When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles
and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy
waiting for my owner to pick me up.
When I was young, I ran the day to its knees.
There were trees to swing on, crickets for capture.
I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel,
tongued in honey and coddled in milk,
sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a colt.
And the world was already old.
And I was older than I am today.
I Cut My Finger Once on Purpose
I’m no baby. There’s no grizzly man
wheezing in the back of the closet.
When I was the only one,
they asked me if I wanted a night-light
and I said yes—
but then came the shadows.
I know they make the noises at night.
My toy monkey Giselle, I put her
in a red dress they said was mine
once—but if it was mine, why did they yell
when Giselle clambered up the porch maple
and tore it? Why would Mother say
When you grow up, I hope you have
a daughter just like you
if it weren’t true, that I have a daughter
hidden in the closet—someone
they were ashamed of and locked away
when I was too small to cry.
I watch them all the time now:
Mother burned herself at the stove
without wincing. Father
smashed a thumb in the Ford,
then stuck it in his mouth for show.
They bought my brother a just-for-boys
train, so I grabbed the caboose
and crowned him—but he toppled
from his rocker without a bleat;
he didn’t even bleed.
That’s when I knew they were
robots. But I’m no idiot:
I eat everything they give me,
I let them put my monkey away.
When I’m big enough
I’ll go in, past the boa
and the ginger fox biting its tail
to where my girl lies, waiting . . .
and we’ll stay there, quiet,
We passed through
on the way to anywhere else.
No one lived there
but silence, a pale china gleam,
and the tired eyes of saints
aglow on velvet.
Mom says things are made
to be used. But Grandma insisted
peace was in what wasn’t there,
strength in what was unsaid.
It would be nice to have a room
you couldn’t enter, except in your mind.
I like to sit on my bed
plugged into my transistor radio,
“Moon River” pouring through my head.
How do you use life?
How do you feel it? Mom says
things harden with age; she says
Grandma is happier now. After the funeral,
I slipped off while they stood around
remembering—away from all
the talking and eating and weeping
to sneak a peek. She wasn’t there.
Then I understood why
she had kept them just so:
so quiet and distant,
the things that she loved.
Open it.
Go ahead, it won’t bite.
Well . . . maybe a little.
More a nip, like. A tingle.
It’s pleasurable, really.
You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.
Sure, it’s hard to get started;
remember learning to use
knife and fork? Dig in:
You’ll never reach bottom.
It’s not like it’s the end of the world—
just the world as you think
Maple Valley Branch Library, 1967
For a fifteen-year-old there was plenty
to do: Browse the magazines,
slip into the Adult Section to see
what vast tristesse was born of rush-hour traffic,
décolletés, and the plague of too much money.
There was so much to discover—how to
lay out a road, the language of flowers,
and the place of women in the tribe of Moost.
There were equations elegant as a French twist,
fractal geometry’s unwinding maple leaf;
I could follow, step-by-step, the slow disclosure
of a pineapple Jell-O mold—or take
the path of Harold’s purple crayon through
the bedroom window and onto a lavender
spill of stars. Oh, I could walk any aisle
and smell wisdom, put a hand out to touch
the rough curve of bound leather,
the harsh parchment of dreams.
As for the improbable librarian
with her salt and paprika upsweep,
her British accent and sweater clip
(mom of a kid I knew from school)—
I’d go up to her desk and ask for help
on bareback rodeo or binary codes,
phonics, Gestalt theory,
lead poisoning in the Late Roman Empire,
the play of light in Dutch Renaissance painting;
I would claim to be researching
pre-Columbian pottery or Chinese foot-binding,
but all I wanted to know was:
Tell me what you’ve read that keeps
that half smile afloat
above the collar of your impeccable blouse.
So I read Gone with the Wind because
it was big, and haiku because they were small.
I studied history for its rhapsody of dates,
lingered over Cubist art for the way
it showed all sides of a guitar at once.
All the time in the world was there, and sometimes
all the world on a single page.
As much as I could hold
on my plastic card’s imprint I took,
greedily: six books, six volumes of bliss,
the stuff we humans are made of:
words and sighs and silence,
ink and whips, Brahma and cosine,
corsets and poetry and blood sugar levels—
I carried it home, past five blocks of aluminum siding
and the old garage where, on its boarded-up doors,
someone had scrawled:
I CAN EAT AN ELEPHANT
IF I TAKE SMALL BITES.
Yes, I said, to no one in particular: That’s
what I’m gonna do!
The sun flies over the madrigals,
outsmarting the magisterial
wits, sad ducks
who imagine they matter.
What a parade! Wind tucks
a Dixie cup up its
sleeve, absconds
with a kid’s bright chatter
while above, hawks
wheel as the magistrates circle
below, clutching their hats.
I’m not buying. To watch
the tops of 10,000
heads floating by on sticks
and not care if one of them
sees me (though it
would be a kick!)
—now, that’s
what I’d call
freedom,
and justice,
Back when the earth was new
and heaven just a whisper,
back when the names of things
hadn’t had time to stick;
back when the smallest breezes
melted summer into autumn,
when all the poplars quivered
sweetly in rank and file . . .
the world called, and I answered.
Each glance ignited to a gaze.
I caught my breath and called that life,
swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.
I was pirouette and flourish,
I was filigree and flame.
How could I count my blessings
when I didn’t know their names?
Back when everything was still to come,
luck leaked out everywhere.
I gave my promise to the world,
and the world followed me here.
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits—
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.