6
After the casseroles from anxious neighbors
And the flowers stopped arriving
And a last aging aunt blubbered goodbye,
I left the silent house,
Drove to the foothills
And began to climb.
Atop your favorite peak,
I opened the urn
And gave your ashes to the sky.
Will I ever stop wondering where you’ve gone?
The light was changing
As I descended into
The mountain's immense shadow.

.
We trod in steps without spark,
A careful journey one remakes,
With days of dreams' surrender,
O love— is but a promised land.

In our youth precious time reigns
And greetings are met with sorrow,
Maidens and lads, each entertains
Graces above us, Venus and Apollo,

Gods on high, who told us stories,
Of the cloud nursery, of mountains
Keep and comings of celestial glory,
Not of gentle caress to windy hands,

Of shy indifferences, the trials of lot,
Nor the endless engulf, still desires,
In this land of lost, unmoving gusts,
Go those who shuffle— souls entire.

At night rise, to the buzz of my son’s blood,
I wake and blow aboriginal dust from my lungs,
Get up and take a turn around the house.

The place has gotten cold.
This ****-eyed family – good God, they are helpless.
I tried to help by leaving things behind,
Like this prayer on the wall
About the timelessness of beauty.
And did you find the poem
About Freud and mountain climbing?
All they do is wail privately
And try to pass it off as singing.

My son sleeps like a chessmaster,
Shocked into resignation.
He dreams about me,
And his dreams are riddled with light
And longing for the past.
Such nocturnal naiveté.

But he knows the stars
And because, like the ancient Greeks,
He can follow them home,
He will leave this place before it leaves him.

This house gets smaller all the time.
Still, the furniture breathes quietly,
And the dancers in the tapestry sway
Though faded by the sun.

The dust from my breath settles down in layers.
Pale light silvers the living room mirror.
My steps leave footprints before each foot falls.
The footprints lead back to my door.

It is time to lie down.
Soon my son will wake up,
And shake off the ashes of sleep.
I don't live here any more.
My death will begin again.

When poets die
It's sad and true,
It matters not
What their bodies do,
The spirit flies
To Poet's Corner,
In Westminster Abbey.
You'll not see
Busts or inscriptions
For all the poets
Whose spirits linger
Alongside Chaucer, Browning, Spencer,
And a myriad of authors.
Dead Poet you have earned your share;
Dead Poet I will know you're there,
Composing in the Laureate's lair.

If I were to write you
A love poem
(this is only hypothetical),
So, let's pretend,
Like poets do.
Would you fit inside
The confines of a sonnet:
No, you're more free,
More like a breeze.
You're not ballad-like;
Though you could be
With those alluring green eyes.
I'd work on an ode
But you don't like heights.
We're not close enough for couplets, yet.
Free verse sounds like a fine fit.
You may end up being a muse someday
If I get the hang of it.
Most certainly when our elegy's written.

(for Peggy, with Alzheimer’s, 1996)*

Absent spirit:
Soothe our hunger for consolation
In the presence of this woman
Who asks for none.

May the colored shapes we have become
Stand apart from these walls--
Where sun after sun has tiled
A catacomb of days--
Distinctly enough to radiate our love.

Banish our loss.
Dissolve the bitter mystery of why.
Forgive our numb embrace
That enfolds this slumping body
Whose eyes reflect glass,
Whose mind quests beyond a dark door
Searching for a land of lost names.

Give words to her passage.
Resolve the twisted path she must follow alone,
The cratered wastes she calls across,
Seeking a land of kindred beings with cognate powers
That name her as their own and exult.

You can’t really picture the place.  
You don’t recall who was there.

But you remember surprise
That human ashes are not powdery dust,
Apt to disintegrate like snow,
Or soft like bread cast upon the waters.

Dad’s ashes chafed your palms like jagged seeds
As you clutched fistfuls from a plastic purple box
And flung them down a hillside
Somewhere in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

And you remember the feeling of urgency
As you retreated up the hill.
You had motions to go through,
Space to occupy,
A black and white landscape to walk
Among small figures filing along a dirt track
In the airless September heat.

— for Seamus Heaney*

Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.

.
We met
        On the wooden boards
Of the music
        Hall, in the fire
Glow of lights
        Dimmed and aflame.
A match was set,
        She was young
My eyes grew
        Wildly kissing her
And we lived
        Long in soft days
Held by the sea
        On Shanganagh
Cliffs, feral
        And green as Ireland
And for one
        Moment our eyes
Shut, caved in
        A day.  Now wood
Below, holds us
        In the casket
Of pine memory,
        Wrap of vines
Sharp wine of days
        Splendour
And in mournful
        Breeze, to these
We did surrender
        At a tomb
And silent grey birds
        Stood muttering
Where we both
        Are cold, grieving
Alone as we are
        Placing flowers.