Poem 52: For Jim Foley

“Beheaded,” I heard

on the radio in Canada,

driving home.

New York tabloids

stamp your name

in dark Helvetica.

Your death tells us

Everything they think

We need to know

About Syria.

Scrubbing the floor,

the rag I’m using was once

a t-shirt; it reads

“UMass Basketball.”

Once, I hit the shot

On the floor at half time

And climbed back up the stands

To high fives with all the guys.

Basketball, Boyden gym:

the gray standard-issue shorts

we wore then, writers

on the pick and roll.

You were fiction, I

was poetry. Our paths hardly

crossed. Only after grad school,

journalism called us both.

I went local and you, global.

In the newspapers now, you

are always wearing aviator shades,

flak jackets. In my memory, you

always had a square jaw, perpetual

shadow, that deep, gentle voice.

I didn’t know

you that well,

I didn’t know

we were almost

the same age,

I didn’t know

I should have been

paying attention

to the number of days

gone missing, to

the blue mosque door,

the Arabic graffiti on the walls,

the labyrinth of bombed out buildings

and rubble, the sound

you hear in the turret

when you take fire.

For you I’d like to drink away

the deadlines at father’s hours

at a bar in a sleepy town.

I’m convinced, no,

I’ve convinced myself you

were there, and I

I gave you five.

Poem 51: Letter to Brooklyn

I've walked
across your bridge,
worn your beer shirt.
Local. From this old river
town in the hills, to you
old river town by the sea.
The naval fleet passing betwixt,
an orchard with a Victrola,
bottles of bad apples, drops,
sparkling, foil, kissing.
Syncopated, discordant, blue.
Once, on the stairs in a walkup
what I wanted to say. But.
Know this. Out in the provinces,
some of us have stayed
amongst the moss and brick
and running. The water even
flows.

Poem 50: Spring Comes to the Candle Store

Tomorrow, it will be April, I said to the woman greeting us on our way into the store. Have we been here before? Oh yes, this is our indoor playground. Baseball hat, my two-year-old son said to me, back inside our front door, getting ready to go. Opening day. The flagship candle store is all animatronic singers, gunnite cobblestone floors, and twinkling lights on the ceiling. Today the soap bubbles blown down in the Bavarian evergreen grove are strangely comforting: at least here, the snow is fake and we can pretend winter is quaint. We change diapers, we meet Mommy, we stand on the bistro tables and watch the indoor fountain. It's spring, so I'm thinking of opera and frolic. Of Hart Crane in an apple orchard, drinking hard cider and listening to jazz records. As we walked past the towers of beach scented candles, Tone Loc rapped "you can be my queen, if you know what I mean, if you let me do the wild thing" over the store speakers. We buy nothing. We brought our own snacks. On the way out, the man at the door said, At least it's not snowing here. My son and I paused under the eave -- he was picking up rocks to throw onto the deck -- so I could point out the little green shoots poking out from the soil beds. Look, I said. We are almost there.

Poem 49: Grit

On a bluff above town, a man sits

In his car, eating French fries 

From a bag. The graffiti inside

The tower features a moth

And beckons you to jump.

I keep noticing the vinyl siding

Of the houses, crowded in

And leering at the street.

When do the crusty gray

Snow banks finally melt?

Where do you suppose 

That ambulance is heading?

The road bends; that's why

You can't see the police station.

There are two McDonald's 

In town. One next to the tire

Place with the inspirational

Signs. None of this goes

Anywhere. Always, you can stand

On the bridge, looking down

At the river and see that

Little island with the tree

That bends in high water.

Poem 48: Still Life With Tennis Trophy

Sometimes, the burnish against the wood paneling
suggests a rustic cabin, when sitting on the ground,
helping put on boots, looking up. There is the bookshelf,
a cookbook for poor poets. Turkey feathers
in a glass vase, my grandmother's candelabra.
Once, we pulled a table by the stove and ate
potatoes by candlelight. The mantle clock, stopped
at 11:10, with a newspaper clipping taped beside.
I won the trophy in doubles, defeating my dad.
The pedestal is shiny and green. The mantle
is painted brick red, the glove rests
on the ash can, black like we saw in Columbus
in an art museum without labels, in a corridor
bookstore, in a glass stein restaurant.
Sometimes the freesia dries and droops,
Sometimes we force the forsythia.
Perhaps we should add a jar of sparkling
Cider, a fire in the stove. We'll burn old
essays, we'll consider the crushed brick
they top dress tennis courts with.
I think it's biere de garde, with the woman
on the front, liberty always has bared breasts.
A court in Versailles, which David painted:
the men all salute, while light pours in from above.
In Boston, where America and France
muralled together there's a gold dome, and
bronze ducks. March days there, too.
Wool socks hang on the gate. The ballet
trophy is in first position, my daughter
was so proud, she wanted ours together.
Some days it's hard to get her boots on,
some days it's hard to get out the door.

Poem 47: Kinkadean

We are always in dusk
On streets pleasantly cloaked
In a half dark, and a light
buzzing from the windows.
It is not fearful, nor lonely.
Loneliness is what I would expect.
The sun lingering an hour later
in the afternoon. Those canvasses
in that store in St. Augustine,
they were all too obvious for us,
inauthentic. I, too, glow
indistinctly. To the coming night
I present a yellow warmth,
all goodness and homily.

Poem 46: Two Haiku

Though there was a line

We stepped into the bulb room

Hit by the scent: spring

The pond still frozen

Despite the balmy March sun

It held as they kissed

Poem 45: River Rats

A pizza house in Athol

By the window

On an April night

A beer

Some mozzarella sticks

A number for our boat

Good luck, they say

In the next booth

In this town

The prospect

Of a rough paddle

Makes you a citizen

Poem 44: March

In the darkened house,

done with grading, I pause

To look out of the window

At the dark husk of winter

Still haunting about our doors.

Mounds of snow, fallen

And shoveled a month ago

Have done little but crusted

And dulled. The snow fort

Now seems like a penitentiary.

There will be no thaw. Morning

Will be just as hard. March,

You are cruel.

Poem 43: It is the leaves that are yellow, and old

Two paths, I said, diverged

In a wood. A yellow wood,

You’re right. And they are

Roads, but that seems confusing.

In the wood, you walk on paths

Leaves crunch under your feet

If there were cars – if there are

Cars, they take you back to where

You’re escaping from.  But to return

To this intersection, this cross, yes

You look back. I’m on the one less.

The one with less. Well, just being

In the woods, right? What you see

Are the old roads, sometimes with

Stone walls, and there used to be

No woods at all. Someone walked here.

Lots of people, maybe. And they

Are gone. Standing here, come to

Think of it, I do hear cars. How

Can I not? And they pass, and I

Stand here, and I marvel at the noise

That carries through the woods

Such that you can hear it on one path

Or the other.