For Philippe Wamba
1971–2002
This is a beautiful country.
{ JOHN BROWN }
on his way to the gallows
i.m. Gwendolyn Brooks 1917–2000
There’s nothing left
to say. You have done
your dance, away—
to the place we never thought
would gather you
though somewhere we knew
how days grow shorn. Unbrittle,
brave, graceful yet laceless,
you struck the stone till you were
the stone, or the face
each dark rock hides, if only
from itself. Somethin else. The water
wears over us—
headed home, salt-ward.
We wade in your wake
& pray. Forever
bendable, you never did stoop—
whenever sidewalk’s hard heat
met your dandelion wild,
you fought that white
head through.
A thankful while, the wind
our way blew.
Without you, we might not know
what wind must do—
it too refuses to remain
unseen, keeps many names.
Gust, bluster, hurricane,
Bronzeville’s heavy hawk—
you swirl & save us
from standing still,
unsailed. What the devil
are we without you?
I tuck your voice, laced
tight, in these brown shoes.
THE BALLAD OF JIM CROW
from the life
& lore of The Killer
a.k.a.
Mister Red, Doctor Death,
Professor Limbo, John Doe
& Jim Crow
NATIVITY
Known by four score
& seven names, Jim Crow
was born
with a silver bullet
in his hand. Some say
on a gambling boat,
others say he met the world
at home, in a shotgun
shack. For certain
his left hand clutched
a tin nickel
swallowed by his mother
so the taxman
couldn’t touch it.
That boy was all
she had.
The day was grey.
The night dark brown.
A twister was spotted
all over town.
Jim’s middle name
was None.
His first left blank
for a few hours
till Mr. Crow came home
& called for Gin.
No cigars. Birth certificate
an afterthought—
back there then the county
only thought about you
when you were dead.
Or born silver—
unlike Jim, this wooden
spoon in his mouth
the midwife promptly took
& spanked him awake with.
Welcome.
TRINITY
Jim Crow’s first cousin was Rust.
His reddish head followed
Jim everywhere,
turning into his name
everything Rust touched.
Jim’s sister was nicknamed Sleep.
Everyone wanted to meet
her, or meet more
of her. She was known to snore
to wake the dead, which
is what Everyone would be if
Jim ever caught on.
On the front porch he shone
his gun like the sun.
For any suitor fool enough
to ask after Sleep
Jim promised a dirt nap
& that’s just a start.
Out back he had begun to plant
row after row
of empty graves like cotton holes
waiting to be sown.
TEMPTATION
Jim Crow and Rust loved
to pick fights. Hated
picking cotton. Dug
the ladies, though beauty
mostly puzzled the pair, those
few who bothered to notice
the duo’s dusty clothes,
their accents thick as country mice.
Rust had a way with machines.
Could make the broken sing
& when he had him a few drinks
did just that. His favorite
sport was thirst,
which only made things worse.
Stuffed on air sandwiches,
hard as tomorrow’s bread
& as broke, they’d wander roads
hoping for more. They picked
fights with The Devil
or each other in order
not to have to fight
someone bigger. To impress.
Folks began calling Jim
Killer, and Rust
Rust. Around thin necks
they stuck out only
for each other, they’d cinch
& loosen like a noose the one tie
they shared, never did lose.
TABERNACLE
Since they shared the same
monogram, Jim
Crow & Jesus
often found themselves
getting the other’s dress shirts
back from the wash.
This was after Jim
had made it big
& could afford such
small luxuries. He
& Jesus mostly met
Sundays in church
where Jesus came for the singing
but stayed for the sermon
& to see whether the preacher
ever got it right.
Jim, you guessed it,
came for the collection plate
& after stayed
for the hot
plates of the Ladies
Auxiliary (no apostrophe).
To one
folks prayed,
the other they obeyed.
BAPTISM
Jim’s duel with The Devil
was quick as Hell.
The Devil won,
of course, always does,
but afterward taught Jim a trick
or two. How to keep things close
to the vest, to dress
& impress, how to play
dumb, or numb, to play
cards & keeps.
The Devil lived on Such
& Such Street, kept
an office at the crossroads
by a gnarled tree.
SOULS FOR SALE his sign
read in red. His smile
was beautiful—mostly
a partial from a dentist
just outside Houston, near Hell’s
third circle. Poor Jim
loved little—his cousin
Rust, sister Sleep
who he watched over
& even prayed for—
Jim felt like an orphan
& meant to make
the world feel it too.
To know his name.
There, There
said The Devil, who hides
a soft side, despite
what they say.
Have a drink on me
pull up a chair
& bend my pointy ear.
Then poured a tall
glass of lye
for bruised Jim to eye.
ASCENSION
The sun set
on all his arguments.
At midnight roosters
called out
his name.
Jim Crow crowed
not at all.
The sun set
in its ways.
Heart in a sling.
Jim’s neck in a brace
like a bow tie
for his court case.
For insurance sake.
Always on trial,
Jim was—
the State defended
Jim Crow to the death
& always won. Jim had him
a huge green file.
Jim slept with one
eye open,
hand clenching
his daddy’s gun.
The sun just set
there like a lazy dog.
The sinking ship
of the eclipse. Jim
spitshining the silver
bullet he was born with.
Jim’s fingerprints
always found
at the scene—sheriffs
must’ve carried them
in their belts besides
their billy clubs & star-
shaped badges.
Jim’s song was a smack
in the skull—
a dark drum.
The discipline
of a nun.
Only at night did Jim Crow soar
where the Big
Dipper’s drinking gourd
dared pour.
From jail Jim’s escape
would take a dozen
dark days.
Took one deputy
paid off
to look the other way
& a birthday cake
with a file for filling
Sleep had gone & baked.
One day Jim
just up
& flew away.
One day.
After his daring escape
Jim Crow’s name would soon
be fame.
Posted all over town
at lunch counters
& water fountains.
Like a sun
Jim shone
his gun.
Alone,
all over town,
the sun set
like a broken bone.
DESCENT
Assassins sleep
like babies, deep
& fitful, it’s the rest
of us who pace
& pace, undreaming.
Or dreaming what
we haven’t done.
Easier to forget
than regret—
Jim knew this,
slept easy
as the money he made
taking out the faithless,
or knocking off
those who thought
for a moment fate
wasn’t watching.
Who tried to siphon off
a bit of the bounty,
or sleep with beauty
as if that could last.
It wasn’t the cash
Jim Crow was after,
but to put right
what couldn’t be,
or hadn’t ever been.
His victims
were lucky, patients
really & he
Doctor Red
helping them along.
Their eyes coins already.
Least they went
quick, had a choice—
unlike Rust
who bit it slow
& steady & fading
as his name
Jim dared not dream.
MAGNIFICAT
Now that he was rich
Jim Crow didn’t
act like it—done
with sharkskin suits
& linen, he learned
to patch his clothes
& count every coin
like a sin. His woolens
worn away like a record
played too much,
the houndstooth warped
like Bessie’s broad voice.
Each month he sent
his mother a bundle
though the two
rarely spoke. Enclosed
is a little something
for food, he wrote.
And when Rust went
wherever the dead did
Jim sprung for all
expenses, ordered the best casket
at Bloodworth’s Funeral Home.
The dam of his eyes broke
& Jim couldn’t go.
Each Sunday
Jim’s mother gave over
her take to God
who didn’t ask where
the bread came from.
Neither did she.
Still, every once in a moon
his mother bought
herself a church hat
with shoes to match—
not to hide
her face, but frame
its blossom brown
& remind folks
that humility
need not be ugly.
Beneath her hat, its bright
unfading flowers,
Jim’s mother lowers
her head & prays.
For her son’s soul. For Sleep
to return. For freedom
from this toil
& the red red soil.
It’s me,
Lord, Jim’s mama said,
bent her hatted head
& clenched like teeth
her hands.
It’s me Lord,
she reminded
herself, whose mother
named her America
and whose father was born
a slave
but died free—
which is better
than the other
way round, if you ask me.
Survivors will be human.
—MICHAEL S. HARPER
It’s all there in black
and white: someone
has done it again.
We have lynched a man
in a land far-off
like Texas, hog-tied
and -wild
to the back of a car.
There’s a word I have been
searching for
in the sand but cannot find.
At five o’clock in the afternoon
we play ball, hard,
in Spanish
until we bruise
No trash
talk, no beautiful
rejections—just these
shots, the smooth
skull of the ball
and that
slant Andalusian light
Nearby they are burying
the boy beaten
by the gang—nobody
knows him, everyone
calls the killers by name.
Names. With handcuffs some
manage to hide
their faces like furnaces
failing—first flame, then smoke
and now only cold.
It shifts, this light,
its bruised eye shines
above our heads.
Before us the horse,
javelin-tongued, about
to whinny a word—
that wildness in the eyes.
Again, the bull
horning in—how many
has he drug
silent into swamp
or South, whether of States
or Spain?
If it moans
like a man it must
be a man.
One day the writer
the painter rose
excused himself from the table
at which he no longer
could sit still.
Still sit.
Bought him a one-way
billet, boarded the train
or the boat bound
for Paris
land of red and blue
Dragged awake by midday
light, hunger
sweating my sheets.
We go out into heat. Sit
shaded and peel the shrimp
we will eat, and laugh.
Seafood fresh as a wound.
Precious South,
must I save you
or myself?
On the day of the saint
we watch from the terrace
trying not to toss
ourselves over like flowers.
In the arena
the bulls bow, and begin.
Above the roar the victor
will save
the ear, the living leather.
Today even the cows are tired
have lain down, tuckered, tucking
their legs beneath them
in prayer. Their thick restless
tongues, tails, their blank
bovine bows.
No wonder we worship cows.
No wonder we let them lick
the salt from our arms.
Or bend beneath them
& borrow their motherhood
make it our own. Have you ever
tasted fresh-pulled milk, slightly
warm? It tastes of whatever
grass you have fed them: blue
or bitter crab. Mint. No wonder
we swallow cows & save
their skins, find out if we fit.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.—ALLEN GINSBERG
America, you won’t obey.
You won’t hunt
or heel or stay.
America, you won’t do
anything I want you to.
(To tell the truth,
I like that about you.)
You’re too much.
What mountains you are
America! What minefields
and mysteries, symptoms
and cinemas and symphonies
and cemeteries!
Bully, albino, my
lopsided love—
America, I can’t leave you
well enough alone.
America, you’ve lost
your way home—
I have saluted
your dying woods, called to
your flags trimmed on tin.
America, I am letting you in.
America, where you been?
I have seen your tiny twilit eyes
your mouth still
stuffed with straw.
I have driven your bent unbroken
back and fallen
to my knees like a nun
in her black habit
praying you would change.
Today the road runs straight
Today the grey
is yours! the fog
and the burning leaves.
Today the crows refuse
to get out the way
Today I drive the rains
of your rough face
your citified plains—
America, won’t you take
your hands of hurt away?
tuck them drawer-deep
like the good
silver of grandmothers?
(I have inherited, America, only
rusty knees, a voice
hoarse from hollering.)
America I have counted
all the china and none
is missing.
America, I love most your rust,
the signs that misspell doom—
And why not your yards
of bottle trees and cars?
And why not the heart
transplants we want?
America, tell the maples
to quit all this leaving.
Warranty up, trial basis,
thirty days free—
America I have seen
men whose faces are flags
bloodied and blue with talk
seen the churches keep
like crosses burning
seen the lady who lines
your huddled shore, her hand
rifle-raised,
her back turned away.
James Hampton, self-taught artist
Evenings I return with my head
Soaked with stars—place
A crown crafted of foil
On my head and set to work
By day I sweep the school
Nights I piece together heaven
The way God intended:
By hand, by saving
What some would throw away
No one sees scraps are what saves
What do I know of purgatory?
Except the cans that once a week
Congregate along the curb, waiting
To be delivered
Some of what I need I find
Among those rusty lids, past peels
And maggots
The metal gleaming
What we gather, we are
When I die and make
My way to that third place
The land-
Lord will discover this
Altar above my garage
Decide it art
Find the faith my hands wound
Each day like a watch
My magpiety
I go with the team also.
—WHITMAN
These are the last days
my television says. Tornadoes, more
rain, overcast, a chance
of sun but I do not
trust weathermen,
never have. In my fridge only
the milk makes sense—
expires. No one, much less
my parents, can tell me why
my middle name is Lowell,
and from my table
across from the Confederate
Monument to the dead (that pale
finger bone) a plaque
declares war—not Civil,
or Between
the States, but for Southern
Independence. In this café, below sea-
and eye-level a mural runs
the wall, flaking, a plantation
scene most do not see—
it’s too much
around the knees, height
of a child. In its fields Negroes bend
to pick the endless white.
In livery a few drive carriages
like slaves, whipping the horses, faces
blank and peeling. The old hotel
lobby this once was no longer
welcomes guests—maroon ledger,
bellboys gone but
for this. Like an inheritance
the owner found it
stripping hundred years
(at least) of paint
and plaster. More leaves each day.
In my movie there are no
horses, no heroes,
only draftees fleeing
into the pines, some few
who survive, gravely
wounded, lying
burrowed beneath the dead—
silent until the enemy
bayonets what is believed
to be the last
of the breathing. It is getting later.
We prepare
for wars no longer
there. The weather
inevitable, unusual—
more this time of year
than anyone ever seed. The earth
shudders, the air—
if I did not know
better, I would think
we were living all along
a fault. How late
it has gotten…
Forget the weatherman
whose maps move, blink,
but stay crossed
with lines none has seen. Race
instead against the almost
rain, digging beside the monument
(that giant anchor)
till we strike
water, sweat
fighting the sleepwalking air.
And one day, when, I will cross
Great Water, walk and reach
that final rise
to find them
singing. There,
in the valley, they all will be.
Forgive me, Grandfather, for wanting
to hear you again
for leaning close to strain
to understand what you are saying.
And Mother, Father, for expecting
to kiss again your wide hands
even though I still can.
In my breast
pocket I shall keep
the ticket the conductor
sold me
stamped One Way.
That day even rain can’t delay.
And we will sit and rock
and sip our sweating drinks—
watching the sun toward us bring
red light like an arriving train.
Lionel Hampton’s Last Weekend in Concert at the Hotel Meridien, Paris, Good Friday, 1999
The light dim
as they bring him—
Ladies & Gentleman
Mademoiselles & Monsieurs
Lionel Hampton!—in—
His cane quick turns
to a xylophone wand—
Dad says the man used to hold
two at a time—strikes
notes clear as a river
or its gold.
Motherlode. He’s slowed
some, plenty—
like M’Dear, 102, who
one night fell off
the porch she thought
a bathroom, then lay till dawn
leg broken—her last
and his. (Still, sometimes
you gotta make a break
for it, like the time
they found M’Dear, eleven then,
along the highway
with baby brother
having decided to walk
back to their old, all-black home
in Bouley, Oklahoma
where a sign in town proclaimed
WHITES NOT ALLOWED
PAST SUNDOWN.)
Playing the subtleties
of silence, Hampton traces,
like a government agency,
the vibes—quietly—
his wands a magic,
a makeshift. Arthritic solos
hover like a bee
above the flower, finding
the sweet center.
Two days before Easter, Monsieur
Hampton plays the changes,
offering up
songs read off
a napkin bruised with lyrics:
What did I do
to be so black & blue?
his voice wobbles
along the highway
called history,
flying home. Here.
(Leaves out the part
I’m white—inside—
because he’s not.)
The band, tight, will swarm
behind & save him
if he falls—when—
The sax player stops
between tunes to dab
a handkerchief at the drool
gathering his chin.
Such
care. The mind’s blind
alleys we wander down.
This is enough, just—
This is Paris—
In the Rosa Parks section,
as the drummer we met
before the second set
dubbed it, we stand
in the back
& applaud
& shout yeah
& block no one.
And I say to myself
What a wonderful world—
Dad’s so excited
he falls off
the risers—& he laughs
& we laugh—
Skies are blue
Clouds are white
Sacred dark light
In which, after, they lead him out.
The world is a widow.
Storms surround us, areas
of low
& high pressure
moving through—
should be gone tomorrow.
Rain from the sky
like planes.
We pull ourselves up
from bed
or death, wander
streets like ghosts,
lost guests.
Everyone’s a town
with the shops shutting
down, no hours
posted. Even the radio
stays closed—only news
or fools still
believing love.
Traffic that won’t move.
In the crossing, a white hearse
hanging a left.
I want to be that woman
just ahead, tapping her foot
out a car window, bare,
in time to a music
I can’t quite hear.
SEPTEMBER 2001
AFRICAN ELEGY ( MUCH THINGS TO SAY )
i.m. Philippe Wamba, 1971–2002
•
One good thing about music
When it hits you feel no pain
{ BOB MARLEY }
THE NEWS [ STOP THAT TRAIN ]
When you died I was reading Whitman
aloud.
While you died I was miles away,
thousands of deserts and oceans
and mountains and plain.
When you went I was reading aloud the end
to a crowd trying
to remember how grief once felt,
wanting to forget,
wanting not to.
While you went about that dangerous road
on your way was it to the sea
I was saying Look for me
under your bootsoles.
Caked with mud.
Caked with mud the color
of blood, the picture much
later I saw of your truck
totaled, towed
by what was left
of the axles—
Your passenger brother’s breath a miracle.
When you died I was reading aloud
for the dead, for what
I had almost believed
and then the world went
And did this. I cannot forgive
this world, its gear’s unsteady turn,
that day’s sun that shone
While you died trying to get home.
11 SEPTEMBER 2002
IMMUNIZATIONS [ LIVELY UP YOURSELF ]
It is late when we decide
the long flight to you, to find
repellent enough to keep
even this away.
It is late when I think I cannot make it
and am afraid—
I can’t, my passport
is old, the picture
I took to tour Europe
with you barely looks
like me now, and yours
I can no more remember.
It is early when I go
get the shots to keep
me well—you understand
they give you a little
now to let it
later not kill you.
There’s no immunity
against grief—
There’s nothing that keeps
away dengue fever
or a hundred other
harms—
Boil or tablet the water.
Another pill to take
the taste out.
Are you ok without meningitis?
I am ok I think I leave
then go back and get more
to make my arm sore.
This one lasts you
for life
This one lasts four months
This one take
every day while there
and seven days after.
This one you don’t need
This one won’t take effect
till you return.
Perhaps grief itself
is inoculation against
it all, faith
is much of it—
I half forget
and hug myself
and there it is again—
the pain—
For you my arms ache for days.
17 SEPTEMBER
THE FUNERAL ROAD [ BABYLON BY BUS ]
Honey’s Fashions
on road to the family home
white mannequins
in the window
selling something I can’t see
last night when we landed
in Dar es Salaam the smell everywhere
of fireworks in the air
as if something nearby exploded
and no one in the road
Que’s Cyber Café on the way
to funeral
right side of his face/fallen
hearse a small bus with a siren
I’ll follow him
forever
dozens of blondwood beds
frames empty
Asante Yehova
on a billboard
Thank You Jehovah
For Answering Our Prayers
a rooster walking
under a vanity
its oblong mirror
Survey Motel
self contained rooms
photocopy binding
red dirt in a pile
high enough
for a hundred graves
Relatives & Freinds
misspelled on our bus
along the long
road to the chapel
one boy saluting
another aiming
his elbow at us
and shooting
20 SEPTEMBER
BURIAL [ NO WOMAN NO CRY ]
We circle the grave
in dark coats like buzzards.
The men, me too, this morning
had lifted you, steering
your wooden ship through
metal doors to the living room.
I couldn’t stand to see
the screws still loose.
A plank it felt we walked.
They lifted the lid
right there and we filed
past like ants, bearing
twice our weight
in sorrow. It wasn’t
true. That ain’t you—
too grey, and serious,
right side of your face
fallen, cotton
filling your nose—
at least the suit looked new.
We held each other a long time
after and could not speak,
like you. Get up,
Stand up, we’ll sing
later, the reggae you loved
your brother will strum
stumbling on a guitar, and for
a moment you’ll be there, here,
where we’d been brought to visit
too late, like fools.
At the grave we step
past crumbling stones
and dead flowers to stand
on the red rise
of dirt already dug
for you. The sound
of them letting you down.
The sound of men scraping
and scraping what
I can’t quite see, spreading
the cool concrete
over you by hand. And it takes
long, so long, like death—
like we once thought life.
The choir lifts us up
with their voices above
the coconut trees—Habari
Jemba they sing—
and the tune tells me Isn’t That
Good News.
Cell phones chiming
their songs too.
After, we place white flowers
on your hardening tomb.
Is it only the sun
we shade our faces from?
Our sweat a thousand tears.
21 SEPTEMBER
SABBATH [ WAIT IN VAIN ]
And all Sunday we slept
starting once
and then again
asleep, wake
only when it’s dark.
It’s one
in the night
Swahili time—
we’ve learned now
to wear our watches
upside down.
We want to see
your town—that you there
on the corner,
haggling
with God?
Later we’ll sneak
& chew tchat in honor
of you, keeping you
hidden in our cheeks
for hours. You are
the Tusker
downed warm,
the chili sauce we sweat
our kingfish with,
fruit we don’t dare touch.
Scrabble your fiancée’s mother
always wins.
HOMESIT. HONEY-
ED. I want
to stay here
forever, or for you,
to see how happy
your life might
make me, us
left to live it
for you.
And tomorrow
back to the work
that is life, grief, what’s
left: climbing
the church tower
till we can’t go
any higher, creaking up
the spire past the bells
I want to ring
but it’s too early.
Down again, we’ll wait
in the churchyard & watch
children playing tag, taunting
whoever’s it & pretending
safe. Walk on
down to a jetty
where men line up pissing
into the unmoved sea,
the shore rocking
a tide full of bottles
like wishes washed
back empty.
21 SEPTEMBER
STONE TOWN [ HIGH TIDE OR LOW TIDE ]
We decide the last
minute, day we are
to leave, to fly for a tour
of Zanzibar—
the prop plane pulling far
above the city and shore
that you loved, leaving
the ground like bodies behind.
Shadows of clouds
across green water.
Whatever I fear,
a fall, does not happen, or has
happened already—who can
say. You’re gone.
And the sun
pays no mind, still leaves
the water blues and green
and colors I cannot name
but imagine you always
had a word for. Stone Town
itself is beautiful and loud
and lush, fish split open
like mouths in the market, cats
waiting for what falls.
The Joba Tree, tall—
where slaves once were tied and sold
and whipped to show
how strong—
long since chopped down.
Red marble
in the chapel
built over the stump.
Here, the House of Wonder
is mostly empty, a few rusty
Communist cars—and at last we reach
ocean bare feet can feel,
fruit you can peel
and trust. Nose full of dust.
Today’s never enough—
the flight back too quick
while the pilot barely looks,
fills out forms and carbons.
In sunset Dar es Salaam
spread out against the ocean
like a hand.
You’re gone.
Below, drifting plumes
of smoke. Can it be
too much to hope—
that tonight the sailboats
will fill their wings
with wind and skim
home quickly
across the sky of sea.
25 SEPTEMBER
CATCH A FIRE
I arrive home to cyclones,
to trees broken like the heat
hasn’t yet. Autumn
nowhere in sight except
a few leaves starting
their fall fire. Driving without
eyes for wreckage,
I don’t notice right away—
Otis Redding sings A Change
Is Gonna Come and I sob
one last time you’re gone.
High up, the BILLIONS
SOLD sign mangled,
once golden arches turned
almost an ampersand—
a few miles along it dawns
what storms I’ve missed.
Signs ripped down.
Roofs made only of tarp.
Pink tongues of insulation
pulled from the mouths
of houses now silent.
Looking for a sign
from God?
one billboard asks—
This is it.
What’s left
of the Hillview Motel
no longer needs say
VACANCY.
Only the hill
still here. The corn
brown and shorn.
In a few weeks who can tell
what’s being built
and what torn down—
flattened, the fields
all look the same. For now
this charcoal smell
fluttering past the hill—
It’s been too hard living
And I’m afraid to die—
the thick smoke billowing
from burning
what’s still green
but can’t be saved.
25 SEPTEMBER
REDEMPTION SONG
Finally fall.
At last the mist,
heat’s haze, we woke
these past weeks with
has lifted. We find
ourselves chill, a briskness
we hug ourselves in.
Frost greying the ground.
Grief might be easy
if there wasn’t still
such beauty—would be far
simpler if the silver
maple didn’t thrust
its leaves into flame,
trusting that spring
will find it again.
All this might be easier if
there wasn’t a song
still lifting us above it,
if wind didn’t trouble
my mind like water.
I half expect to see you
fill the autumn air
like breath—
At night I sleep
on clenched fists.
Days I’m like the child
who on the playground
falls, crying
not so much from pain
as surprise.
I’m tired of tide
taking you away,
then back again—
what’s worse, the forgetting
or the thing
you can’t forget.
Neither yet—
last summer’s
choir of crickets
grown quiet.
19 OCTOBER
EULOGY [ PEOPLE GET READY ]
And so the snow.
Far away the cactus flowering.
White morning making
my hands sting.
Lilies in a refrigerator
losing scent.
Tell me the weather
wherever you are.
Let snow send its angels—
lay down and wave
numb arms.
Deepening drifts.
We who are left
like mailboxes along a country road
huddle together in the cold
awaiting word.
5 DECEMBER
ONE LOVE
Long ladder
the rain makes
The thirsty
throat of God—
The night of the day
we buried you
we sang every
Bob Marley song we knew
by heart or whatever
it was that kept
us up, and together—
call it gut—
It sure wasn’t
legs that kept anyone
that day moving
numb.
A fork
in the road like a tongue
Long night
the heat makes—
The wide open mouth
of your brother’s guitar
Your mother & us making music
to shut the silence
that is nowhere
but where
you might be, planted
beneath the palm trees.
We sway
how long I cannot say
Long ladder
of wished-for rain—
Later that night
we each sing some
song that is ours,
whatever we know—by gut—
& I sing the thing
that’s kept me
company all day:
It’s me It’s me
It’s me O Lord
standing in the need
Of prayer—
It’s me It’s me It’s me—
O Lord—
Your fiancée tall
& sleepless
One brother strumming
One outside smoking
And another already
quiet under a hill.
The old song
my love sang:
From this valley they say
you are going
We will miss your bright
eyes & sweet smile—
Later your father
giving stories to the dawn
tells of his great-uncle
who lived to be
one hundred
twenty-two years old
& was still
going strong—
Know how he died?
He took his own life
Left a note saying God
has forgotten me.
It’s me It’s me
O Lord—
Tonight I
and I are afraid
we may have slipped
God’s mind—
Above us
the stubbed-out stars
The dark unmoving
mouth of the guitar—
Tonight, by gut,
I pray you are
God—
but not forgotten—
O earth
of a thousand exits
O endless
endings—
Why does waiting
feel like pain
& pain waiting?
How to finish
this song,
say my goodbye—
Long ladder
the days make
Short time
to climb.
SPRING 2003
Already the apartments
unfilling. Steady rain.
The feeling of rented
gowns against the skin.
Of rented everything.
That rain
again. The green—
loud sound of digging,
whine from a far-off machine.
Tornadoes take away
whole towns,
touching down. Families
try to find
each other, pointing out
their child in the crowd—
That one’s mine,
proud. Teams practice
sliding home
dusting off uniforms
& somewhere the tailor is bored
to tears with nothing
left to hem. Rained
out games—
But the flowers love it
says the man selling me
sweet tea.
In my yard what I thought
were only weeds
turns out are really
a hundred tiny
blooming maple trees.