on obligation and poetry

each morning, she dumps the used coffee grounds
from the previous day's pot, a chore she always
promises herself she'd do the night before.

each morning, she must clean the stained
carafe before she can fill it with water.

each morning, she makes a bit of a mess, cursing
softly, as she rinses the last specks of black down the drain.

each morning, when the automated wonder signals
it's finished, a steaming mug only moments away,
the boy asks 'mommy, what's that noise?'

each morning, she smiles and says, 'mommy's coffee is ready'
to which he replies, with a knowing nod, 'oh, sure.'

shakespeare will tell her the rest is silence,
yeats will tell her the center cannot hold,
hemingway will tell her it's just a dirty trick--

she'll fix herself another cup, sigh,
and wonder, what's next, what's next?

Fearing Charlie Chaplin

I am having a time of it,
managing my modern problem.

My daughter loves you, Charlie Chaplin,
and it makes me tremble, tremble.

She sits cross-legged on our couch, perched forward in smile,
fighting off bedtime deadline to watch five more minutes, five more minutes
of your Vaudeville falldown.

And she loves you and your falldown and your little moustache, too.
She’s too young to see a little Hitler in you,
too young to fear the tyranny of a little dictator who will juggle-drop her heart.

What dynamo cogs will you wind her up in?
Would she pilfer day-old bread loafs for you, play house in a rickety dockside shack?
Would she sleep soundly in vacant department store beds
while you disable and enable your friends, the crooks?
Will you make her giggle with forks and rolls as kicking, dancing legs and feet,
one of your gold rush girls adoring the table ballet?
I see you googly-walking down city streets, dragging her to carnival cafes,
shoulder-pressed dances of whoop-it-up, and black and white sunsets.
I see you slipping, sliding and sending her down the God-tragic conveyor belt assembly line.
I see her slyly working the coppers to bust you out of handcuffs, out of paddywagons,
out of black metal prison bars and little light-filled jail windows.
I see her sneaking out in bowler hats, loose suits, and a unbelievably bendy cane.

My daughter loves me, Charlie Chaplin.
I am serious, stoic, solid in body, in mind.
I embrace responsibility, Charlie Chaplin.
I haven’t strapped on roller skates and teetered on precipices in years.

But my daughter loves you, Charlie Chaplin,
and it makes me tremble, tremble.

I am having a time of it,
managing my modern problem.

Felinae

(S)he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells [her] (s)he's a good Cat. --Christopher Smart

She sidles past me, disregarding me,
like a woman, too busy, window-shopping
downtown, disregarding me.

They share a general disdain for me.
Yet for each, I offer an observant stare,
a look that begs for time and attention.

Her ash gray coat must be soft to touch.
To dare to touch could prove tragic—
a hiss, a sharp snap, a quick slash scratch.

I implore with an unsure and shaky voice,
changing pitch to soothe the savage soul
that might pounce my pathetic heart.

So then, I wait. Ignoring without ignoring
her upraised nose, her confident saunter.
I wait, quietly, feigning attention to anything else.

In time, I get a look, eyes thrown back
over a moving shoulder, a hint of a grin,
claiming control with every step.

Election Day

Scraps now scraped into the stretched-full white Hefty bag
and Wifey backlit warm in the kitchen sink window rinsing plates.
We end today
the way we end most days, up from the table groaning with a rag,
wiping down counters, loading the washer, too too late
for Monopoly, Risk, another please please play

from Little Bit avoiding the sad crashing weight of 9 times 8 and
chapter eleven of some book bringing a boy-wizard making good.
I spring out the back door
and quick off the back porch lugging stench with a trash hand
stepping assuredly into a black yard with wasted food,
an echoing speech, and more

promise. A red polluted sun sinks low behind sweet swaying trees
dropping leaves like blue dreams, shook free from a waking land.
The night gives up its moans,
sighs, dry eyes, and bald-faced lies. My knees
ache, but they always do when fronts move in. It’s good to be home,
makes easier the day to withstand.

redshift

Forsaking hundreds of dollars in toys, my son
plays with a tape measure.
He hands me one end and walks away.
When the tape grows taut, he smiles as I let my bit go,
watching it slither back. Six feet is always six feet. I am here.
He is there.

I was ten when I got
that first, flimsy
blue telescope. Perhaps my obsession
with the past begins there.

you excel at being wrong about people,
he told me after three days of silence.

There is movement between us,
though we’ve mastered
the deception of stasis. Such is the illusion
actors project when the scene plays
itself out in an empty house.

I still look for answers in a sky I can’t touch.
Star charts only explain
how it used to be—the distance
light must travel for me to see.

a pulling apart by forces
laying quietly in a cynic’s heart,
so that time
does not remember
the could-have-beens

the space between us,
an arm’s length or a thousand miles,
swallowed whole.

sorry to be heavy,
all my lightness is gone.

Birthdays, Again, & Happiness

Just at the moment I was remembering
that I had forgotten, nearly, your birthday,
again (I do it every year)
I was struck by a death-wish deer.

She only took the mirror, smudged the window
with deer snot, shattered what was left of my
October nerves & left no doubt as to the
ridiculousness of these daily drives.

This is my Jesus year after all,
you’ve survived yours (and, now, another)
and I have aches & pains and all of this talk
of change & danger can’t help but worry even us, right?

What is it about getting older that makes
shoulder pain, forgetfulness & politics
more significant? Or is it that we’re really
near the end of it all? (How many more years on the Mayan calendar?)

What was it Socrates said about living the good life?
(We have the pieces of precious paper to prove we believe.)
Isn’t that why we spend all our time talking to these adult-lets
about “iron-strings” and, God-willing, sprung-rhythm?

It’s too bad that deer had to die on your birthday.
I’m nearly certain it would have lived another year
if I would have jumped ship and missed another year’s work & play.
But the road must have it sacrifices, and happiness is still a morning walk with friends for coffee.



28 October 2008

Pedagogy of the Depressed

for JW and JB

In sudden blossom then slowly out, sat down once in giant laughs
while the little tramp pratfell down the lecture hall screen—
another St. Paul morning
full of grace. The sideways looks of sober college staff
heated hotter than black cooling coffee. A whole world proved mean
and rough, little warning

for interior men, bearded poet-scholars with yellowed nails,
bats in the hair, families prodded to a river bridge’s edge
or the inevitable hospital bed.
If these two were birds, they were heavy birds, explicating tales
without flight. Heavy and land bound, they semester-pledged
perpetual flapping with hearts of lead.

Pleasant thought, pal, to say God has no memory, forgiven all.
I would really like to think that and the two teaching together—thick hands,
thin fingers,
shaking through glasses of comic spirit, dream bottles, late night scrawls,
praying sweet water drops on the dry bone lands
and hoped-for mercy may linger.