The building in my new office is in
used to be a convent.
Everything we say in our little cubicles
can be heard clearly in the hall,
as if Mother were still pacing,
Rosary ticking,
alert for Special Friendships
or overzealous penances.
She doesn’t want us
using much toilet paper, either.
There’s a hidden stopper on the roller
so we think we’re free
to pull as much as we want,
but instead we get
just a little less than we need.
The sun is the eye of the fish of the sky
that flips its tail in mirth.
The river’s the gill of the fish of the hill
that swims within the earth.
Toads that fly,
birds that dive,
horses of the sea,
dogs that climb,
baboons’ behinds,
are all I know of me.
And god is the mother of me and other,
connecting the freak with the fair,
so when you hide your eyes inside
I vanish in the air.
4/8/1930-10/10/2007
My mother enjoyed life and a wide variety of things in it. To her, whatever was up next was going to be great! She loved her family, all children, books, crossword puzzles, teddy bears, dolls, the Catholic church, seafood, cigarettes and coffee, the Secular Franciscans, and jazz. Hers was a world in which Precious Moments could groove to Oscar Peterson. As a child she’d taken acrobatic ballet lessons and late into her life she could still do perfect cartwheels for her grandchildren. Without any formal education or training she made a successful career of writing and publishing; and she made it look natural and easy.
My mothers life was not easy. And it was populated by some difficult people. For many years I was one of them. And yet she absolutely insisted on seeing the world through the eyes of love and grace and beauty.
Ever my father’s daughter, I can’t tell you how many times I tried to explain to her (and these word are all capitalized like in Winnie the Pooh) The Reality of the Situation. She would just say, “I know, Peg,” and go right back to seeing the world of love and grace and beauty. And no matter how many times I tried to warn her, she always talked to strangers.
I want to tell you my family’s iconic Francine story: It is the mid-sixties, a time when going out to eat was for very special occasions only. We’re in one of my father’s awful cars, let’s say the Rambler, and we drive past a pancake house. My mother says, “A pancake house! Those are always so nice.” A pause. My father says, “Fran, have you ever been to a pancake house?” She hadn’t. But she knew that if she did, it would be great.
In her final days my mother’s body was broken from the accident and she had pneumonia. It hurt her to move and it hurt her to breathe. But, typically Francine, because her family was standing around her bed she said, “Hasn’t this been the best week ever?”
Myself, I’m not a believer. But for her I am sure that whatever is up next is bound to be great.
on his death
Hauling my Father Away
The man who hauled my father away
arrived at the trailer park in a black Chevy Blazer
with funereal curlicues painted on the back window.
The trailer was disintegrating, my father was big,
and though it was a grey February day
the man was sweating through his black polyester.
When the wheel on the gurney hit the hole on the floor
my father flopped sideways like a tuna
trying to catapult itself out the door.
My brother and I laughed
in spite of ourselves.
We were so tired.
And our father was so gone.
For my Father, Five Years Dead
I said I love you as I left that day.
You didn’t hear me say it, I suspect.
I’d turned to go, the machines were in the way,
and I wasn’t even sure it’s what I meant.
The dark familial clutter clears away
as years and failures all my own amass.
I say I loved you easier today,
not just because you are not coming back.
Back when I was the boy of the family
I used to jiggle step in my father’s shadow all Saturday.
At the barbershop there were Hulk comics
and pictures of ladies in their nighties
and I learned how to say JEEEEEEESUS Christ
and not make it sound like a prayer, either.
We’d go to the bar to sit in cool darkness
and drink 7-Up right out of the bottle.
I learned jokes and shaking hands with the guys.
Or we’d go fishing – catching pumpkin seeds or clumps of grass.
I had to be quiet then, but it was serious quiet and easy,
not like mom’s nap quiet when I always needed stuff.
And we’d sit together against a tree.
Blue eyes and brown eyes didn’t make us different then
like breasts did later.
Oh, we were a club, just us two.
At night he washed my little hands in his big ones
and dried them hard,
even between my fingers.
He opens the package in the parking lot of Mailboxes, etc.,
tosses the wrapper into the back seat
with the rest of his things.
She has knitted him brown gloves.
They fit him perfectly.
He lights a cigarettes and stares
into the dark distance
yawning.
Gone Gone Gone
The scenery falls too fast
from this inexorable train;
pastures, houses,
signs unreadable,
license plates unidentified.
When did they tear that down?
People, too, moving,
twist themselves out of our arms
and run;
or take the long, easy glide
from the sky
into that little pond,
there on the left,
gone.
Even our dead,
bodies stilled,
are taken,
disposed of,
gone.
Unable to hold on
our bodies rebel,
cramp,
tear
as if it were our own flesh
gone.
Let, spilled spent,
gathered at the rim of the slick sheath,
dried, flaked, famed, unnamed,
resting at the nape of the embattled hill,
running before triumph,
trickling behind failure,
trapped in the cherry’s violent red,
sword thirst, virgin squirm,
Take ye and drink of this, all of you, He said.
Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Matthew 20:14
I waited for my cousin.
The others were still coming in, shirts off,
dirt, juice, and sweat painting their faces.
I was tired.
Not from working,
shit, I’d only started an hour ago,
but from the heat, from sleeping all morning,
from my life.
Emmett, always trying harder,
had gotten on the wagon at the crack of dawn.
I could see him coming in, pulled back
by the skinny horse, both of them swatting at flies.
Around me men started to grumble,
to fight.
Everybody was getting the same money.
Emmett and I were getting the same money.
Suddenly I couldn’t stop laughing.
Ahead, in the green shade of the fig tree
that crackpot stood,
handing out the pay, saying
I love you. I love you.
For Garth
At 77
Coyote has a chest tube
strung from lung to plastic bag,
a ginger colored liquid trickling.
He’s prickly and not too clean,
carved down to sinew
and spots and yellow teeth.
He’s denned himself in
and doesn’t want much company.
I rub his shoulders, feel how the muscles
have let go of the joint.
The nurse comes in and he snarls,
rolling his eyes behind her back
to show me he knows what he’s doing.
He’s alpha still
through bed rails and morphine;
holds up the bottle
to show me how much he’s peed.
Small Poems de Terre 