For Meri, Allie, Mike, Jenny
I cannot teach you
about death.
I cannot pass on to you
what I do not know.
I can only imagine what
the beyond is,
where we have never been,
where we hope something occurs,
like light or time.
I do not know if anything exists
past the last galaxy,
in that void hardly contemplated.
How many is the infinite number
of oxygen and hydrogen atoms
that join to sponsor water
in perfect symbiosis?
And in greened Iowa,
The kernels of yellow-gold corn, as many
as the uncounted stars in the uncounted
galaxies?
Oh, but I will tell you
that if death were
an enemy, I would fight like hell.
We would engage in epic combat,
roiling on
boiling seas, clanging underneath
Wagnerian evergreens, hurling thunderbolts
across mountains.
My blows would be Herculean,
my rage unstoppable,
My victory complete, death killed and
cast under your feet.
But it may even be that death is simply
the nothingness beyond,
beyond numbers, beyond thought,
beyond fantasy,
Where time transcends anything
we can comprehend.
Or death may live in a place
Together with life, where colors are soft
and warmed with hope,
smells the sweetness of pleasure,
Touch the security of faith, of peace,
taste the sharp cockiness
of confidence, and
Sight the laughter and tears, the love
I have had
since you came from that other place,
To be carried with me here and where
I will go.
For Nadine Hey man
Do you remember when
I was little? You were my
comforter a canopy with
wings spread wide, who listened when
I couldn’t talk to them.
You were my refuge from spring rains,
summer’s scorch, and in winter
flakes of wet snow. I would stand
tight to your rough skin, your
thick body blocked me from the iced winds.
They couldn’t hear
our whisperings and the things we shared.
If I cried you would touch me
or do something to make me forget.
When I climbed way up in your arms,
I was taller more powerful
than anyone below.
I always loved you in ways I could
never explain and one day
you said my initials were yours.
I grew up went across
the horizon, planted new trees.
Yesterday I watched them cut
you down, dump you on that
flatbed hearse, your limbs gaping,
graceless uncoordinated, awkward,
sliced into grotesque pieces.
I followed as they carted you
crouched in your embarrassment—
uncovered—onto Main Street
like a freak show for all to see.
But somehow, even after all that
you were still alive juices oozed
out your sheared limbs and you lifted
a few leaves, waved to me into
a last wind. I turned from your
final humiliation
unwilling to witness the very
end after your last gasp when
someone would warm themselves over
your burning bones, perhaps
laugh by the heat from your heart.
For Adam Rosenberg and Lesa Shapiro
You were not
supposed to be here
at the time of my rebirth.
I did not expect
your eyes
Hebrew-blue
that I see
before anything else.
You must have come
straight from
the Psalms and Proverbs
after bathing In
the Pools of Solomon.
They will try
to stop us,
but we will race
beyond their grasp
across the forest floor
past timid ferns
that sway to lute songs
past wildflowers waiting
thousands of years for us.
We shall throw
our pasts away
slip down inside
each other’s eyes.
I shall learn about my face
from your fingers.
You will teach me
where warmth is
deep within,
where your shyness waits,
where gravity pulls me.
You make me shiver.
When my words tremble
you unravel them
muted by your faith,
wiping away hesitation
quieting my fears.
I do not know why
you first said,
“Dance with me.”
Your eyes
are twin moons
that smile.
They have seen inside
And hint of the future.
We will go then
out there
and dance among the winds.
A stall
is a ritual
of flying.
Pilots need to test
the exact moment
when gravity leans on
the plane’s nose,
pushes it down
into a fall
and us with it.
To find
that instant when
change is in command,
the wheel or stick
pulled back,
as if we were choosing
to haul ourselves
backward into our pasts.
We point up and up and up
until the instant
we cannot angle any higher.
Forward speed staggers,
time slushes
and we meet that very
second and, like an orgasm exploding,
we tumble from
that held position
wondrously out of control
into the present tense
and then oh and then
into the future.
are puffed up tales
telling stories,
illusions
whose time has come,
breaths blown eloquently
by the Creator,
impregnating
the air
the way galaxies
are brushed
across
the cosmos.
We did forget your face,
Jesse.
The one we gave you the
Bronze Medal for.
When you did those things
for us in
World War II.
Do you remember him,
Jesse Carpenter?
No, of course you don’t.
Why should you?
He dropped out in ’62, from
his family.
From the way most of us live.
An alcoholic,
Jesse.
The street was his home,
with another vet,
Johnny Lamb, his old buddy in a
wheelchair he wouldn’t
Leave that last very cold night.
He froze about a block from the
White House.
Where presidents decide how many
hundreds of billions
Go for dams and defense.
He was easy to ignore
Out there in the dark.
This morning darkness lingers . . .
Simple things are hard to describe:
the way the light edges over
night’s borders, dawn one step behind,
the sharp, green-black silhouette of
evergreens pressed onto brightening sky,
like the cutouts
I used to make in third grade.
And there’s clear, luminescent Venus
hanging from a string
below the sliver moon,
the only lights
still left on the blackness.
It’s an odd configuration,
meaning something I don’t understand
but meaning something.
Yellows and oranges wake up,
push into the darkness
like consciousness aroused;
magenta flaunts its outrageous pink-blue,
even a band of green, if you look carefully . . .
Across the bay,
fire
climbs the windows of the houses,
dawn shakes loose, clears its sleepy throat.
And yet. . .
There are dim blurs on the water
not wakened by the wind
ruffling the surface,
perhaps flocks of scaup asleep or diving.
I can’t be sure.
Before I can tell you
all that I have seen,
this spent night has journeyed on,
chased by morning
and my love that seeks
people, animals, everything—
and especially you.
We buried you
late Monday afternoon,
Dad,
just before the rain,
but you
weren’t really there.
We did it well,
like you lived your life,
now closed inside
the grained oak
coffin.
I looked for you
when I woke this morning
but you were shrouded
in the mist
of your mountains.
I could not hear
what you were
telling me,
the words were all
slurred together.
Now, on this Monday,
a week later,
you would say
I should not be afraid,
that I should
live with the pines
and the hardwoods
as they do
with each other.
I should watch
how the tide changes
and learn the ways
time passes.
I still see you
strong and confident,
high on your horse
the one that did not
permit anyone else.
I remember
what made you
laugh
when you became
angry.
I smell so many
of your smells,
hear your sure voice
in the dark,
miss your man’s touch,
bristled kisses
and hugs we renewed
when I too became
a father,
when I too fell
fatally into time.
Soon they come, the pilots,
needing to get off the ground,
gravity oppressive, no longer
acceptable. They gather early
on this flat field, edged with
trees they know mark the limits
of the time they will have
to stop within or rise above.
Light has overpowered darkness,
lifting it off and away for the day
Two, maybe three or four, congregate,
a circle of comrades,
to poke the earth with small talk,
to share glances of the sky,
to feel the wind replace thoughts
until one says slowly,
as if he had drawn the winning card,
“Looks pretty good, I guess.35
Then maybe a scratch behind an ear,
a grin, a nod, a turn toward
the hangar where a biplane
waits and listens.
The pilot rolls open the large doors,
walks to his flying ship,
its smells filling his soul
like an elixir. He stands for a moment
between the wings and fuselage,
rests a hand on the painted fabric,
its feel no longer needing
to be remembered.