The restaurant was a Chinese box.
My order was wrong,
then right,
then wrong again.

The waiters were men,
then women,
then men.

You were angry with me,
then not;
then you weren't you, or at least,
didn't seem to be.

An alchemist came and turned the soup to stone,
the stone to a poem,
together to alone,
despite all assurances printed on the menu card.

Lunch for 2.
Dinner for 4.
In your hand an apple,
then nothing; then a core.

I said, "My love...my love...my love...my love...."
as I dug with my fingers all the way through the world,
to find a hard queen, a woman dissolved
in your eye looking back saying, "Now what, girl?"

Teacher says that every time a bell rings
she is awakened in the night and lies there
remembering the bay at San Sebastian.

The stars in the sky there are local,
drifting up from modest houses in Loiola.
They are as close as cats on a sill
and are able to both warm and wound.

Teacher says that when her heart beats,
she cannot sleep, recalling the day of drums--
the Tamborrada, and the clouds that gathered
in search of their pilfered thunder.

During the Aste Nagusia, or Big Week.
La Concha Bay is home to stilt walkers wearing
huge papier mâché heads. The calm waters
are like mothers who knew these giants as babies.

Teacher says that there was a man there,
or a woman, or an enchantment she cannot describe.
Perhaps all three, a trinity born of sangria, celebration,
and one bell beneath the drumbeat, a ringing bird.

On these recent nights, far from the Basque country,
she is startled by her doppelganger lying awake beside her.
The lesson she cannot teach is that neither knew of the other,
though the invitation was always there, a tongue in the bell,

Like an arrow in the flesh of a saint or an invitation
to La Concha Bay, and the days to be lived beyond it.

I see where David Berkowitz got Jesus in prison
like they always do.
Now he runs a ministry, adept as he always was
at delivering
succinct
sermonettes
delivering people to God.

He was a postal clerk, always involved
with the Message.
Such converts have a carnival of explanations--
the devil
the neighbor's dog
and other invented booshwah.

Susan Atkins got Jesus in prison too
and wrote a memoir
about her redemption, her will turned over
from Charlie
to Christ
but it could have been Moonies or Ekankar.

There is a rat who lives in my garage.
He hasn't heard the Good News
but he never
hurts anyone.
He has published no book, leads no prayers.

He likes to hang out behind the shovel
that has never dug a grave.

The authorities let Leslie Van Houton, Caril Ann Fugate,
and Nathan Leopold out.
Karla Homolka changed her name and might be anywhere,
at services maybe,
holding a bible and smiling.
___

I asked the Unabomber
if he had ever been in love.

You know--before Montana--
before wandering the unforgiving winter woods
holding a frozen tulip
and a rolled up poem
nestled inside a pipe as if you were a minstrel.

I asked him
if anyone had ever inhabited
the slow-cooking smoker
of his heart.
Was there ever the very emblem
of desirability
in the formula of anyone's eyes?

In your Harvard classes
full of second-week quitters
and callow
nattering plebes
was there never any elevated romantic
who might have solved for the
impossible equation
of your isolation and your need?

Oh Teddy,
you coward,
you murderous nutjob,
if the one whose heart could have stopped you
were to speak at last to your wobbling soul,
could you still be fixed
even now,
or are you already ******?

Perhaps my question itself
is like postage on a parcel
that can carry your remainder
softly out of shame
or suddenly into Hell?

When I met you, you were day-sleeping in somebody else's car
and running around scrapping all night.

With your shaggy hair and that roll of your shoulders,
you made me jelly-kneed right from the start.

Sunny, you kept your loneliness hidden from your running buddies,
your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars in the Texas night.

I kept you coming back by feeding you, like some Italian mother
with a full pantry and a real bad crush. Come onna my house, birichino.

You had nothing, expected nothing, and were fearless, so fearless,
but when I fussed over some new cut you turned boneless as butter.

When I drank you turned to a rumor, gone like smoke, hating the stuff
yourself, and somehow above it. You made me want to kick loose of it, like you.

How did I charm you into staying, my gorgeous one?
How did we teach other what love was, with your silence and my words?

Til the day I die I know my heart is full of you, and all that you gave me.
I held you in my arms as you gasped and ran free, in the black hour of your end.

Oh, I learned to care again, about life, about myself, about it all,
but it took a long terrible while. and it was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Girls always fell for you like autumn leaves, light as sighs, stars of a moment.
I know how lucky I was to be the one you gave your heart to.

It's been thirty-two years and I still say your name and picture your face
every day. Even the angels won't be able to tame you--I won't let them.

Wait for me. When my hours are over I will find you. I will come running.
_

The conspicuous Christians
fill four booths and keep the waitress hopping.

12 adults
5 young children needing high chairs in the aisle
17 orders, all different
5 special requests
2 plates sent back
1 spilled coffee
separate checks, please.

after an hour, they leave
dishes, napkins, crayons, sticky syrup spots,
straws, spoons, forks,
and
1 tract
with
2 crisp 1 dollar bills tucked neatly inside.

Back in bus-and-duffel days
turned out, less to than away,
half-high, with no plan,
I went up the coast.

San Luis Obispo, Carmel, San Fran
and on up to Portland.
That's where we go now
--people my age--
but this was then
when I had no means, no ways,
and just my naivete.

Out in the water, somebody said
to watch for the whales.
They live in the dark underneath,
and like me, come up, then back down
without learning a thing or so it seemed.

On the bus some guy liked
Gordon Lightfoot
"You've Been Talking In Your Sleep."
He spoke my language like a native
better than the pidgin kid that was me.

He told me a blue whale's heart
weighs as much as a grand piano
and can be heard from two miles away.
Bye daddy, behind me down the coast--
thanks for kicking me out.

I wondered, as Seattle became B.C.,
what if it's all just big empty water,
and me lugging some big booming beater for nothing?
Or what if I'm all ears
but the watersong was never for me?
What then?
And what now?

I look out these days not at California coast
but at Michigan lakes,
cold and deep, choppy or still.
I know only that I still don't know
and never will.