it was a formal affair, amaranth napkins
folded neatly in laps

everyone clapping in unison; an obligatory
percussion of pink palms

when we left I asked you
if you enjoyed yourself

your terse "I guess" was predictable,
even though you invited me

under halogen haze, I watched you
distance yourself with every step

until you turned to me to say,
"I meant to end this before today"

I knew you would say this as soon as we entered
this man made sea of light

and saw black waves undulate around you,
cast by your perfect gown of white

in the hall, I listen as she calls out
his name

not aware I am there,
nor would she care

if I open the door without making
a sound,

I purloin a few seconds to watch her
before she sees me

when her eyes catch mine,
she looks away

the morning sun makes a sympathetic effort
to light our room

"our" room which from which I have
been excommunicated

the drapes she sewed only last summer
are never open

that is her world, staring through
baby blue curtains

which mute the half light of morning,
though not enough

not enough to blind her to the spot
where her son's crib waited

until I committed the unpardonable
sin of taking it to the cold cellar

only a fortnight after our stillborn child
was placed in the ground

for me, the creek may as well have been the mighty Mississippi

too shallow for canoe; mostly carp and crawfish called it home

no great novels were penned about adventures there

though I had my own tales to tell:

sand squishing between my toes on a sultry August day

a water moc I decided to let live

the time my grandfather taught me how to clean the catch--fish guts given back to the sluggish current

most of all, the arm I found on a Sunday afternoon, one attached to a body

who turned out to be a man who had cheated my grandpa

and vanished only days later -- assumed to have absconded to avoid John Law

my uncle the sheriff fished him out and planted him again, without a doc's scrutinizing eye

never was the man mentioned again, even by his kin--whipped white trash

such was Texas in 1940, questions not answered because not asked

drought dried the creek to fetid puddles
the year my grandpa passed

the very spot I found the arm, one of the last places to dry

a stagnant pool with minnows and memories colliding in death throes

and my grandfather buried spitting distance from the man I had found

both now above the creek where it joined
the river Brazos, it too a victim of the sun's relentless sear

though not so willing to give up secrets, to
cast doubt on legends, or let ghosts rise from the mire

feed corn in field for weeks
to fatten them up for the ****

from stands of live oak, hackberry
they would come, fawn and doe

leaving tracks in morning dew
to and from the scattered grain

I slept through their feeding, then
followed their trail into the copse

where I found fawn gutted
by the mythic mountain lion

I did not believe existed,
until that morn

I pulled the carcass to the edge of the wood,
in view of the stand

where I waited with rifle and starlight scope
for the great cat

who came with the waning crescent moon
and did not know I shot him

through his red river heart
as he crouched to finish his meal

(Cross Timbers, Texas, 1991)

I wrote a poem
called feather light

in which a man
took flight like raptors

from a ledge where those creatures
were known to perch

for a minuscule morsel of time
the man felt feather light in his free fall,

but that didn't last--soon the grave grip
of gravity made its presence known

though before he landed
on the pine green canyon floor

the sluggish tug of memory
yanked on him rudely, and lumped his throat

dispelling the manic myth one's life
passes before one's eyes in that final moment

all he saw, save the tree tops
and the shimmering river

was a door closing, the one where she
was on the other side, suitcase in tow

and he was left with a tear drenched face
and aching heart--a lover jilted, again

yes, that was what the poem was about
(but my PC ate it and crapped it out into cyberspace)

it seems awkward October is when
the days march into a haze,

unaware of how the sultry nights of August
evaporated

and left us with falling leaves, lime lawns,
and adulation of harvest moons

even if drought has murdered every
sprout planted in hopeful April

I keep a big calendar on my breakfast room wall,
and another in the hall

to remind me a freakish frost has not signaled
it's December

and feel blessed to remember, All Hallows' Eve
is not yet here,

for when it comes, the neighborhood ghosts and goblins
will yet knock on my door

expecting treats sans tricks--I'll pass out candy
with a tepid smile

knowing all the while, November
is a sleepless night away,

dragging in another day, colder, when more
living things pause their pulse

and I turn the page on two calendars
to see if it then seems November

I didn't choose to be son of a scared Jew
and angry Irishman

who never laid a hand on her, even when
she turned the butcher knife on him

when he tried to stop her from slashing
her red wrung wrists

this spectacle in plain view of 5 children for whom "woe is the world" was daily refrain

I recall Father's blood trail on the concrete between our house and the neighbor's, a surgeon not expecting a bleeding Sunday guest,

but my mother's madness didn't rest on the Christian Sabbath, nor on her own

after that, the shrinks did their magic: Mom did the Mellaril march, the Haldol hop, the Stellazine stomp, and the less alliterative Thorazine shuffle

none of those chemically induced dances did a thing to increase the chances for my mother's salvation

soon she was behind the locked doors of "Ward 30," where I visited and Mom told me she had found Jesus

a befuddled revelation since I didn't know she was looking for him--her kin had hung him from a cross and taken the heat ever since

the doctors released her to the street, where she made misty retreat to the hills of Saint Francisco's bay

though she found faint solace in Pacific waters, she would never again see her sons or daughters

half a lifetime later, I found a long lost cousin my mother agreed to see, though not with me, for I was too much a reminder of scars which never heal

she sat with Mother near the end of days, sharing silence, the scent of Salisbury steak, and a view of the distant shore

as my patient cousin rose to leave, my mother finally spoke of a sea she watched turn from cerulean to indigo dusk

childhood beaches my mother did recall: the castles she did craft, the crawling ***** she did follow, the sun bathed sand where she made her bed

far from the one where she now lay, the one in which she would go smoothly into the night, perchance returning to blue waters, where hot blood trails cannot follow