sixty-one minutes ago, a stormy midnight;
I watched the clock hands join as lightning
struck my high pastures

only last month, a twister snatched a steer
and dropped it in my neighbor's stock tank--not a scratch
on its hide after a cylconic half mile ride

tonight I had no fear funnels would find my fields;
the distant thunder claps taunted me, reminding me
they have fierce fire, but don't always bring rain

I watched the clock, waiting for 13:02;
only last month, my wife hid with me
in our storm cellar, praying

I prayed with her, though I doubted
a god was listening, or cared; my entreaties
were not for refuge from the storm

instead, I begged the black sky
my woman would be saved from white
blood cancer--for a miracle

that was not to be--the almighty saw fit
to perform one for a dumb beast that very eve
but not for my wife of fifty years

she lasted until 1:01 AM yesterday
13:01 I strangely conceived; I had the lucky
steer slaughtered at high noon today

I'd let it rot in prairie grass, were it not
for her--she would not want it to be carrion
for buzzards, a profligate desecration

she would want its flesh to be
a feast for a family she did not know;
hands clasped, giving thanks

to the same god that saved it
but not her; I can't rest, I'll watch the clock,
waiting for 13:01 again and again

you found me
in a second hand store
on Lincoln Avenue

you bought me
for nine dollars and tax because
you thought I was a mandolin

you told Tryone, the clerk
who would sell me into slavery, your
wife always wanted one

you took me home to your
twelfth story apartment; I discovered
your wife was gone many years

but her photo on the living
room wall got to see me, and hear
your lament:

you wished you would have
found me seasons sooner--but my
strings were rusted even then

my last song played at a bar mitzvah
before your hair turned white, before
your wife's many colored regrets

you played me but once and didn't
like what I had to say--you tossed me
from your balcony to the street

I made the same flight your wife did,
landed in the same spot; yes, I suspect she was  
more a disappointed music lover than you

that afternoon,
the boy fried an egg on the sidewalk,
sunny side up

Mother said to waste food was sin,
though she had no qualms about dumping
Daddy's rot gut and gin

while Daddy was comatose
with drink, down the sink she would pour it;
the son knew the ritual well  

tonight was the same, Daddy ******
and couched, Mother cleaning his puke
before the dinner dishes

Daddy wouldn't recall a thing tomorrow,
another day which held mother's silence from fear,
shame--Daddy's from ethanol's eager eraser

Daddy would never know a transformer
blew but a block from their house, leaving
unsettled scores in the dark

or that for once Mother and son
wouldn't have to look at Daddy's hangdog face,
the incandescent haze which bathed it absent,
thanks to a blessing from a blackout
of another sort

with moonlight, he travels mostly
at night, past snoring hikers and embers
of fires that cooked their food, kept darkness
at bay, and heard what they had to say

if the coals could only speak, perhaps
he would find the right circle of stones,
a black heap of carbon that once glowed
red and gold, and her tale would be told

at least he would know the last words
she spoke in this wilderness--whether she
chose to vanish into the deep wood, fodder
for the scavengers

or was the prey of evil men,
who lurk at every turn--in bustling city
and quiet forest as well--vipers who strike
without warning, without curse or cause

when the moon's light wanes, he moves yet
in darkness, feeling his way, a nocturnal detective,
hoping to find what the others have given up
for lost and registered among the dead:

sign or scent of her--black coals or white bones,
a piece of tattered clothing, the canvas backpack
with her name, the hiking boots he laced for her
which left tracks he forever yearns to find...

three miscarriages: God's
abortions her curse, the third time
not a charm, though with a marriage
of joy and alarm, she feels a flutter

more wings than feet
taking flight amniotic;
she lies still and waits for another,
the expectant mother

she is not
disappointed;
it moves again
to her delight

climbing closer
to the light, wet wings
flapping slowly

this web fingered,
big-brained swimmer-flyer
son-daughter-carrier
of the eternal flame

who will be to blame
if its eyes never see the sun?
what God would will
such a denial?

the one who gifts all
things life, yet has been
but a fickle teaser
with her

she lies very still,
holding the breath of life, hoping
its exhalation will be the current
on which new wings take flight

it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm  

a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours

I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon

eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago

we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past

I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not

until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep

and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul

he replaced the washer,
the refrigerator too

he liked new appliances; they
reminded him of her

especially when he opened the freezer and found
not a pint of her Haagen-Dazs Vanilla

the new washer contained old ghosts as well
for he blasphemed her by washing on hot

a prohibition when she was still here, for fear
of shirts shrinking, she always claimed

he wondered what words of hers would haunt him
when he gutted the wall for a new oven

maybe it would just be the longing for the smell
of cookies baking  (chocolate chip)

the ones she prepared for the grandsons, the day
she took a "quick nap" and never woke up

I hear his barking from the other room
like a knocking on a door I can’t open    

his coughing comes in waves, drowning silence  
I clutch my own chest, “breathe”  

twice, thrice a day, I see him hobble to the bathroom,
oxygen tank behind him, his ball and chain  

there’s no ax of repentance to set him free after
fifty years under the brown leaf’s spell

not in this gray world where mindless cells multiply
and organs surrender to uninvited guests  

until one morning,  I wake to stillness--though I know
his hacking will abide forever, in memory’s vault

paler than her skin, was the scar
on her chin, a two inch memory phantom
at a forty-five degree angle

that, I recall most of all,
the lady beside me at the deli, the Saturday
before my daughter was born

I know I looked at her twice
in the flash of time it took to order,
two pastramis on rye

both of which went to ruin
since my wife went into labor
the moment we sat to eat

we made it to the hospital
in twenty minutes, though I don't remember the ride,
my hands on the wheel, the traffic lights

we hit every one, my wife said,  
yellow then red, and those were perhaps a portent,
an omen of what was to come:

thirty hours of breathing, heaving,
fetal distress, a caesarean section, a beautiful
daughter, who lived thirty minutes

I can't usually see her face, except
when I close my eyes to sleep, and then
as a small circle floating above our bed

her visage smooth, baby pink, full of light,
though it lingers but a moment, before I see the scar
on the woman's chin, the meal uneaten

judicious July, two inches,
auspicious August, three; September sunk to half
an inch, but leaped to record heat for the month

October first, he was at the bank,
hat in hand and pride somewhere deep inside,
after he swallowed it two droughts ago

the banker would know, this time
he would not bother to ask--the reaping now
would be from blood, not soil

the blood of his ancestors
who fed a nation, anonymous plodders who plowed
the sod where they were now buried

he was the last; he would have to move fast
to get dollars for his dirt, before the loans came due,
before the wife, the children knew

they would soon be town dwellers--that October
would be the month "Farm For Sale" signs would hang from
his fences like mocking scoreboards

and the month he would feel like
he had drowned in drought, leaving no doubt
he had failed his father, and his sons

blind from birth, she
could tell the difference
between the odor of chrysanthemums and tulips,
and remember her first whiff of both

she could identify
the scent of her brother
in a groping group
of sweaty brutes

she knew
her nose was her biographer
collecting memories, visions
her eyes could not

she studied biology
only to discover her compendium
of smells originated in a space infinitely
smaller than a fly's eye

a few molecules
devoted to identifying ham,
the rich smokey meat
of her first Easter

another clump to help her hold
the faint smell of perfume which lingered
in the room hours after
her mother passed

and who knew what atoms,
what cells, what curse of chemistry
forced her to recall, most of all, the sweet scent
of her newborn's hair,

the few seconds she held him,
after his heart stopped, and they took him
and placed him in a smooth, cold box, where sight,
sound and smell were locked forever

I found a skeleton of a bus
so far into the pines, I knew it had been
dropped from the sky, to save me  

they had to be far behind,
the other side of the stream, where those hounds
lost my scent    

Jed and Tonto didn’t follow me across
the shallows, and I’d bet all the money I ever stole
those curs and the posse ate them up    

there was almost half a moon, though
inside the bus was black; outside was freezing
drizzle pattering on the roof  

the coat I filched was soaked    
my trousers too--nobody told me
Alabama got this cold  

if they had
I wouldn’t have believed them
until that night  

I curled up in a ball
behind the driver’s seat, shoved
my frozen hands in my shirt    

then I heard that hiss, and saw
those eyes--I stayed quiet, more quiet even
than when I hid from John law    

then she growled, deep, slow
but I kept watching her eyes--emerald and still, still
in the place I first saw them    

then we were both silent  
I’d  *** my drawers before I’d move
freeze outside... get ate inside  

the hours passed fast; I drifted,
dreamed a little of being back inside, and woke
when the sun hit the cracked windshield    

she was still there
with two cubs nursing, now used to my smell
I suppose, since she didn’t jump  

when I slid down the bus stairs
into the frosty grass, where I saw a doe
chewing forbs, close to the roots  

lucky the lion had her babes stuck
to her teats, lucky I was between the cat and prey,
lucky the bus was in that grove

every night, the klaxon
wailed, like a hound lost in the fog

Mum and I would be sitting down
to dinner when the beast began bellowing

she would quip, them Gerrys want me
on thin rations, and to the cellar we scuttled

Mum would bring a votive candle, a pale of water;
I would grab Tag, our shivering terrier

in our tiny circle of timid light, we would wait and wonder,
how far were they? what would the next sun reveal?

on All Saints Eve, the house shuddered; the dust
from its two centuries drifted down on us like fine rain

then all was still, until we fell asleep--maybe she was
dreaming of Father, and what field now held him

I was not--sleep had taken me but a moment before
our tired beams moaned and gave way

Tag was then barking through his tremors, and she lay
still in the rubble, her eyes slit open

though only enough to see I was there to bury
her, in green pasture

far from this gloom, her quivering pet  
and orphaned manchild