Poem 55: Exactly This

Still, the steam rises from the roofs in the morning, like breath.

I sit here at my little desk and look out the window in silence

and notice there is a humming in my ears.

The simple lack of noise is terrifying, until I

remind myself that I can hear the birds and the sound

of my fingers, typing. This morning, in my rounds,

people asked how I was doing, and I couldn’t look them

in the eyes.

What I see is not pristine. There are layers of ugliness and decay:

the still-gray side of my garage, the chain link kennel fence, and the

weed maple trees that hold it up, even though the neighbors’ fence behind us

fell down.

These are not the subjects of poems, people tell me.

You are far too sentimental. But what am I supposed to do?

It is the bird songs that save me, every morning, but only

when I listen for them. They sing even though I don’t fill

the bird feeder. I fail in my responsibilities, I don’t keep up

a respectable household. There are flies in the basement,

like Beezlebub, whatever that means. I can’t stand the word

heathen, even in jest. Orthodoxy never seemed a friend to me.

I like the idea that the sun releases the frost, and you can see it.

It is just a thing that happens, I know. But I like to watch it.

I hear dogs barking in the neighborhood. Cars drive by.

Sometimes, I think the limit of my courage is to be quiet and listen.

Even though I’ve heard people shout that exactly this

is the wrong thing to do.

Poem 54: October on a Napkin, Somewhere

You don't need to tell me

I'm mediocre, white;

I know that in our brief seasons,

We lose our green and become

Vibrant and hallow, we sing

Red, gliding into orange.

Who should I blame

For just standing here,

Romanced by stone walls?

Fire, fire is the answer.

I am in love with my own

Falling.

Poem 53: Near as I can tell

Near as I can tell

being a poet means

sharpening a pencil

at 2 a.m. by lantern light

with a jar of hard cider

by your side, because 

you can't sleep.

It's that you think this

is a good idea,

that you want to write down

the sound of the saxophone

playing at the top

of Poet's Seat Tower

one summer night, months

ago. Pencil shavings

are deliciously analog, 

and it's better than worrying

about the price of cord wood

or what your wife said

to you last night, in a fit 

of pique. You think

of mussels, blue cheese,

wild apple cider.

You think of yeasts.

You think of the meaning

of spirit, what is left

after the fermentation is done.

It all looks better

by lantern light -- all the breaks,

all the lines. You can't sleep

because you're fermenting.

The night is just the place

where it's only you.

The neighbors are all sleeping.

An old lullaby mix plays

faintly over the baby monitor.

It plays for you, like the saxophone.

The cider is half decent.

Yours will be better. It will taste

like the whole tree -- twigs

and all.

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.

Poem 42: O Forsythia

O, forsythia, all through my need for you
that is to say March, that is to say decades
All the gray days in my gray house, the gray
days of my dry youth. At the hardware store,
they said I couldn't kill you. They said,
You'll have to fight this one back.
And here you are, a smack of yellow
across my face. Can I confess, I've wanted
to bury my face in your petticoats,
I've wanted to prowl the streets
muttering about rivers, about melting.
I've always loved the river, even when
it was low and you could see the ribs
of rock. That brick gatehouse, diverting
water for the canal. O forsythia,
it's Spring and they're coming to take
away my bloom. How I find myself
staring at the fervid buds of the Magnolia,
even my pink rhododendron. Crocus hips,
tulips, all that reaches out of the earth
to bloom. Forsythia, when they take it
will you be there? Forsythia, will you tell me
you'll still burn yellow for my sake?

Poem 41: Sputter

At least I know
how
to pile kindling
how to twist newsprint
to strike sulphur
At 63 degrees and wakeful
At wondering
about regrets, about real estate
The wind runs up the mountain
Often, he reckons
Coals, ash, embers
What is the job of a father
to fold expertly a diaper
to wake up bleary
to know what lonely sounds
the night makes
Among my special skills
pause, restart
crouch and watch
the flickering flame
All the other things, I forget
what I'm doing
how to keep
What's important is the draft
oxygen and fuel
But always, there is interrupt

Poem 40: Fourteen Lines

You were waiting for me, pink
Silk and black dye in my dream
Though it was bitter, bitter cold and the baby
Though the other night, the water

We waited in the sunlight for the baseline
In the room, the phone never rang
And the nurse brought us juice
The numbers on the monitor were all over

And the student with the broken finger
Despite all the pillows and the coughing
In my dream you reminded me

In the kitchen I remembered
The turning over and the 2 a.m.
I'm glad he was not born on caucus day

Poem 39: Fall Sunset

Whether there is wisdom
in noticing, while raking damp,
curled leaves in the back yard,
by the broken fence and under
a dead bough still hanging
from the neighbor's tree,
that even a sunset that cuts
the day short at 4 p.m.
can make the horizon blush,
I don't know. Gray is softened,
our bungalow looks warm,
and our daughter is playing
on the stairs. Nine years ago,
there was fog on the day
of a November full moon
and it lifted. We sprung
into this.

Poem 38: Fragment of Other People

I find myself looking into the back yard,
at the plastic wagon with the leaves,
and thinking this is my adventure now,
in the house, around the block,
little stanzas of ordinary, and me
trying to sift through them for glints.
I'm happier that you are here.
There is no less discovery in a smile,
but still, the rain, the peeling paint,
the dog that needs to be walked --
next to our photos, our windows,
our escapes...

Poem 37: Rail Trail Over the Connecticut River

I was comforted, watching the leaves
from the railroad bridge, while they
bobbed and drifted in the wind, flocking
above the river, mirrored in the water.
Eventually, they would splash down
at the same spot as their shadow.

All day, I'd been singing "Mona Lisas
and Mad Hatters" in my head,
or out loud, thinking of my own brushes
with bohemia. I can't decide
about Bryant Park, or standing
on a stoop in Park Slope
in a Greek fisherman's cap.
Heck, I can't decide about the ghostly
photograph of the water tower at night
at the university in Orlando.

My daughter held a branch with leaves
over her head. Her flowers, she said.
I tried to explain to her what
a confluence was, but the sidewinding
ripples didn't seem to matter to her,
nor the kaleidoscope of leaves.
She wanted to walk the dog by herself
down the bridge, and left me
by the first girter, contemplating a year
stamped in rust.

Poem 36: Oh, the Sun

I remember standing in a window-lined hallway in Bartlett Hall. Maybe even leaning my head in against the cool glass, staring out across the parking lots and athletic fields at the light cast from the falling sun. Oh, the sun. Nothing made me feel like a Floridian so much as being in Massachusetts at four o'clock in November. The gold orb we took for granted would set so early, before the workday was done, so you were always going home in darkness. Mine wasn't the only shadow cast in that hallway, I wasn't the only one leaning like a flower. I remember that clearly now.