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What the Dead See
Chestnut Hills Cemetery
He had a pimpled countenance,
angel wings spread—guarding what?
The yew tree? The maroon DeSoto,
cloudy plastic stretched across its windows,
parked too close to my mother’s plot?
The crow did what crows do: perched
on a headstone, cawed now and again,
let the sun extract the purple hidden in its wing.
It hopped to another grave, watched me watching it,
then cocked its head away. I could see only one eye,
exact as a rifle sight. What did the dead see?
The roots of the yew tree inching toward them?
The still earth filled with failed crocuses
never opening a passage to the sky?
When I was little, my cousin and I would lie
on our sides facing each other, each headed
the opposite way. Downside up, we’d talk for hours,
making all the weird faces we could.
The familiar made strange, my cousin an alien,
mouth in her forehead, blank spread of skin
where she ought to be kissed. Could I still loop
my arm inside her arm and walk along the beach?
Maybe the dead see us like this: upside down,
combing what we should be shoeing, smirking when we
should be crying, laughing at all the wrong parts.
Ellipsis
Mysteries begin not with a crime
but an omission, a missing knob
on the tv, the absent scent
of verbena. No gory scene’s
as compelling as the missing
chair at the dining room table
Clear water instead of wine.
When I was nine, the dog disappeared
one morning. Its long body stopped
pressing a place in the chair.
The old scratches in the hardwood
made us pause to wonder.
A choke chain, strange liquid in the bowl,
lean pieces of meat, uneaten.
No one voted to get another pet.
My father just wedged a puppy
in the box where the old dog slept
as if no one would notice.
No votive candles along the window.
The stone birdbath had lapped up
the water the dog used to drink,
gagging himself as he swallowed.
Insomnia
West of here along a road, once dirt, a catfish
lurks and turns at the bottom of Hendrix Pond,
its heavy bony head just listening. No one
dips a line in the water any more.
A yard, flecked with four-leaf clovers,
tumbles toward the bank. No mower, not even
a swing scythe to thwart its growth. Aunt Emily’s
old wisteria wraps the post of the swing set,
rust settling into the cross bar where my cousin
would hang upside down, her long rush of hair
brushing against the weeds that sprouted around us.
Her cheeks flushed with blood, her upside down smile
saying we should forage for toads and worms
to thread on a hook and fling into the shadow.
Nothing was urgent then. A thin layer of leisure
wrapped the yard like the soft sheet Mother
covered me with on nights so hot we trusted
the undulating screen to let in the breeze
but keep out what churned in the dark.
(This poem first appeared in the Autumn 2001 issue of the
New Welsh Review.)
My Mother’s Seventieth Birthday
When I call her from the grave
she lifts herself,
peels away each tatter
of her pink nightgown,
her belly still sags into a smile,
the arm flesh flaps—
it always did.
I offer her a blue flannel robe,
sleeves wide enough for oxygen tubes.
She eases back into her old
rough-waled chair,
her skin thinner now.
I ask what’s inside the hill.
She answers, A long gentle blade.
Please don’t take my picture.
Those windows make the grass
grow backwards.
Together we pull the knife
like a snow plow
through the store bought froth,
more sugar and air than cake.
Only a small piece for me, she protests,
dragging her finger along the path
left by the ghost slice.
She crooks the frosting into her mouth,
sucking loud, as always.
But the candles. She can’t keep
from smiling at the candles.
I still can’t get my breath, she says.
You blow them out.
Rapunzel
It grew longer than my longing
to escape, longer than
the bricks stacked one by one,
the trowel in my father’s hand,
longer than the longest time
he pinned me down
soundless. My face a winter
moon too bright for the window,
too bright for the leafless trees that snared.
And when he touched, my head
was a glass loft. Inside that snow globe,
words I couldn’t speak swirled,
a blizzard in the dark
settling into drifts looser
than meaning,
looser than the nightgown
that let him in, looser than this gold
I loop again and again, strand over
strand—his longing, my fear—
over and over into a long rope,
this long braid.
(This poem first appeared in
Poets for Peace: A Collection, edited by Timothy Crowley, Chapel Hill Press, 2002.)
This Whistling Is for You There in the Dark
“Oh, love, let us be true
to one another! . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And, we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
--Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
“Owls hoot to mark their territory; whistling is a contact call.” --Duncan Brown, Welsh naturalist
We gather near Afon Dwyfor at the moth trap
to see what the blue light has drawn from the dark.
What we call a moth, Duncan tells us,
is just one stage, the imago,
the final flowering of its univoltine life.
He scoops out each one, careful not to crimp a wing,
speaks its poet’s name before freeing it:
small phoenix, common marble carpet,
Svenson’s copper underwing, pink bardsallo.
The Latin names, he says, echo evolutionary orders,
categories constantly changing.
These days, nations seal their borders,
Israel, India, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan,
forgetting how taxonomies can blur.
When Tomahawk missiles gather, when six shooters
slip from their holsters, what hope
even for lovers, like you and me?
How can we hope to lay aside our weapons—
the gunmetal silence, the empty e-mail screen?
Peter Howson’s “The Morning After”
monoprint and oil on paper:
A female inert on the edge of a bed,
back turned like a shield.
Her mate, escaped from the other side,
clawing the air with a hand no longer his.
Hunched over, he regurgitates
a scream. Blood shadows him.
His or hers? Impossible to say.
His soft genitals surface in the Venice red.
Outside the window, a wide-bodied plane
hovers above a building only six stories high,
a patient lover stroking with its wing.
Duncan says most creatures mark their domains.
Owls hoot and swoop along the edge of night.
Even moths claim their spots of light.
Tonight when we flutter together in the dark,
no taxonomies, please. Call me Yellow Brimstone.
I’ll name you July Highflier.
Melyn y drain, esgynnwr Gorffenaf.
Then watch while I trace a circle
of candlelight on the bed,
and, for this one hour, claim it mine
and yours.
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