Environmental love
One
I wrote to her from the sea shore
that short weekend vacation
when I was six,
a bragging man of inch-high printed letters,
who licked the stamp certain
she would be impressed,
the sea and gulls still aching in me,
the indelible impression of youth
marked upon my soul,
crashing waves and salty air
and broken ship on the reef—
old fishing boat fill of souring fish corpses,
which reeked for weeks,
though to me,
there might have been pirates to battle
or women to save,
swords clashing in frantic glee
before the inevitable Davey Jones,
and for the long ride home,
I imagined her, receiving me like Errol Flynn,
her long five-year-old hair gleaming
like gold from the porch,
small hands grasping my letter on the stairs,
shaking with expectation—
though when I arrived,
there was no one home,
just my letter, stuffed in the mail box marked:
address unknown.
two
You always were persistent,
your sure step shiftless in the sand,
inches behind mine,
refusing to fade the way mine do,
the wavering water washing up,
sinking in at the toes,
the deep impression of your life,
always remarked upon,
leaving that satisfied taste of completeness behind,
while I, in constant struggle within myself,
looking for ways to make my name,
a Wall Street broker, a notorious book peddler,
a hustling, rustling bandit of the street,
almost ready to wash your feet
or windshield for your secret,
me, the invisible foot on the sand,
my suit, tie and shimmering shoes
meaningless here among the pixies
and gypsies of your imagination,
like a gull's bloated body
in the low hung clouds,
grey upon grey,
while you, stark,
a white gull with black head laughing,
even at the waves that crush you....
Three
When the lines fell during the storm,
there was still hope,
the cold wind blowing rain over the roof,
like fingers prying into our lives,
tapping at the windows,
doors and cracks of floor,
seeking to steal fire back for the gods,
huddling up into the corners, poor,
impoverished Prometheus waiting for the claws,
stepping from the house the morning after
to dangling power lines,
the swaying caucuses of witches from Kansas.
Four
We turn to sleep again at dawn,
the pale glow of morning against the dusty sky,
chipping birds and hooting trains singing,
the entanglement of bed sheets and
oversized pillows around our arms and legs,
the webs of passion,
or roots to some greater desire
of which neither can attest,
wood pressed against wood,
growing in and out of the barriers,
around factory fences,
through cracked walls,
though in dreams,
we brood in own dark thoughts,
in rooms of abrupt awakenings,
like pacing tigers
glaring through the bars of our cage
with self-doubting eyes,
waiting on morning to free us,
waiting on the first flicker of sunlight
through the tiny cell windows to enlighten us—
and in anticipation,
we see blue glimmers of false dawn a thousand times.
Five
the blizzard came
after you were gone,
rain turning to sleet
then snow, during
the long walk
from downtown,
passed huge
turn-of-century
homes whose wide
windows had seen
such storms before,
worse, more furious,
lapping white up
against their steps
like foaming waves
upon which my
footprints come and
go, the path
self-made, no one
before me making
those exact steps,
nor (despite many
imitators) will any
exactly follow, my
thoughts, twisting
under my cap with
you, wishing you had
remained one more
hour as to catch the
flakes, me, ashamed
for not having
waited, for having
sent you too quickly
upon your way,
leaving me to this
lonely, terribly
beautiful path
through the snow,
boughs of evergreen
leaning, my step
erased, but not the
memory of you,
engraved beneath,
not so much in ice
as in stone, unmelting
permanent, asking you
to return home
soon.
Six
She blew in from Texas twice,
first, sweeping me up from
the cold asphalt, her round eyes
appearing out of the desert dust,
full of storm and passion,
having driver her BMW motor bike
fifteen hundred miles straight,
through rain, snow and bright
sunshine, collapsing in
a Kentucky drug store
from exposure, her father
finding her three days
later, near death, tucked
under motel blankets
like a young child
whimpering more from his
presence than the pain,
ashamed, perhaps, of returning
to her home state where she'd
abandoned him and two lovers,
crying in her fever dreams
for her lone star brother,
finding me, a sheet of used
typing paper between my teeth,
the inevitable paper tiger
leaping through words
for some unknown destination--
the kind of journey that
frightened her to the bone,
drawing her up like an
attacking cat,
snarling, snarling
as she rode me to the
moon, a perpetual trip
of endless miles as
self-destructive as the
one taken between
Kentucky and Texas,
crying in the fit of
passion for her
lone star brother.
Seven
I keep expecting Spock to step up into my life,
the narrative squeaking out a television speaker,
life as hippie, hermit, writer,
listed in order of their occurrence,
the flaws of character made obvious by the screen,
the craze of millions of witnesses
to the demise of a man,
the embarrassment of wasted talent,
years and years of looking for the key
that fits only me,
flaws waiting like California
for the proper seismographic catastrophe
to set me free from this need of importance,
to live life without identity,
or worth,
or perfection.
Eight
Silver track thumping machines
ride the slim line through the meadows,
wearing over the scarred cut
between the reed-heads like a dull knife,
unable to quite press through the surface of muddy lane,
the river, a hidden secret of amber weeds and crying gulls,
swirling ever under the northern gulls
and shadow of Giant's Stadium—
train windows steaming to hot and curious human breath,
business suits frame in metal and plastic,
flat, two-dimensional people
who come and go with time schedules and punched tickets,
muttering of suburban concerns:
raked leaves and rising oil prices,
leaving thoughts of river to the rail road men
who take them from Twin Towers to dusty abandoned stations
rooted in firmer ground.
Nine
The wagon ruts run deep along
the up-curved rim of the road,
like lines of age in precious wood,
winding along the bend of river
where bridges intersect,
their spider legs pressed rickety
into the white froth,
rumbling and shaking to the wagon wheels
as they roll across to the mill,
where boys, penny-wise in capitalism,
sell bundles of wet newsprint
back at 2 cents per pound.
Ten
We always waited,
lines snaking out into the halls of Plato's Eden,
ignorant, mind-naked children mumbling
the names of teachers as if Gods,
ten years from the last blast,
marred with youth;
they have no history,
only math and English lessons
(French, Chinese, who knows whose face
is whose and which ethnic blend they have taken)
and for the most of us older souls,
we've forgotten this--
Eleven
Fish, carrots and potatoes,
the fundamental meal of being human,
living on the brink,
dirty dishes thick as roaches in the sink,
burned-pot effigies half-scrubbed,
you-- soft at the table—
a victim of domesticated mockery,
peeler gripped between your fingers like a weapon,
with me, the infatuated villain,
challenging values and necessities,
thinking love enough to keep bread buttered
and boiling water filled with food.
Twelve
They say we still live like pioneers,
the hard life fading with each break of winter,
when the shape of ice released us
for three more seasons,
freeing the captive river and petty streams
like unstopped wine,
flowing out under the rusting bridges,
chunks of frozen river like ships sailing
finally to the sea
taking their frosted crust with them,
their hard and weary days
of huddling before the gas-stove,
the sunshine playing on the surface of water
in lost jewels,
slow, spiraling leaves of autumn
caught in the eddies,
new, yellow-green budding
on the tips of trees,
waiting to bloom.
Thirteen
The subtle carp never comes too near shore in Autumn,
dancing over dead leaves with spider's tenacity,
webbed-back flat against the brown bottom
where she finds her peace
It is a grubbing catfish with guzzling nose
that snuffles at the edge, raising rude bubbles
among the reeds, like a bull frog snorting as it eats
its own eggs, crewing perpetually its own pointless future
immune strangely to the hook waiting for carp
in deep water, where the tortured white foam
bitterly chooses beauty over the beast.
Fourteen
No trees grow here,
just the brick face
of Paterson Firehouse #3,
and smoke stack fumes
of the General Hospital
pinning this poor house in
like a prison,
cars slanted towards
the street with two
wheels on the curb,
like drunken sailors
swaying in their journey
from the bar,
homeless and hopeless
with possessions stacked
roof to floor in their
rear seats, old men
snoring behind the wheel,
sweating to the beating
brutal sun through
the windshield,
chewing dream-cud,
spitting brown wads
of tobacco to the curb,
shivering, lonely,
waiting for something
or someone,
waiting for rain
to relieve
their heat.