Flying At Night Page 6
snow blows
from the shoulders
of old houses,
lifts,
catches the wind
like long white hair,
like pipe smoke,
like the thin gray scarves
of immigrants
standing in line,
hands in their pockets,
cold fingers
pinching the lint
of their stories.
The Voyager II Satellite
The tin man is cold;
the glitter of distant worlds
is like snow on his coat.
Free-falling through space,
he spreads his arms
and slowly turns,
hands reaching to catch
the white, elusive
dandelion fuzz
of starlight. He is the dove
with wings of purest gold
sent out upon the deep
to seek a place for us,
the goat upon whose back
we've sent our problems
into exile, the dreamy beast
of peace and science
who now grows smaller, smaller,
falling so gracefully
into the great blank face
of God.
The Witness
The divorce judge has asked for a witness,
and you wait at the back of the courtroom
as still as a flag on its stand, your best dress
falling in smooth, even folds that begin now
to gather the dust of white bouquets
which like a veil of lace is lifting
away from the kiss of the sunlit windows.
In your lap, where you left them, your hands
lie fallen apart like the rinds of a fruit.
Whatever they cupped has been eaten away.
Beyond you, across a lake of light
where years have sunk and settled to the floor,
the voices drone on with the hollow sound
of boats rubbing a dock that they're tied to.
You know what to say when they call you.
As the President Spoke
As the President spoke, he raised a finger
to emphasize something he said. I've forgotten
just what he was saying, but as he spoke
he glanced at that finger as if it were
somebody else's, and his face went slack and gray,
and he folded his finger back into his hand
and put it down under the podium
along with whatever it meant, with whatever he'd seen
as it spun out and away from that bony axis.
The Pitch
Tight on the fat man's wrist
is a watch with a misty face.
His hand is hot on your sleeve.
He wants you to give him a minute,
friend, of your precious time.
He's got something for you
and the little lady. Call it
security, call it insurance,
call it aluminum siding.
Subscribe to these six magazines
and the fat man wins a nice trip
to Hawaii, friend, a nice trip
to Acapulco. A fat man
hasn't much time in this world.
His pulse has one foot in a cast.
On his cheeks, red cobwebs appear.
He's got the Moose Lodge on his breath
like a vinegar bath, and his eyes
are yellow caution lights. Listen,
he's got a little woman, too.
The Sigh
You lie in your bed and sigh,
and the springs deep in the mattress
sing out with the same low note,
mocking your sadness. It's hard—
not the mattress, but life.
Life is hard. All along
you thought you could trust in
your own bed, your own sorrow.
You thought you were sleeping alone.
The Onion Woman
All of the clothes she owns
she wears in layers, coat
upon coat upon coat
like an onion. She's wrapped
the woman inside, the taste
of the woman, her odors,
her heart. But the fear
still shows through all those skins—
that tight white core
where the shoot has withered.
Hobo Jungle
A fat brown car seat, mushy with rain.
A few fire-blackened cans. A bucket
without any bottom but holding
a full measure of cottonwood leaves.
Not much of a story. You've heard it all
time and again—a few rusty words
enclosing a center of darkness, an edge
that can cut if you try prying the lid.
An August Night
High in the trees, cicadas weave
a wickerwork of longing.
In the shadows between two houses,
a man peers into a room
through the hum of a window fan,
the fragrance of his hair oil
like distant music, far too faint
to awaken the naked girl
on the clean linen of moonlight.
The Urine Specimen
In the clinic, a sun-bleached shell of stone
on the shore of the city, you enter
the last small chamber, a little closet
chastened with pearl—cool, white, and glistening—
and over the chilly well of the toilet
you trickle your precious sum in a cup.
It's as simple as that. But the heat
of this gold your body's melted and poured out
into a form begins to enthrall you,
warming your hand with your flesh's fevers
in a terrible way. It's like holding
an organ—spleen or fatty pancreas,
a lobe from your foamy brain still steaming
with worry. You know that just outside
a nurse is waiting to cool it into a gel
and slice it onto a microscope slide
for the doctor, who in it will read your future,
wringing his hands. You lift the chalice and toast
the long life of your friend there in the mirror,
who wanly smiles, but does not drink to you.
Geronimo's Mirror
That flash from a distant hillside,
that firefly in the blue shadows of rock—
that's Geronimo's mirror.
After all of these years, he's up there
still trying to warn us
that the soldiers are coming.
He sees them riding along the horizon
in an endless line,
sees them dipping down into the valley
rider by rider.
His mirror of tin, cupped in his palm,
says they're nearer now.
It says he can hear the black rock
sounding under their hooves,
can smell the sharp smoke of dust in the air.
Now he can hear their dark voices,
the old voices of horses,
and the talk that is leather's.
And now they are climbing the hill,
that holy hill that is Geronimo's,
but he is not afraid.
His mirror is warning the others,
and we are the others.
Porch Swing in September
The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun
that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion
whose flowers have faded, like those of summer,
and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it's time that the swinging were done with,
time that the creakin
g and pinging and popping
that sang through the ceiling were past,
time now for the soft vibrations of moths,
the wasp tapping each board for an entrance,
the cool dewdrops to brush from her work
every morning, one world at a time.