Go On, Then
Many people have wanted a thin gold chain like I’ve put around my neck
Lark and primrose on one bone china mug, shamrock and a curlew on the other
When I stroke the finch enameling and then lift the lid, the heavy miniature piano plays “Windmills of Your Mind”
Next to the recliner, the sewing
Inside the frayed cover, red spine, what I like more than Lenski’s toy giraffe poking from the boxcar behind the Little Engine is the drooping smile of the green Kind Engine
Which of us bought this book that’s still shrink-wrapped?
A stack of Rescue Squad follow-ups she would inscribe get well or sympathy
A diary of three weeks’ angst, barred from seeing a new grandchild
An entry slip for Hadrian’s Wall inside the blue wallet in a white strap purse nested in a brown shoulder bag
What to do with the birdbath? the flowerbed’s lounging gnome?
How nice this extra little cushion on the car seat feels
Is there a name for these extra-large sunglasses that fit over eyeglasses?
For the large sky?
* * * * *
Fire
Lipstick brands your shoulder, embered flint, bare knee.
My four limbs trail from the kindling box.
Bead-heavy bearded iris drench the table
as a cat who went hungry and woke starving talks.
Out there the freshets wrinkle. A thrush swells
its dawn song. As yet the invisible bends us.
You curl, pillow crooked between your knees.
Doubled in bedclothes I take you from sleep — that heat.
* * * * *
Vanishing Points
When I dent the fender, pay late bills,
the line that rides too high up my forehead
is your eyebrow, a hint that you could
deal with results of the well-meaning:
six charity turkeys, one family holiday,
doctor-ordered uppers, your own I dunno
reflex response as the radio played, coffee
perked, you opened the paper.
Before tax day mother would harp
in rooms other than the one
where you sat with your beer
that you added accounts for a major
corporation all day but couldn’t
start ours until April 15th.
You never knew insomnia. Your face
spoke a fugitive language.
At the work bench in the cellar
grimy dust topped jars of nails
whose piece of wood was never found.
Weekend handyman had slipped under.
Then the day job. You were hammered past feeling.
My pencil would point to the ceiling.
I pointed it back: you know something,
at least your eyebrow does.
I stayed put on the chair
trying to figure the answer.
Tax extension came due in late summer.
Flicking moribund Japanese beetles
to an old coffee can’s inch of gas,
you’d be visibly around
mowing the lawn between Lucky Strikes,
barreling the station wagon to the shore.
One of these days, Alice!
roared from the screen on weekend poker nights
while Connor or Cooney or Burke was riffling the cards.
In pajamas, we slid our faces through the staircase bars.
Our hands went chill, mouths wide with Ralph’s pow! right in the kisser.
Later, smoky, sloshy, you slipped the discards for the second draw.
Your face lit like the tube, the Kramdens’ frugal happiness
flickered to a band, a wavery arch of black on white.
When I cleaned out the house I tossed
in the pit color-code barley and silk
on a weekly geography map of a land
overseas, a test on original sin, a
quiz on the three-personed God. I tossed
dirt on the Father old sediment, Son
his eruption in time, the Spirit’s compressed
combination of forces no one could explain.
Hold me under the breakers — Give me a quarter — Rub my back
Daddy — Weeks at the ocean, hot dogs and tickets, leaky taps,
not enough rooms. Your voice was my Hansel and Gretel, your eyes
my report card. Night after night, ready to rest, you lifted your palm
from the small of my back, then your fingers — More, Daddy —
Your hand whispered so long in its circle you’d thought me asleep.