I found a white stone on the beach

inlaid with a blue-green road I could not follow.

All night I’d slept in fits and starts,

my only memory the in-out, in-out, of the tide.

And then morning. And then a walk,

the white stone beckoning, glinting in the sun.

I felt its calm power as I held it

and wished a wish I cannot tell.

It fit in my hand like a hand gently

holding my hand through a sleepless night.

A stone so like, so unlike,

all the others it could only be mine.

The worldess white stone of my life!

They come in white livery bringing the sun,

the Robed Heart astride her white mount,

crowds lining the royal road in anticipation.

Ahead, the castle flying the new colors,

a queen’s great labors come to an end.

A shout, and the cord is cut,

the crown placed upon my head.

And I am, Mother, I am!

I count the rays of the jellyfish:

twelve in this one, like a clock to tell time by,

thirteen in the next, time gone awry.

A great wind brought them in, left them here

to die, indifferent time measured my whirling moon

and sun, by tides in perpetual fall and rise.

Englobed, transparent, they litter the beach,

creatureless creatures deprived of speech

who spawn more like themselves before they die.

I peer into each and see a faceless

red center, red spokes like a star.

They are, and are not, like what we are.

                My mother

gathers gladiolas. The gladness

is fractured. As when

the globe with its thousand mirrors

cracked the light. How

it hoarded sight: all the stolen perspectives

and the show of light

they shot around us: so that

down the dark hall the ghosts danced

with us: down the dark hall

the broken angels.

We are not birds. Despite our walls covered

With winged men, we are not birds.

And all that is birdlike in the bats

Is also deception. They have

No feathers, no beak, no high-pitched heart.

Their wings are skin. Skin! Stretched

From shoulder to foot like the cloth

We nailed to wood to build

Our doomed medieval contraptions for flight.

Or like our taut sheets, the high-strung skin,

The great single wing of sex we lean on

But we are not birds. All that is birdlike

In us, in the bats, is illusion.

There is nothing at all of the bird in us…

Except for flight. Except for flight.

The Witnesses come again. They come to my mind

Before they come to the door. The young man wears a red scarf.

And the old woman is soft in the head. We sit on the porch

And she fans the waves painted on the Watchtower’s cover.

The waves are blue as rebellion. “The ocean,” she says,

“See here…the ocean…the ocean is full of dirt…

And it is going…” And she is gone. Stares blindly

At the spot where two drab deer made the baby laugh

By eating dead bushes. He thought they were cows. “Moo,”

He said. “Moooo.” He names things by their sounds.

The young Witness picks up the dropped conversation,

He plies a soft black book. Is pledged to persuasion.

Once he was a Papist, but now he is not. He frowns

At the statue of Mary covered with bird lime. “The signs

Will come,” he says. “The signs, and then the End.

Only the chosen will stand.” My mind lies quiet.

Maybe he pictured just the nail,

the slight swirl in the center of the head and raised

the hammer, and brought it down with fury and with skill

and sank it with a single blow.

Not a difficult truck for a journeyman, no harder

than figuring stairs or a hip-and-valley roof

or staking out a lot, but neither is a house,

a house is just a box fastened with thousands of nails.

Again you found yourself hoping for the last day,

to be like a man whose debts are paid and rises

with the sun to walk to work alone through a green valley.

The birds he cannot name, the sun shines as he remembered

it did. His shoes kick up tiny clouds of dust on the path.

He hums idly and carries his coat under his arm.

He thinks of a lewd joke to tell his wife in the kitchen,

vows to spend more time with his children. How wonderful,

he thinks it is, to be a righteous man.

Although it is a Sunday

across a cleared tract

of mud and standing water about the space of Disneyland

where dots of birds pick singly

and huge yellow CAT’s and backhoes wait in Titan postures –

a carpenter, a pieceworker

is nailing on the solitary gray square of a new foundation,

flopping the plywood sheets down on the joists,

his hammer winking across the mud-brown expanse

and music from a parked pickup,

no walls yet, more like a dance floor than a house.

I’ll make you a saint

from an unblemished code book

that must be read

in a German restaurant

where beer is served in glasses

wrapped in brown leather

when the cuckoo strikes twelve

this will be the moment

of ascension

An unpredictable man

grew from a boy who

wanted to fly in a machine

he kept in his mind

and powered with June bugs

Pearl earrings made him vomit

germs infected his moustache

only 18 napkins at the side of his

plate would bring him to eat

To friends, he was as predictable as the mathematics

that sailed through his mind like feathers

blue cuisine

is served

in the municipal swimming pool

thin glass noodles

in thick blue sauce

draw

into the water treader’s

mouths

followed by lush swallows

of grape juice

sloshing in glass goblets

big as Biblical beehives

Still half-asleep and often still half-drunk,

They bitch about their wives and trucks and work.

The Skil saws lurch. A hammer hits a thumb

Or bangs a nail over or splits the wood

At a crucial joint, which anyway was out

Of square or measured wrong; then bending down

To pull the thing, his butt peeps out above

His pants. Mostly that’s how things get done.

But certain afternoons, with men arrayed

Around the frame, the sun appears to gleam

In sawdust winnowing behind the blade

And catch the hammer cocked above a beam

In a still life of the legendary glamour

Of craft and craftsmanship the mind is given

Long since and far away, where the poised hammer

Doesn’t fall, and not a nail gets driven.

I’ve mowed four times since you’ve been gone.

And now the yard’s knee-deep in maple leaves.

They seem more red this year.

Mike called. He had some tickets for the game.

Everybody misses you, you know. Already

The air smells cold, it smells like football;

And the school bus comes by every morning.

That was so long ago.

Please call me soon.

Please tell me when you’re coming home.

            I bought some lingerie.

When he was starting out, still green,

He used to make a signature mistake

So that his hidden talent could be seen,

Reversing the flag above the White House roof.

It made him feel ingenious and aloof

To signify his forgeries as fake.

He always liked his jokes, but they are private.

Sometimes, when he is pressed about his trade,

He answers with a shrug, “I draw a profit”

Or “I trust in God.” Nobody ever laughs.

In the den, above two ebony giraffes,

Hangs the first dollar that he ever made.

He sent this key from Florida.

I think. A key to what?

I tried the car, the trucks,

tried every door – nothing fit.

My wife thought it was his idea

of a joke. I never got his jokes.

Not a word from him, just things:

a blank postcard from Colorado Springs;

a snapshot of himself from Aspen,

arm in arm with somebody, but

both faces had been scissored out.

A sign above the bar said SHIT HAPPENS.

Eugene, Spokane… He’s telephone,

collect, and I knew it was him,

though he always used a different name.

At times enough to make you laugh:

Call from Hans, Ricardo, Jeff,

will you accept? Yes. Dial tone.

What I want is a single uncrumpled can,

still factory-bright, held lightly aloft,

in the roadside stubble. I want to see the clouds

warp achingly across it, and to hear

the one high hawk’s cry drawn out to a wisp,

a flourish perfected over time, that might answer

the crisply branded Circle-R, white on red.

Want it to end with a perceptible shudder

in the wake of an Airstream or an eighteen-wheeler,

the aftermath of something really big.

Standing on the lake, I felt my heart

growing heavier, growing old.

He clopped his gloves together,

shot me a look so warm it hurt.

Hell, it’s cold! he laughed. And colder

tomorrow. Shifting to the other

foot, he shivered an emphatic God

- and set revolving into space

another shapeless cloud

of crystals, impalpable, separate…

Breathless tonight I caught it

full in the face.