Let’s sit right here, us just us, on our bed
of scrubbed sand.
We’ll talk without speaking, gaze out on
old man Atlantic,
Watch his energy build into rhythmic waves,
their lives intense but short.
Commitment is in our fingers,
each one of yours entwined in each one of mine.
Behind us the dunes stand cool and collected,
their hair, made of shore grass, dances
To smooth jazz sown into the whispers of the wind.
Remember how we used to laugh at existence and non-
existence because we didn’t know what else to do?
Now I must sit here without you. Last week
I released your ashes on the water’s edge
To recycle your remains with the atoms
of beginning and end.
See, the sand crabs continue to create
their hieroglyphics,
Messages sandpipers and gulls have learned
to interpret and track over millennia.
It’s dusk, isn’t it, and for all the days
that will follow. I reach for your hand.
I want to touch you again, just one more time.
One more time.
For Robert Monroe Parker
But if s not as though I don’t want
to remember that early evening in college when
Bob and I decided to walk fifteen miles
up into the Green Mountains. That
weightless night spring was untroubled,
clothed in laughter because we owned time,
giddiness an attempt to escape
our sheltered cocoons. The sky warmed up
with early light as we struck the high meadows
woods the stream where we had caught rainbow trout.
When we are born next time we’ll understand more
about pain and loss when you finally give up all hope
and slide straight down into a lake, your last breath
bathed in tears. We’ll walk far beyond the campus
get married have children and love as never before.
old friend no longer you
stagnant in death
locked forever in your years
even now your whispers
differ from your old voice
I can still hear you teaching me
about the clever behavior of plants
habits and habitats of deer fox bass kingfishers
and the clapper rails you studied for your doctorate
you never accepted laptops
they invaded your privacy
we couldn’t get you to talk with them
remember the backpacks when we camped
you made your own I never met anyone
who wrapped the outdoors around himself better
home cold hot snow or rain
now your ashes are strewn
into an upstate New York wind
and over a Fire Island beach
I have things to tell you Bob
a mink crossed my runway
two broad-shouldered hawks
were feeding on a large rabbit
the adult teaching its young
did I tell you my new essay
the environment woods lakes
oceans streams especially air
we need to offset down-your-throat TV
how they blast us on radio media ads
fired on us as if we need them to survive
where the hell are you Bob?
only a couple of months I’m frightened
I want you to call we can walk
the lakes the moors in Montauk
hike camp the Adirondacks
wherever you’d like you said
you weren’t giving up you finally ran
out of energy too many pulls downward
god you were magnificent
change is the only constant isn’t it
the tide has run out you with it
a one-way trip to wherever
those night talks history nature ecology
politics women memories
I’ll remember ours you goodbye Bob
All this time
you had it wrong,
believing you could only
float on water, that you could not
make a deal with gravity.
Discover the air.
It is thick
with meaning
and carries you on Aer’s wings,
its power like some kind of divine
omnipotence. You can escape from the ground
liberated to float on the wind.
What do pilots seek?
Some mutter that slipping
through the air is like
the rhythms they feel
making love.
Some look and observe very little,
babbling about the music of Elysium.
Others ramble about Creation.
A few quietly insist
that when Death
opens its doors
they will enter on the air,
grinning with anticipation.
Inspired by Donald Hall
He doesn’t have much time left.
He’s alone now, the long years have
buried his old buddies,
buried the flights they made
in those V and Diamond formations, those initial
approaches over the runway,
the leader peeling off the downwind, the others
following the way geese do in trail.
Flights to another pilot’s country airstrip,
alone or with a pal, navigating by “dead reckoning,”
the old way, before nav-aids and GPS.
He feels like he’s enveloped in the sky’s pageant
with the same awe he felt as a boy.
But times the engine became rough or backfired,
or weather a sinister monster in front,
even worse behind.
He would have to shake off fear,
calm down to ensure the right decisions.
He gathers his old bones, pulls himself
up slowly on the lower wing, then settles
down into the cockpit, not as smooth as he did
fifty years earlier, a time he’s distorted somewhat.
He fastens shoulder and seat belts, tattered
helmet and headset, smiles at past memories,
yells “clear!” even though no one is present.
He turns on the electric master switch,
the magnetos and presses the starter.
He sits expectantly, reviewing the things
he has to check: oil pressure, engine temp,
altimeter, rudder, elevator, and aileron controls.
He taxis through familiar grass, turns into the wind,
pushes the throttle forward, the plane lifting
him once again into the air. He scans the sky
for his friends, imagines for a moment
they’re there, waiting for him—
and they are.