Dépanneur

On the way back from the (maybe
metaphoric) market, your arms
are monkey-long, your shoulders
pulled to the ground by laden bags

(the endless recycling of matter),
and the street just a little too
long on this winter afternoon,
half-sinking into its shadow.

Maybe you're walking and thinking
of other market days (always
abreast with the morning sun)
when others gladly pulled your weight,

or maybe you are just dodging
the sidewalk traps of slushy snow
(that right boot has been capricious),
under the weak glow of street light.

But then you happen to look up,
and George -- his face a question mark --
in white overalls, through the glass
lifts two thumbs above the apples,

waiting for an answer, and not
maybe but certainly your smile
lets it all go, waves it away,
and buries it under the snow.


George says the rubber band keeps his sleeve from getting too dirty.

Doing Laundry with Beethoven

It's the little motions -

stretching an arm to peg
a long-sleeved shirt on the line,

leaning against the wall
to let someone pass,

lowering the kettle
silently to the stove

(Adagio from "Emperor"
hanging in the air) -

that carry the weight
of the day and prove
that we are here, now.

Words to Send

I pick them like my father picks
vegetables at the market:
he walks, and looks, and touches,
smells, and knocks (for a watermelon),
then purchases the best offer,
hands full of morning goodness.

One of the traditionally
empty-handed, I at least
pick and gather words, carefully,
those abandoned, long-faced words
left for later, then forgotten;
I assemble them and send them

to addresses while we're still here,
and make those who've forgotten
remember.

Nuclear Arms

"... as he went to join the nuclear
arms protest in Amsterdam in 1981"
I read, and was momentarily stuck
in the image of two strong, unhesitant

arms, with subatomic powers of enfolding
all my protons, waltzing with my electrons,
and electrifying all my neutrons; arms
gifted with the force of fusion, gathering

all my elementary particles,
keeping them from speeding away
in opposite directions, anchoring
them in a here. Arms that could

annihilate my entire population,
in a blink, on a whim, if they would.


(written during the longest night of the year, as the full Moon enters a total eclipse, and the winter starts: Dec 21, 3:14 AM)

Of Winds and Antelopes

"In the silence, the flag flapping, the rope hitting the mast, were more mournful than any music" (Harry Mulisch, The Assault).

(For Marijana)


The saddest sound I ever heard was the wind in a bottle.
It happened one muffled afternoon full of restless clouds,
While we stood, two figures pinned down by the casual sky,
On top of the hill, turning north south east and west
Among the freshly dug graves, glittering in the pale June sun,
Above the city.

We carried gallons of water in plastic Pepsi bottles
From the far fountain (the one in our sector had run dry)
To keep the flowers fresh, turning the earth around our mound to mud.
Then we settled under the willow-tree on her left,
And looked down the hill to the lower levels of the site
Where a woman in black swept around her mound with a small broom.

Beyond, bulldozers opened new lots, pushing the edges,
And beyond them, purple hills ran down to the river,
Rolling now then and forever, slow and unsurprised.
And it was then that the north wind which came with the river
Slipped into our plastic bottles and started to sing low,
So low that it seemed to be sinking underground,

A long, low sound sadder than anything said or unsaid.

I looked to where we had lit the candles behind her cross
(It's never easy to keep them burning on top of that hill)
And saw a small wonder: the yellow wax melting
Into an antelope running quickly, faster than the wind,
Lighter than the beginning or the end of light.

Lady Lazarus

In the rush-hour bustle
of the metro, she held
a white bunny, gingerly
pressed against her chest,
its pink nose quivering
softly into her black
leather jacket. No one
seemed to notice or care,
her coy smile and the bunny's
blatant whiteness lost
in the post-work haze.

Imagine pulling
the security brake,
and yelling, along with the
clanging of the alarm,
and telling them all
(Lady Lazarus of
the Metro) to look,
just look, and they would see

a small huddled miracle,
a touch of magic
straight from the black hat,
visiting for a second,
gone at the next station.

In*spiration

Inside, something snapped,
splintered. A long asystole,
a mid-breath arrest, and
a shock of nothingness - then
a dazzling moment of
syncopated truth.

I finally passed you by
and walked on without
turning, my glance
relaxing into other
lives, my rigor mortis
melting in the sun.

An inspiration
opening the lungs,
injecting the eye with
the trace of a clue,
shifted minutely
and inimitably

the birds, the trees, the sky.
All just mine, all new.