This first poem is a continuation of my poem "losses" from the last post. the second is what happens when a recovering Catholic reflects. The third is what happens when a recovering catholic gets drunk.
15. The old man is monkeying around
Under the hood and the sun
and mom
Is reading a book aloud
About a family that adopts a whitetail fawn.
They eventually have to tie pink ribbons
To its antlers
To show the hunters why this animal is unafraid
Why it would be foolish to shoot it
And one day it does not walk into the yard
Out of the dark woods.
Mom pauses and looks out the window into the pines
We hear the wind and our breathing
And the old man’s colorful language
And the ticking of the overheated engine.
Someday we will have a car that is dependable.
That will be a sad day.
16. A loon followed the boat
Watching every cast as if the lure
Were a new animal
It could learn to love
Something
worth building a nest
on a waterlogged stump for
Something
It could greet the sun with
Something
That would not go away.
18. seventeen fell before the invading hordes
And perished in the mud of history
Choking on the blood and bone
Of its shattered existence.
This lack of voice is its power
And its legacy.
A warm blanket covering its sixteen predecessors .
This is its being and its nothingness.
19. the gravel crunches under the tires
As I pull the car into the turn-off
And I hear the gulls screaming from down the bluff.
This dune country holds white and red pines
By their spidery roots
Until the water and wind exposes enough
Of the wooden labyrinth to upend them.
This is the building of the mountains of sand.
The dead and bleached bones of trees
Catching and holding and rising.
I look out past the pines into lake Michigan
And watch the burn of the sun
On the sharp whitecaps that break the deep green horizon.
US-2 will carry me out of the state of my birth
Into the nation of my exile.
20. this snowshoe hare shrieks like a child
For a slaughtered moment.
Redskin potatoes, baby carrots, yellow onions,
Rutabaga, cracked black peppercorns,
A half-dozen large cloves of garlic,
Three-quarters cup of water,
And a single bay leaf,
Will soften the animal’s pain
As its life becomes more life
As its body becomes my body.
21. what if the iceberg were not bigger under the water?
What then would we fear out on the high seas?
The truly serious lack of ice would force
The sailors into stories of giant squid out for the blood
Of the virginal.
That is what the unseen mass of ice would become.
The blood of the pure, innocent, and ignorant.
22. the arm he held her with is no more.
It went missing on a hot june day in the back meadows.
Fields full of alfalfa and clover
And sporadic patches of milkweed
That was grown to fill the life vests
Of soldiers during world war two.
The arm he held her with was torn from him
In a field that saved ten thousand lives
Seventy-years ago.
The man he was is looked for
Everyday
By the woman she has become.
23. tonight I sleep on the floor
Next to a man from cinncinnati
And across from a loud woman
On her way to san diego.
This train stops in cleveland
Not cinncinnati.
I fear for my neighbor.
I always do.
“on being raised knowing a wealthy god”
How many earthworms
have I killed
By opening this ground
To the winter-starved robins?
How many neighborhood cats
have I fed
By starting this garden
And inviting
those orange-bellied birds ?
Everything must eat
And I will thank the dead
While I savor the tomatoes
From this holy place.
This is the suffering of guilt
And the atomic structure of truth.
“zen”
I stole tulips from under beaumont tower for my mother.
They were gifts to the university from the queen of holland.
My mother admired them on her last visit to campus
And our scholars had more than one-hundred thousand.
Fifteen would not be missed.
They were dug up on a warm april evening
And put in a backpack next to a half-empty
Half-full
Fifth of jameson.
The moon showed its full fat face
And lit my efforts.
After I had pilfered the royal goods
I sat beneath the tower
And toasted the moon
and all the queens.
My mother loves those tulips
And the story
Of their origin.
A quality sin i say.
2 years ago
