a cairn on every mountain
chronological tricksters stacked
by near naked natives, or frat brothers
who pointed the way there
with crushed Bud cans?

fossils were less disingenuous,
treasures from a Jurassic sea, staring  
back at me--coprolites a fine find, evidence
our voiceless progenitors also
squatted and shat

after days of wilderness
wandering, I found a lonely menhir
tall as two men, wide as one, in no
particular vantage point
to the sun

who carved this monolith
I'd never know; how it was dragged here
would vex me even more

I sat beneath its shadow
until it stretched a desert mile
all the while watching, waiting
for someone to return
to claim it

when no one finally did,
I rubbed my hands on its weather worn flanks,
and bid goodnight to ancient strangers  
who worshiped this silent stone

there are two diagonal slashes
in the gauze of screen covering
the sliding glass patio door
each, this very moment
points to a dove

a pair that hid in the oak
this morning while they made
their song, dulcet tones to most
though not to me

I don't recall how the screen
was cut, but now the birds have moved on
and the gashes point only to a bed
of leaves, I will probably not rake
tomorrow

today, I will draw
the curtains and, as darkness gathers,
leave lights off

that may keep me from seeing
my son's flag draped casket lowered
into the ground, without the sound
of even those mourning doves

I am glad your mother departed
before you, for she would have screamed
in today's silence, and would never
have let me close the curtains

she would have implored me
to repair the screen, especially if she happened to see
the scars pointing to two sad songbirds,
even for a brief moment in the sun

through my microscope, I spend hours
looking at the interstices of a plant cell wall;
if the earth did not spin, I could endure the whole
frigid night staring through my telescope at one violently still
crater on the moon

but I eat only soggy cheerios for breakfast,
ramen--chicken flavor--for lunch, EVERY day,
and either Dinty Moore stew or cheese ravioli
for my evening repast

my toothbrush must be blue, the paste pure white
and I could never tolerate the plight, of socks slipping
down past my ankles

I love Vivaldi, Brahms, and the sound of soft rain,
but hail batters my brain like a billion ball bearings
on an defenseless tin ***

my alarm must face due north
and my bed sunset west, beyond those things
I have no peculiar request

except
that things remain EXACTLY the way they are/were
for eternity

I can't play a savant symphony
like some would expect, or do cataclysmic calculations
in my head

though I can recall,
two years and four months ago today, a gold thumbtack sitting alone
on my dead granddad’s wood work bench, and the gray smelling roll of duct tape I placed precisely three inches from it, to keep it company

and if I ever again travel 365.26 miles to visit Granny
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA, it better be there, not having dared
to move a nightmarish nanometer

the last victim of polio;
she took up brush and canvas
and began a portfolio of one

her singular subject,
a sagging pear in the neighbor's yard,
threatening the cedar fence daily

and daily she would add strokes
sometimes only a vein on a blue Monday  
a leaf in a weekend, and a chunk
of trunk on a winded Wednesday

over summer greens she would
double dab fall's golds, yellows, or russet
if snow had begun to drift

seasons, years made their circles  
until her hands became stiff, her eyes
filled with film--then, she only sat by the palette,
silent, reverent to a lifelong friend  

when she passed, the work
was nearly done, missing only half a fiery sun,
yet the sky was a glorious blue
by chance the final hue

of an image altered  
a hundred score, by a hand
that would have done so
a thousand more

George told me,
"ain't how long you live,
but how you live that counts"
strange he had clung to this
rock for double eights

and that he swore he'd jump
from a plane when he hit ninety, without
a parachute if he chose

those long linoleum journeys
when I wheeled him from his room to the dining hall
were the best part of my day

a minimum wage slave,
ending my graveyard shift
watching one after another leave
a thousand different ways

he called me "brown sugar"
I took no offense, for colored girls get deaf to such
jabs before we get bras

I knew, from him,
it was a term of endearment
since his red blood had earned
him ****** names like "Charlie Chief"
and "Drunk ***** Joe"
long ago

he told me grabbing melons
along the Pecos beat cotton picking
on the prison farm, and I never asked
how he came to know either

he said his squaw
was dead some forty years
his own trail of tears since
would never dry

no children had lived
to become great warriors
or proud princesses, though
he never said why

when I would leave George
at his table, the end of our daily stroll
he would bless his eggs with words
I didn't know

those who shared the table
sat mute and chewed their cud
as I walked away, I would never fail
to wonder, if I could find
a plane and pilot

I was three, four--surely no more
we marched through the old city, I
mostly on father's shoulders, a place
I was perched so often back then  

of a thousand dry seas on the moon's
pocked face, only one my father chose to wed  
with a bomb crater: Mare Ingenii

to others, you were but a mammoth hole,
ill-timed casualty of the bombers wrath,
but Dad named you for a barren basin
on the dark side of the moon  

eons later, I was an ancient ten,
and John Glenn spun thrice around the globe
I then asked if we would live to see the real you,  
an astronomically sculpted scoop, two hundred
arctic black miles across  

dad said of course,
and I believed him, especially
after I asked when, and he said
a billion years ago

tufts of grass stand in the yard  
hairy green patches of tenacity
in a field of neglect

half a screen guards
a **** stained door where
someone painted, 214

the pit bull sits behind it
waiting to be fed, and to be
chained again to the stake

where, like any beast bound
by gravity and the grave, he will
make ceaseless circles  

smaller  e a c h  day,  
unwitting sentry to those
two legged creatures
inside

who, with or without
the pit, lie prostrate, in dreamless
bug rich beds    

when they fall
from sleep, they too make circles
bound by stakes and chains…
invisible    

though their pull is felt
and their infernal rattle heard
no matter how far from home
the prisoners of Tulip roam

strangers,
we shared a bench, stories  
while I watched my grandsons play
he gazed at the twirling leaves
an autumnal symphony
ascending        

in one day it will be November  
he proclaimed, and one ancient “all saints day”
he had reported for induction into a congregation,
one he would never forget    

I had been in the same flock  
though seasons later and what my eyes
had seen had long since been tucked away
behind wedding marches, my children clawing
their way into the brave new world, and
those boys now frolicking before me

I do not know what he saw  
or what things he still carried  
to the battlefield of today    

but he never blinked at passers by  
and when the sun would break the clouded sky  
he would pause mid sentence, mid breath
to ask what I could never answer    

where did the flowers go,
when had the trees shed their leaves
and why was I still staring at lads in play
this day, All Hallows Eve, and would we
all be here tomorrow?

a century skipped
from one soup line
to the next

never thought I would
stand in one, a homeless octogenarian
who doesn't like soup

the library serves sandwiches,
Eden’s apples too, on Mondays, but gray Sundays
they are closed, so here I be
at a holy house

that feeds beggars, bankers
and ******, but only after servicing
our souls, with etudes on eternity
and other hymns to which
I am deaf

tomorrow I will visit the VA
for my monthly meds, free potions
to pacify me while I wait for a bed
in the shiny new castle,
forever being built

in the meantime, I get the shed
behind the shack, of another "brother"
who tells me war stories

that can't be true, since he
was but ten and two when
the last bird chopped its way
into the Saigon sky

the embassy below yet teeming
with ghosts, and the screaming hordes,
scurrying still in a conquered land, desperate  
victims of our proud command

I don't tell him he does not
speak the truth, for he gets even more
potent pills than I to keep
his demons at bay

today the broth has chicken
and rice, and our platoon slurps in unison
after another plaintive prayer
to a god I never knew

tomorrow, over my white
bread and bologna, we will
be able to sup in silence, in the
calm cathedral of tomes

where I will try in vain
to comprehend the mystic
Kabbalah, or perhaps read The Grapes of Wrath
to hoist healing hope of suckled redemption
before my ancient eyes

.

a letter came from Ukraine
tailing the newspapers' grey accounts
faster than the cloud of fallout

there were three smudges
from a child's digits, between the stamp
and my address

prints of proof you were there,
eating the Hershey’s I sent, though
your mother scrawled my name
and safe, numbered place I live,
a planet away  

the letter yet sits
on my desk, quiet, perhaps
waiting to be opened

I planned to surprise you
in your sluggish summer, with a visit,
and American Girl dolls

but April lasted forever  
for you, who happened to be walking
close to the melting kiln, looking
for spring’s first buds
on a Saturday morn

two tens, and seven, the square root of 729
no matter how the numbers collude in air, they are there
just as I drift off, before I catch myself thinking
of other numbers, like the age at which Jesus
died

twenty seven,
my four syllabled mantra, for that is the age
you got the needle

I was not a witness, but your attorney was
how he did not weep, I will never understand
he knew they put you in a diaper before you took
the final stroll

twenty seven, and during those final steps,  
your sins yet dragged behind you, like ball and chain, not severed
by the axe of repentance, the chisel of remorse

where did the gods fail, taking you so fast from
the dim lights of the b-ball courts and your dreams
of being Michael or Magic to the dead afternoon when
you strode up the cracked walk to that crack house
and put two thirty-two rounds in the eye
of your second cousin who came in first
on your short list

all because of a hundred dollar slight
and a spoonful of powder the world could mistake
for simple sugar

you didn't fight when they strapped you in
and your final testament to an uneven world,
an insolent audience, was, "it is what it is."

did you feel the tug on your *****, from the raiment wrapped
to hide your seeping shame, did it take you back a quarter century,
when a manic mama pampered you in pampers
and kissed your tiny tummy more times
than numbers could count, though
not enough

did you, like I, in the moments between light and dark,
between this world and one where you must sleep alone
see twenty and seven flash before your eyes
and disappear before you could realize
what the plaintive plungers
and naked needle meant

swish, swash
under a blue moon
you, in your chariot, racing north
on Highway 1

while I look for footprints
in the sand--five toed tracks to prove
you were here with me

swish, swash, sea songs
replacing your voice, like I had any choice
but goodbye

after your confession,
and your appeal for absolution,
on the same shore we first lay,
naked

and walked until the sun rose
above the silent cliffs--the same bluffs
you climbed now to be with him

would you two also tread a beach
and marvel at weather worn gems, the purple waves'
evidence time smooths and soothes all things

I don't believe it
even as I find and finger new green and amber shapes
on this eternal stretch of sand

she wrote an entire novel
about a man who cut his hand
on a can of sardines

he found in a silent cupboard
of a prairie house abandoned since
the dust bowl, or perhaps since
the eighth day of creation

the can he opened with a rusty blade
he found in yet another home of ghosts
on a treeless lane in Topeka

where he spent
four naked nights
hiding from the cruelest January,
his memories, and the devil

who his mama said eschewed the cold
and he believed her, but built a fire all the same
until a fat ****** sheriff came
and sent him into the night

where a wailing wind waited
and blew him south through the dark
like just another tumbleweed

when he finally
landed, dry and thrashed
in his new sagging palace
the snows had melted,
the winds calmed

there he found fine fodder
in a tin with sailor standing proud
a feast of fish at his feet

was a shame to behead
the mariner with such a dull tool
only to find mush and ancient fetor
anointed by three drops of his red blood
the can demanded in exchange
for its long dead bounty

fishing the river is for old men,
solitary figures who saw their original sin
and now see darkness closing in

for old men, who watch
the leaves pass on soft singing waters
to them, it matters not if they make it to the black sea,
tarry a while on a quiet bank,
or sink into the silt

for old men, who dream while awake
whose eyes no longer flutter but squint
in the sun’s naked white journey
from shore to shore

when their line becomes taut,  
a slow dance will ensue, not a battle in a larger war
they once felt compelled to fight--raging, raging against the night,
for fish and fisherman know, when the conversation ends the line  
will again be loose, drifting on currents, bound for the certainty
of uncertainty

fishing is for old men, I
am haunted by waters

the entire platoon, lost
even Leroy--all said he had the “shield”
in this field, he must have let it down
all six foot four of him, on the ground
beside him, Tony from Brooklyn
Fresno Frankie, all

the lieutenant, in motionless repose
his head resting on Leroy's ribs, his short blond hair crimson
from the base of his skull to his ears, color courtesy
of Leroy’s grated gut

not one sound
why had they not bayoneted him
with the others....he saw one standing over him, leaning
down with his AK-47, moving as slowly as the minute hand
on a giant black clock

where was the sun
after all these hours among the dead
hadn't the earth turned, or did it spin into a sky
where Helios had vanished, superfluous now
on this lifeless plain

still, in this darkness he saw
one by one, his sleeping brothers awake
yet drenched in blood, arms outstretched,
mute while they drifted upwards
in ribbons of soft, silent light

I see the barrel at the temple
feel the nickel sized circle on the skin
hear the loud last report
after the trigger pulled

daily, this scene scrolls in the head
a secret, e pluribus unum,  one
no other players read
in their scripts

I don't write theirs, only
mine, and they have their own
clandestine plans, their own
scenes at the edge of the
abyss

sometimes, I see them
fall, screaming, or silent
until they land among the other
bones

I don't know, I will never
see that place with my eyes
for I lack the courage to jump
or squeeze the trigger

no
I will find a way to sleep
and never wake up, let others wonder what lines
I read in my final hours hiding from the sun,
or why I chose pills and potions
instead of the gun

Michiko would never know
the strange creature that opened its bowels
that day, was named Enola Gay

she would remember the fine feel of the water on her face,
the taste of tea she had with her pears, and the odor of chrysanthemums through her window

the same window through which
her mother would stare, there, at the morning sky
at the smothering smoke of all creation

her brother was left a shadow
on a wall, nothing left at all of her father
who stood at ground zero

Michiko, only double digits the day before
would follow her mother down the long road
to the smoldering fires and scorched skin
and the stalking stench of the dead

on the path, along the way
but only that day, Michiko would see the black giant
growing in the summer sky
a magnet to her eye

more beautiful than all
the sweet flesh and shrines that fed it
a billion years in an instant
that August morn

blue moon, once in
your light, I will be
shed of the heat of this day
free to stalk my prey
tear flesh from bone
feel gravity's gift
slide it down my gullet
sate me for another night
until one more slower beast
crosses my path
in lesser light

the headline, Avian flu,  
was the first bird that arrived
to mark our beginning  

I was in O'Hare,  
on my first cell, when she agreed
to have dinner

but stuck in JFK, four cells later,
when she asked me to get my things
from her loft

CNN was on the flat screen
the new plague on instant replay,
becoming a stale tale de jour

wings of silver birds
were slicing the night sky
my ticket to ride one
on the bar

I hoped
I wouldn't catch the newest bug
while still in the air

I will bring you concord grapes,  
for you like the color of them, and I the way
your cheeks move when your mouth
is full of them  

I will cut the meat for you,
in thin slices, as razor narrow as the knife
will allow

the nurses tell me
to let you feed yourself
to gain your strength
back

but we, just you and I,
know your arms will become more flaccid
with each passing night, and no amount
of measured movement, will make
that right

I will make the soft cloth wet, warm  
and caress the dirt away, for they scrub you
like palette or canvas, painted all wrong

I will brush your hair,
a hundred strokes each eve,  
as you did, before your amber waves
turned wistful white, and your limbs
went limp

I will read you stories
of children at play, lads and lasses
who never grow gray

I will bring apples
for your wooden bowl  
but we don't dare slice them
for they are there for us to watch
to help us remember red, round things,
beginnings, in a world before this room
of endless ending

she drank only Teachers Scotch
with me, and only with me she said

a half truth--she drank
only Teachers, but with any slurping soul
who had the time  

the fraction of that lie stuck in my gut
waiting for our Scotch, our Teachers Scotch,
to wash it down, to flush it through a black hole
to some yawing universe that only existed
in the last drop of the last bottle
from the last oaken barrel of...
Teachers Scotch

I did not expect the truth from her
except I loved pretending it was there
waiting to roll from her tongue into my empty ear
along with the scent of the fine whiskey
she drank only with me
(but never all of thee)

when he was 84, he rarely recalled
the Great War, though he left a finger somewhere
in French soil, and on deep sleep nights,
few and far between, it would call him
a spectral image of  gas dead faces
drifting through like sallow clouds
in the charcoal sky

his nephew was the only one left
to fish these green waters, to court the steady
trout that he too saw in his dreams--all the others,
even his own sons, marching  in the concrete squares
of the cities, visiting now and then like peddlers
hawking wares he could not understand...
soccer games and mutual funds
gourmet feasts at eateries
with cryptic names

the lake was still the same
the  loons chatting, the waves lapping
but without his Helen, the fish he caught
were usually granted reprieve, saved from
his sharp gutting blade, her sizzling skillet,
and without her beside him under her ancient quilts,
the nights were not longer, for grief, he knew,
did not stretch time, but only
made its circle smaller

was a sun sated Saturday
when the nephew had honey do's as good excuses
and the old man was left alone, sitting by a black rotary phone,
waiting for one of his old nine digits to dial the new nine and two ones,
it is what they all would have expected, a cry for help, a long mute ambulance ride, them seeing him helpless with hoses and wires, delaying the funeral pyres, as was the custom in this post teen century

instead, though he felt the anvil on his chest,
and sweat drenched his JC Penney work shirt,
he moved not his feeble fingers to the phone, but his fated feet
to the lake, once only a long a hop from the porch, now a mammoth journey, ten, twelve Sisyphus steps downhill--when he reached the waters edge, the fowl called him casually, their slow song on the currents,
and he sat in the fresh grass, watching the painted blue sky
he saw the fins of those he had set free, hoping
that would count for something
when he curled in fetal repose,
and closed his eyes
by this lonely lake

I dream of dogs
though I doubt they dream of me  
or rabbits running across
a monochrome field    

I presume
many things about the canine psyche:  
an ancient wolf howling in their head  
an inability to feel dread, and
the arrogance of cats,
their “pet” peeve    

feigned feline ferocity  
may bother them not one whit
nor do they likely give a ****, what stirs
in my primordial cerebral soup, when I scratch
their ears, and vainly imagine their fears  
of the dead dark, are the same
as ours

I began writing of thee, 63  
but after considerable effort and time
belched out only glib rhyme  

when I recalled my last walk,
however, it was in winter woods, only yesterday,
the frozen ground crunched under my ancient boots,
speaking to me in its own verse  

“move fast,
this white art won’t last,
make your tracks deep, soon
we’ll not make a peep”    

so I complied,
stomping on the frigid frost
shuffling with aging caution on thick ice  
watching my breath mist gray
the still air  

was such the entire walk
one foot after another, making tracks
lesser numbered beasts would sniff and see…  
fading remnants of the me    

then I saw you, crystalline knives  
hanging from brittle branches long ago grayed  
reflecting all that came within your sight  
in your solid time, dripping drops slowly,
silently, before freezing once again
in the approaching night

the carpet was her friend  
its woven pile stitched by a Java descendent
just for this sparkling occasion, or a thousand others  
when she slithered across it  
to find the crystal goblet,
or porcelain bowl      

the night began with promise
a phone call from him, or the other him
saying he would be there after dinner
when it was night enough to enter
under cover of darkness  

last time he had entered on the sofa,
though she didn’t remember anything
but rolling onto the floor, and waking the next morn
rug burns on her back, dry tracks of him on her thighs  
and the carpet to the door    

she had asked for more,
more of him, more of the wine, more of the night
that came and went like he, without so much
as a by your leave  

doubtless there would be
other nights, when they would turn off the lights
and sink as one, in a silken simmering sea
together to find treasures
on the ancient floor…  

more likely,
in her world of more,
he would walk away again  
her left draped in sweat,
and the familiar scent  
of disappointment

how could I not love you,
when you wrote of death, while others
courted coy flowers--I know you were not
a comely creature, and if you were Aphrodite,
perhaps you would have been love lathered
on cold Amherst nights, though I
suspect you would not have heard
a fly buzz when you died, for you
would not have been listening
for such a beatific symphony

I feel flat lined, on this flat earth
now and then, when I follow the wild pigs’ path
into the thorny mesquite, the scrub oak,
I see a spike on my graph    

when I find their fresh droppings,
dung still steaming on morning’s crisp ground,
perhaps I have found, something to make
my heart pump enough to register a blip,
a puny peak on the scrolling page    

true, this is not
the rubber tree jungle where
I first learned terror and trembling unto death
where I hunted other prowling prey, who had no sharp fangs or tusks
to tear my young flesh,  but could, with a fateful finger flick
spill my rushing red blood in the puke brown soup
of the rice paddies

those days now are seen
faintly, through a milky haze,  
though for others it seems, recalled
at night, in dread dreams

I do not share their nightmares--if I did  
I would not wander into the winter woods
to face my foe, to hear its gray growling, hoping
its charge will be quick on this flat land,
and that the thumping in my chest
will paint a beautiful sharp line
on the pallid parchment

cyclones of russet leaves  
doing devilish dances in her yard
while she read, sipped chamomile,
and listened to the cat’s warm hum by her feet,  
the neighbor’s Harley on her street    

the default ring tone
she never changed, interrupted her mid paragraph,
between the writer’s deft description of a noisy bar,  
and an anonymous couple walking to the car  
to find something they lost
long before that night    

the words that came
when she answered became part
of her own novel, lines scribed in a book
she would carry with her forever,
words she read over and over
as she ran to the car,
“your husband is in the ER”
“your husband is in the ER”  
“your husband…”  

he had gone for cat food,
asparagus, and likely some beer,
or Chablis if he remembered they were having
chicken Milan that very night    
and he did, because the bottle  
was yet on the floor board
of his Honda Accord, after…    

two officers met her
at the sliding ER door  
and the eyes of one, puffy with compassion
required they say no more than her name
this also now written in her own book
since half of it was his  
half, his

his parents arrived
at 2:56 AM the next day
having been entombed in a silver blue buzzing tube
two hours late from JFK--first class only meant more
mournful space around them  
they could not fill      

her own mother
handled all the arrangements, being a master at such  
having buried her father, the last pilot downed
in that crazy Asian war, and putting her older brother  
in the ground when white blood cancer
took him before he made it
to double digits  

services, closed casket,
were on a thick Thursday,
delayed a day while they
waited for their priest to return
from his own mother’s wake
in some other world  

all friends and family
gone by Saturday, leaving her to listen
for the cat’s hum (but he was hiding)
the neighbor’s roaring machine  
and more ring tones, more sound  
that would too become indelible lines
in her timeless tome, that began
on a windy Sunday

struck by lightning twice by twenty-four
this astronomical record was hers, Guinness proclaimed,
this lady so famed, top of her class at Stanford, then Yale Med,
and blissfully wed, to a surgeon who always came in second

this did not matter at Cabo, or even in their first condo  
but as her curriculum vitae grew faster than a Walmart receipt
on Black Friday, he scrubbed up for one bloodletting after another, removing appendixes, and appendages, feeling her shadow
grow heavy, even in the bright lights
of his operating theater

his first was, of course, a nurse, though at least her age
his second, a decade newer model, fixed his lattes at Starbucks
number three was the neighbor with whom they shared
nothing but a fence, and a few awkward stares

her hours in the lab with petri dishes grew, and  
she never let on she knew, that her clean shaven number two  
was lying with others to stand himself  

when he asked for a divorce--number four requiring more
than liquid exchanges in sweet hotel suites--she acquiesced and even let him have the Welsh Corgi, the cabin in Aspen,
and half the 401K

to this day, she recalls imagining his liaisons  
while she married menacing molecules to one another
in tubes under faithful light, seeking answers to questions
asked by the dying she would never meet
a lump would only grow in her throat    
if she thought his scalpel never sliced
the heart of number four, for five

two hydrogen
met one oxygen
a dance ensued
I am

once a collage
hung on a wide white wall  
with monochrome photos of  
all creatures great and small  

Dali juxtaposed with Doris Day,
LBJ atop JFK, and Joe DiMaggio,
grinning Frankenstein and frowning
Frank Sinatra, not far below

Hemingway, Groucho Marx, Marlon Brando  
occupying three of four corners, the bottom right
a curious cat, in stretched repose

dead center, a cracked crucifix
and four Beatles all, Paul the biggest
with the cross crowning his frame    

a Corvette,
and Stalin in his tomb  
were also given ample room,
on this black and white piece of art  
as were *******, with cap,
Jimi Hendrix with axe  

another three score
and a couple more, completed
this cacophony of sight, but absent
were J. Bieber, Beyonce, any of the Simpsons
of Fox fame, revealing the artist of this gray masterpiece  
was blissfully blind to cyber sacrilege,
Steve Job’s toys, and the lost soul
of Lindsey Lohan