Memories – flyingtrapeze.net

June 11, 2022

Rain, Salt, and Love: 47th Post

SALT

My Fear Is a Silent Jungle

At the top of the tallest temple
whose apex pokes from the snarl of life
like a middle knuckle
hunched in an exactly square
east-facing doorway
a monkey sings softly
paw curled around nothing
beside her.

Along twisted pathways below
vines reach for the back
of something that ran by a century earlier.

I am the rain carrying an apology to your shoulders.

My Love Is a Greedy Deity

Worshipful one, I command thee:
bring Bartlett pears—three, or five—
slice them so no bruise remains
place them in a ring like a child’s
drawing of the sun.

In the center, erect an altar of gold filings
shaved from the wedding rings of high school
sweethearts, and on it pile grains of
wheat—seven, or eleven—
soaked a week in honey.

Then leave. Seek joy or angst as you will
but do not return until I call you.
I dine now.

I am the sunlight carrying freedom to your enemies.

My Body Is an Unmarked Detour

I stare at you from under bright orange hair
that seems to alarm you
gesture with my red-bearded chin
which takes the rest of my head with it
in what could be a yes or a suggestion for you to move.

Is there something you would like to talk about?
—my choice of shirt, my lack of a manicure?
Can you say anything to clear my doubts?
—Do you want me to approach or show myself out?

I am the wind carrying salt to your world.

My Memory Is a Dove in the Window

In a dream after her heart attack
my mother screamed “Bastards!”
a word she’s never said aloud
at a circle of grey-bearded men facing her
their shoulders hooked forward
hands hanging white at their sides like skinned birds.

I am the long-held note carrying answers to your daughters.

February 3, 2020

Roots and Branches: 42nd Post

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THE LANDSCAPER

He feels for the roots
pushing cracked, lined hands through the soft dirt.
He removes the intruding hedge’s dark knots
to spare the thin struggle of a tree.

He wants assurance
that his new lady is the right choice.
He rolls a stone into place while
the earth turns on its axis.

I think of the farm my partner and I didn’t buy,
how we came to this house with no curtains instead.
The landscaper wants to know
if he will be a good parent.

The air smells of dislodged spearmint
and crushed lavender.
The blood blister on his palm swings skyward
as he cups a drooping branch and clips it off.

He does it over and over, the swinging and cupping.
What would mean “I don’t know” in my hands
is a pruning ballet in his,
the tall tree an answer.

I think of the child we didn’t adopt,
of her photo in the book: Kristy.
She had so many letters: ADHD, ODD, PTSD.
My lover couldn’t see the girl

in the forest of letters.
Next spring’s seed catalog lies on the seat
of the landscaper’s truck in the driveway;
a diagram of next year’s garden takes shape in his mind.

He hurries to lay gravel and sand
but loses to the rotation of the earth.
“Want to save this nest for your daughter?” he asks,
laying it carefully on the porch steps.

The daughter we did adopt.
The one to whom I am a good parent
most of the time,
alone in this house.

“Yes,” I say. Yes to the lady, the good
parenthood, the nest. Yes to the removal of roots
that held nothing so strongly that a mistake
couldn’t make it all fall down.

January 13, 2020

The Relativity Stare-Down: 41st Post

A Portal Through Mysterious Woods sm*

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

A tree isn’t “tall” except in relation to us,
who are “short.” The heart of a hummingbird
fills the world. Try
to apply this principle to loved ones
who shrink with age,
slow down and speed up according to
the weather, forget where things
are but remember how things were,
what it was like in Columbus Grove, Ohio,
how to tie a clove hitch, or a sheet bend,
but who’s that asking am I all right
and can I tell her who she is?
I’m anonymous as winter and twice as old
and she could be too—what’s the point of telling her
anything? It’s a red and black flannel shirt
I remember,
with little rips in the shoulders
and soft threads that hang from the cuffs,
brushing against me like second thoughts.

May 17, 2019

Wishing for Harmony: 37th Post

How nice it would be if both one’s internal and external dialogues could be peaceful…

REHEARSAL FOR AN ARGUMENT

I am a square-shouldered
decision, a kite
snagged long ago,
my tedious semaphore
unrelieved.

It’s snowing, but
I cut the sound:
everyone’s already heard
bloodthirsty barking,
the scrape of claws

on tree bark.
Let them imagine
the tap
of each crystal flake
shattering on impact.

Placing my ear
to a rock,
I wait patiently
for the translation.
A thousand frosts later

the answer is
mine in a
mound
of sturdy flour.
I spit

and knead:
a lunge of knuckles
and there’s bread
and blood
all over.

July 13, 2018

Good Writing Habits: 32nd Post

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Not About

Poems often are about
exactly what they are not about.
This poem, for instance,
is not about the person
all those other poems were about.
Good writing habits forbid my telling
what this poem is about, but I
assure you
it is not about
what it is not about. Here
you see no mention of smooth hands,
no sly references to sex disguised
as descriptions of long train trips,
rivers slamming into bridge pilings,
or autumn trees bursting into flame,
no metaphor comparing that person’s eyes
to whatever the next best thing was.
Not even anything like a simile.
Not in this poem that is not about that.

May 1, 2018

The Mockery of the Swollen Garden: 29th Post

Sunflower & bees

After the Death of His Twin

—for John Fuller, age 80

The solo creak of his Naugahyde chair.

The excess of fruit broadcasting its ripeness.

In the closet, twice the needed pants and shirts, twice the needed gaping shoes, worn at the heel.

The nervous voice of his landlord, trying to remember which one passed.

The sniff and yip of the dog, double-checking under the table.

The mockery of the swollen garden.

The sports section left folded with the classifieds.

His unspoken opinion of the news story about welfare mothers.

The uselessness of the second bookmark pressed into the novel.

In front of the TV, half the snoring noise to waken him to his started insistence, “I wasn’t…”

The other narrow bed, tightly tucked.

The hearing aid left on the end table for the first time.

In the bathroom mirror, only two hips, two nipples, one penis.

The surprising regularity of his heartbeat.

March 16, 2018

No Pain Yet: 27th Post

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Taking Comfort

Minus five degrees Fahrenheit at the gas pump
and now I’m driving
shuddering into fifteen degrees in the truck cab as the sand dunes
of grocery bags shift gently beside me.
I grip the stiff blue wavelets on the steering wheel as I surf
the ice-covered parking lot.

There’s a damp warmth where my thumb bends
and I huddle toward it without moving
the way a lover leaps in spirit at the flare of a match.
I follow it home
a thermal conductor to my warm kitchen just six blocks away.

Standing indoors I pull off lined leather gloves to see
blood in a smeared map of South America flowing
from a dark Amazon. No pain yet. No recollection
of pushing my tearable flesh against something firmer.
Only a moment’s understanding of our need to linger over wounds
for the comfort they can give us.

February 18, 2018

Anything to Grab Onto: 26th Post

Lament

–for my mother

The time

everyone else

had left the party but the music was still throbbing

and Stefan

two languages

away from me

had my blouse half undone–

that’s the light

I mean

orange

smelling of alcohol

dangerous with its promise of brilliant regret

The time

I jumped

heavily clothed into the water

for lifesaving practice

and the water

pulsed

above me

reflections subdividing like amoebas–

that’s the distance

I mean

deeper than

my arm’s length

resonant with resistance

The time

I climbed

on Trinidad Head

alone on black wet rock

shocked

by the sudden

brawl

of ocean too close–

that’s the texture

I mean

where anything to grab onto

is life

even if it tears your flesh like a cat’s claw

January 20, 2018January 18, 2018

Wanting to Shout: 24th Post

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Being quiet has its advantages as well as its ability to kill one.

I Want to Shout that My Hurt Is Greater than Yours but I Mustn’t

Locked in the apartment she rented this morning
she wrote on a calendar cover: This is because,
She could smell the last tenants in the flattened areas of the carpet,
in the air in the nightstand drawer.

In the Central Valley a foreman hands out long hoes.
Drive by: look to see if workers bend to the cabbages and garlic.
Imagine the turnips’ moist bodies, soothed in dirt.
Drive by: crop dusters rise and dip and roll away just behind you.

The body stretched, running away.
The body shapely against angular gravel.
The body in the center of my memory.

In the Central Valley rows of stakes
with seedlings lashed to them. You drive and drive,
relieved to see the quick curve in the rows where you think
a tractor driver may have swerved to miss a rabbit.

Cupping a two-month supply of Prozac in her left hand
she walked from bed to couch
and back to bed. No, I would do that.
I imagine she does it.

The body tossed in the field for owls or coyotes.
I suppose that’s where you put it.
The body still on the gravel in my memory.

In the Central Valley almond trees seem neat and classic as penny loafers.
I hit a hawk, even after swerving.
A hundred miles later when I had to stop for gas
its body and wings were still there, fanned out across the truck grill.

I drove past parked trucks: TNT Reddaway, Dole, Reliance,
CWX, U-Haul. She was my lover’s most recent ex-lover.
I let the 5 a.m. red sun burn a hole in my sight,
only to see I’d made a perfect black backdrop for my thoughts.

I pried the bird off with sticks
and carried it to a row of bushes. Those stiff
angry-looking hedges they force to grow behind some gas stations.

January 6, 2018

Those Awful Heads: 23rd Post

Amish Dresses Drying on a Clothes Line

This poem was published in The Centennial Review (Vol. 38, No. 2, Spring 1994).

Esther

Are all the doors locked?
Is the stove on? You’ll
check it? All right then
I’ll leave that to you.
Do you like colored glass?

See this clear blue vase?
When I was five I’d
say to my aunt where’s
my pity pitcher? She’d say
here it is darlin and

she gave me that pticher
I treasure it more than
anything I have. My grandmother
never gave me anything. My
daughter says I shouldn’t remember

such but how can I
help it? Is the stove
on? Do you think the
stove is on? No? Well
then all right. And as

I was telling you we
had geese in a pen
about as big as this
room and one time they
jumped up and flew and

a coyote got one of
em and carried it off
too far our gun couldn’t
shoot so far you know.
Have you ever heard coyotes

howl? My mother said they
shouldn’t have left their nice
pen. Are all the doors
locked? We’re isolated here you
know. Though I could swing

a polecat by the tail
I guess it’s OK you
say they’re all locked? Well
then all right. Are you
going to be here in

the house with me all
night? Will you sleep up
there or down here? As
I was saying one summer
a woman visited me at

our cottage up north and
she hated the woods. She
didn’t like the spider at
the swimming dock either I
told her it was my

pet and how did she
like my other pet this
garter snake. Well she went
home after two weeks though
she was supposed to stay

with me all summer. But
that was better don’t you
think? Are you going to
be here in the house
with me all night? Are

all the doors locked? You’ll
check them? Good then I’ll
leave that to you. Do
you think the stove is
on? No? All right then.

Do you like to travel?
It’s good for a person
to go places while they’re
young. My parents went up
to the Black Hills once

oh they were pretty that
was before those heads were
there. The Indians were real
mad you know when they
put in those awful heads.