i. “…THE SAME FORCE AND EFFECT AS AN ORDER OF FILIATION…”

She’d said she wasn’t expecting or demanding a ******* thing
(It’s probably your kid, she said, But I wouldn’t swear to it)
And his buddies swore he was crazier than a ******* rat
To even think about going along with the whole idea
After she all but given him a Get Out Of Jail Free card,
But he’d gone ahead and signed all the paperwork
Which, in the eyes of the state and the child-support folks,
Made him the one true father of this baby-to-be.  
He couldn’t begin to explain
Why he hadn’t fought the notion tooth-and-nail,
Save for the occasional muttered Baby oughtta have a father,
But there was more to it that; he had a vague notion
That knowing half of who you were was worse
Than having no knowledge at all, your whole reason for being
Becoming the exploration of odd hunches and unrealized fears,
The study of every man that crossed your mother’s path
In the hope (or, more likely, the absolute and utter dread)
That you were glimpsing a part of your genetic destiny,
Though such a line of thought was probably just *******,
A product of Genesee Cream Ale philosophizing.
When the time came, he’d agreed
(An idea which reduced his friends
To mute amazement and slow, sad head shaking)
To be present at the birth,
And, after certain undertakings
He’d just as soon not have seen were complete,
The nurse (saying It’s a boy.  A big, beautiful healthy boy.)
Handed him a black-mouthed, screaming little mass,
Fists clenched tightly, entire body tensed
As if it realized just how inadvisable the whole situation was.
Faced with this tangible evidence of his ostensible patrimony,
He found himself unable to say anything except
*******.  **-lee ****.

ii. As The Old Joke Goes, “In The Morning?  
*****, I Don’t Respect You Now.”

He had, of course, forgotten her name,
Assuming he’d ever known it,
And so it had been chica and hija and amada all night,
Though, to be fair, she couldn’t remember
If he was Juan or Jhonny or Jesus;
She simply remembered that he was Colombian,
All dark hair and bright smiles and quite tall
Although that could have just been a trick of the eye,
As his friends were all compact squatness,
Which she had pointed out  while they were dancing,
To which he’d subsequently horse-laughed out loud.
Chica, he’d fairly shouted over the music,
The best way to be good looking is to have ugly friends.
He’d come to Batavia to hunker down for winter
After the wineries had buttoned things up for the season,
Spending his time catching odd jobs here and there;
Anything to get by, he’d said with the most outrageous of winks.  
She’d had no intention, none whatsoever, of taking him home,
But anything to get by takes in any multitude of sins,
Venal and otherwise.
She woke up about two-thirty or so, all damp with sweat
And the remnants of *******,
To see him awake and getting dressed.
Before she could say a thing, he put a finger to her lips.
Shhh chica, he said softly and soothingly,
Like he was trying to hush an infant,
I got some stuff I really need to take care of;
Look, we’ll get breakfast, OK?
You know the Bob Evans out by the highway? Six o’ clock, eh?
And with that, it was a quick, almost brotherly, peck on the cheek,
Then he was gone, so stealthily that she was briefly unsure
That he’d ever indeed been there at all.
Breakfast, can you imagine she thought
As she rolled over to get some sleep,
Like I’m even awake at such an hour.

iii. We Don’t Ask For Directions, And We Sure As Hell Don’t Make Lists

There had been no blowup, no volcanic incidents of infidelity
No grotesque financial stupidity;  
The china and glasses had remained unbroken,
The plaster-and-lath not displaced
By the seismic slamming of doors.
It had been slow, subtle,
Like the slow unraveling of a thread here in there
Opening up a gaping hole in a old comfortable sweater,
Or how the unhurried seeping of water
Would occasionally cause an outcropping of rock
To tumble into the gorges over at Letchworth.  
Oh, there had probably been the proverbial last straw:
Maybe the new refrigerator that didn’t fit through a single door
In the entire house (and who in hell bought something like that
Without taking measurements anyway)
Or the foolhardy extended warranty on the Volvo,
Which had **** near a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it
And had no more trade-in value
Than a Matchbox miniature of the model,
But it any case, the immediate cause
Was probably more symptom than disease, anyway.
He’d packed a couple of bags with the basics
To ****, shave, shower and dress,
And jumped into the ancient but well-protected wagon,
Heading to God only knows where:
His brother in York, maybe,
Or his mom’s place way the hell up in Tupper Lake,
(Not that he had the stomach for the questions and sidelong looks That particular destination entailed)
But about ten miles out he realized
He’d forgotten his ******* bike.
****, ****, stupid **** he said,
Pounding the steering wheel in rhythm;
The notion of going back like some dumb-*** eight-year-old,
All hang-dog look and tail between his legs
Was not particularly appealing,
But the notion of having to **** time
Without the prospect of a bike ride
(Wind in what was left of his hair,
The barking in his calves as he climbed an incline,
The whole **** freedom of the thing)
Was simply too much to consider,
So he swung the car around and headed back.
She was, as he knew she would be,
Waiting in the doorway with the bike
(**** near sharing a brain after all this time, to be sure),
Her face hung with a look not really a smile or frown
Or anything that fit a definition,
But endearing all the same, and he heard a voice not quite his ask
Well, is it OK if I come in for a few minutes?

iv. The Bob Evans Out By The Highway

…the **** am I doing here anyway, she thought,
Staring down at the table, chunky taupe-ish coffee mugs
And logo plates, fine china for everyone and no one,
Set for two (she hadn’t ordered, she was waiting for someone)
The restaurant more or less empty,
Only the odd trucker or  some senior citizen
Who was still on rat-race time.
The clock had hit six-fifteen when she,
Eyes cloudy and threatening to ambush hastily applied mascara,
Was ready to flag down the waitress to let her know
That she was just a coffee, thanks, when he walked in,
No, burst in, like a madness of chrysanthemum
Where there had only been undifferentiated greenery
Mere moments before.
I’m sorry, chica, he said, bending over to kiss her cheek,
This whole life thing gets in the way sometimes, eh?
He sat down, slapping the table with both hands
Man, he said, all but snorting, I could eat a horse,
And what better place than this, mmm?

It was one of those fussy, fuzzy little epiphanies;
She’d noticed, a little surprised and nonplussed,
That her wedding ring sat on the window sill above the sink,
Its removal necessitated to scrub the assemblage
Of dishes and silverware facing her,
The act certainly of no particular significance in itself
Simple unconscious mechanics,
Like tying a shoe or a quick goodnight peck,
But a thing at one time unthinkable,
Akin to betrayal and other sorts of unimaginable treachery,
Involving the breaking of solemn covenants
Of undying affection and fealty
(Though such vows rendered impotent
By their very nature, their utter lack of recognition
Of life’s winds and wuthering)
When love was a thing close kin to sheer madness,
Hurtling onward without heed to caution or stoplight
(But such emotion also prone to falsehood,
A three-alarm call with mutual aid to boot,
All for some overwrought trash barrel or barbecue)
And she was stirred from such reverie
By his appearance in the kitchen with a late arrival of glassware
Proffered with a bit of a wan smile,
Which she accepted as sufficient apology,
Taking a moment to push the ring a bit more toward safety,
Away from the minor maelstrom of water
Rushing unheedingly into the drain.

He’d been away for any number of years,
Days cascading over the spillway of time
Into pools of weeks, oxbows of months,
And though the town was much as he remembered it
(Though a little more tattered and careworn:
Another broken windowpane here,
A wall in grave need of paint there,
One or two more storefronts gone to plywood)
The cemetery was all but labyrinth to him,
A corn maze of granite and narrow drives,
The plots having metastasized, the stones having spread
Like so much crownvetch overpowering the simple grass,
But he’d been able, after any number of false-starts,
Uncounted instances of double-backs and do-overs
To locate his father’s marker
(The man gone some forty years now,
Taken by…well, who knows what
His mother, stunned by the prospect
Of having to step into the dual role
As nurturer and breadwinner,
Too stunned to even think of requesting an autopsy.)
He’d come, ostensibly, to make his peace
(Whatever that hackneyed phrase entailed)
But he’d ended up, if not as mute as the stone he faced,
No more than a cow-country Caliban,
Haltingly sputtering bits and bobs of half-phrases
Concerning the implacability of accidents, the vagaries of chance
The coffin-lid limits on mere men and women.
He’d given up the ghost, finally,
And as the daylight slipped away on the bumpy old horizon
He’d simply brushed some dried bird guano from the gravestone,
Then picked the dead bits from the flowers
Doing their level best to hold on
In the urn he’d wrestled from his mother’s ancient station wagon
Two, perhaps  three, days ago
Before settling back into the car to try to divine the way
Back to the main road
(He’d found it in surprisingly short order,
And perhaps a quarter-mile or so down the road,
He’d come upon a small rabbit,
Frozen mid-lane by his headlights,
Finding himself in a world not of his making
Not knowing whether to flip or fly;
He’d missed it by mere chance, nothing more,
And he wondered if the poor thing
Would be so lucky with the cars behind him.)

There is, I admit, no small attraction in the possession
Of the wand--but invariably that becomes obsession,
For magic bewitches all it touches, and woe to the man
Who, having discerned its methods and secrets, believes he can
Employ it yet stay unfettered and unscathed, without effect,
(As if the mere claim of enchantment would not make one suspect
Both the man and his motives), all sweet fruit without bitter rind.
Such men may find the verdict of peers and gods to be unkind,
(There exists no single point in time we fail to comprehend
That no simple act of wizardry postpones our mortal end)
For who among us remains impervious to Nature’s whims
Or time’s ravages--our concentration wanes, the eyesight dims,
Our hands shake, every bit as unsteady as our convictions.
So we carry on, with our exceptions and contradictions
Expertly hidden, in the hopes that, at least for a short while,
We can offset, through the employment of parlor tricks and guile,
The diminution of our gifts, fading of our faculties.
So, as we reach our denouement, what have our abilities
Brought us in the end, save the knowledge that our reputations,
No matter how great, serve as no match for our limitations?

We try to stick to canned goods these days.
Not that it’s particularly easy, mind you,
As the expiry dates have come and gone;
You have to have a feel for what ages well
And what simply can’t be trusted.
Some of the stuff in jars is OK, if the seal’s good
And it hasn’t had too much unnaturally bright light or heat.
Sometimes, in frustration or fear or just plain madness,
We’ll grab a couple of pieces of fruit or berries
Straight from a tree or bush
(Just a brief, guilty nibble, mind you,
As our wiring for self-preservation quickly takes over,
Though that’s akin to insanity in itself;
Indeed, a considerable number of people
Won’t even consider stepping outside anymore.)

We have come to this place, then,
Carrying our threadbare blankets,
Our dented and dinged peas and garbonzos
To this portentously lush locale
(Nature’s metamorphosis, now running in overdrive,
Having its winners among its throng of losers,
Sitting among a recklessness of flowers
Which have smartened themselves up
In sizes and hues heretofore unknown)
As what passes for evening takes hold
(The daytime air so stultifying and adulterated
They don’t even bother issuing warnings and advisories any more.)
We watch the odd, unsettling out-of-place aurorae,
Not giving utterance to the obvious—is this the one?—
But choosing to soft-shoe our way through the hours
With small talk, the odd kiss and cuddle
(There are those who have taken the humanity of affection
Beyond the merely foolhardy or oblivious,
Cults of propagation comprised of odd Gnostic outliers,
Dreamy and staunch proponents of extraterrestrial rescuers.)
As the darkness takes hold, we lift our faces to the stars
(For the nights are always starry,
Clouds being relegated to only memory)
And as they sit above us, stark, awesome in the oldest sense,
It is hard not to think of what an ancient man
Wrote of one equally ancient to him,
That though they have seen the totality of our folly,
They remain wholly without fault.

We say
it is wasted
upon the young, to which
Youth retorts, Grampy, I do not
concur.

And so I walk upon this stage of life
Set before this night of a thousand eyes
Sans players and bereft of drum and fife
My given charge to sift the truth from lies,
To extract from the ore of distant past
Some kernel of what the years ahead may hold
And though I know full well the die is cast
My gestures and speeches long since foretold
And I am content with the part I play
In this warhorse my fathers have composed
Though other dramas are now underway,
Sad and hackneyed things which I had supposed
Would proceed, my presence not required.
The director demurred when I sent regrets
And so that preordained was what transpired,
This life no stroll upon the parapets.

My Dearest Capulet,

As I write you in these waning hours
(The number of my sunrises and sunsets finite,
Easily counted upon either hand)
I do so resigned to the certainty
That this missive shall remain unanswered,
Most likely forever unread--but tell me, dear lady
To whom else would I address this correspondence,
For who else is more likely to understand
That love and hate are not opposite poles,
But are as the hissing, slathering jaws
Of that dreadful two-headed snake,
Which, if not separated by a prudent interval,
Will consume the other and then itself.
I have lived and learned this quite well
(At the hands of teachers and other lesser men)
And pondered other questions of fatality and fidelity,
Surmising that rings of gold and fetters of iron
Are neither necessary nor sufficient.

If I have not come to peace with my fortune, distant soul mate,
I have at least procured a measure of acquiescence,
For I have known love and hate and death,
Known them thoroughly enough to comprehend
That they are not wholly separate entities,
And that they will often appear at one’s door
Wearing the formal attire of one of the others.
I have burned, brightly if not in illumination,
And now I am spent, a charred celestial body
Rotating ever more slowly
Until a final, silent, unobserved obsolescence,
For after we have loved profoundly if not well,
What is left to us but the sepulcher?

I remain faithfully yours,

Any gift which is lauded may become a curse
If it denies one office, or lightens the purse.
Though I once drank deep of the sweetness of favor,
My visions bear the taint of unpleasant flavor.
I have become, it seems, an inconvenience
Not to be moved aside with relative lenience,
But to be swatted roughly like some irksome fly,
To be excised as a nagging, untimely sty
An irritant which confounds and clouds one’s vision.
I stand before you, an object of derision,
A dustbin to collect your calumny and scorn
(Paraded in the roughest cloth, hair rudely shorn)
Likened to that which falls from a donkey’s behind.
No matter, then—one finds that young thoughts in an old mind
Foment suspicion rather than learned debate,
(Though I would likely decline to participate)
The upshot being unpleasant realities.
So shake your fists, and mouth your banalities,
Yoke me with the verdict of trial by fire.
You shall, soon enough, do your dance with the pyre.

When that day of reckoning comes
(Hopefully, some light years distant,
As I like anyone else, cling stubbornly if not desperately
To this process of plodding aimlessly along)
Where the book of myself is closed, I have asked,
Though how I plan to enforce the wish remains an open question,
That I am not Cadillac-carted to some incongruous green space
Where some dark-clad and stiff-collared stranger
Bounces pebble-laden soil onto the top of my bedding for the ages.
Much better,  at least to my way of thinking,
That the remnants of my essentials
Are strewn upon some cold Adirondack lake,
Or perhaps if its current residents
Are sympathetic and not particularly litigious,
The backyard of my childhood home
(I have not fleshed out that particular portion of the equation,
As I, like most people, am much less emphatic about my do’s
Than I am concerning my don’ts and won’ts.)

On the odd occasion, I am visited by a curious dream
Concerning my departure from this particular plane;
There is a fire, though not some vast, heroic Viking pyre,
(Even my reveries have a certain reserve about them)
But something less prepossessing,
Like some small pile of leaves,
Such as my father burned when I was a young boy,
And a black-suited cleric stands before the flames,
His face only somewhat familiar, yet still comforting
(A distant uncle or favorite teacher, perhaps)
And he litters the embers with the residue of my corporeal self
With words absolving the folly of my acts of commission
(The stumbling footfalls of the blind; throw them on the fire)
The shortsightedness of my omissions,
(Boorishness of children and fools; throw them on the fire)
The sum of my shortcomings and misadventures
(Victims of our angels and gods; throw them on the fire)
And the trails of smoke drift aimlessly upward,
Toward birds who cackle and twitter unconsciously,
Oblivious to all the machinations below.

The historical marker, doubtless wearily press-stamped
By some inmate at Attica or Dannemora,
Refers to the relic as St. Leger’s Tower,
Though those old-timers who have not died off or fled south
Prefer the name “Barry’s Folly”,
As the general in quesiton was reported to have claimed
That it would stand, like Empire itself,
***** and unsullied for a dozen centuries,
Indeed several hundred years beyond as well.
All that lingers now is the main of its foundation,
Topped with no more than an uneven row or two of brick,
Sitting squat and forlorn like some drowsy and unconcerned sentry
Standing guard for the nearby entrance
To an old, long since abandoned cemetery
Where the stones of the war dead and early settlers
Have been washed clean of names, dates, and epitaphs
By the tainted, corrosive rains
Which once rolled in from Gary, Flint and Hamtramck,
And further up the hill, a weathered and peeling billboard
Invites those unwitting travelers who have wandered off the Thruway
To experience the magic of Herkimer Diamonds.

And so you have come to this immutability,
Delivered by those forces, those fates
(Unseen, perhaps things of our own making,
Unshakeable in any analysis)
Complicit in our preordained rest and rust,
That which made that Ephesian,
Ruefully reading the eternal river
To see there was some eddy, some oxbow
Predestined as the end to his temporary journey,
Deposit his scroll in the great temple,
And such for all of us, then,
The marble chiseled and graven,
Final but for a few finishing touches,
The fate of all men, fated to dust yet invulvnerable,
Shadows brought to the precipice
Of such things which are inescapable
Yet chosen by us nonetheless.

Well, the maps were quite ghastly, you know;
We’d assumed the Frogs would have a pleasure cruise,
All baguettes and brioche, up the straits.
We’d no idea the Turks had dug in as they did,
As the spooks and their charts
Revealed sheer cliffs,
Harmless as Dover.
Nor did we fare much better on dry land,
The topographical atlases we had in the field
Might have been compiled by Mercator himself.
The Turks fought quite well;
One gives them a measure of credit for that, one supposes.
Frankly, we’d have been better served
If we’d just waited for the de rigueur internecine slaughter,
What with the ease they’d hacked each other to bits
Over some ancient family squabble or inconsequential tribal matter
(Can you imagine civilized peoples
Fighting to the death over such trivia?)
I suppose such cruelty and boorishness
Should have not been surprising.
They wouldn’t take prisoners, you know;
Just shot our boys *****-nilly,
With no regard whatsoever to honor or military convention,
Though it should have been no surprise
That the swarthy ******* would not play by the rules.

He was holding court between sets at the Texas Bar
(Not his usual stomping grounds, necessarily,
But the owner was a decent guy whose checks were good,
And a Wednesday night gig pretty much found money)
Going slow and easy with a scotch and soda of uncertain labels,
Having come to rest at that station where, as he sighs it,
Wallet tells me I prefer well drinks to the top shelf.
He’d been, if not a name name, at least recognizable
(He has posters showing him sharing the bill with the heavies,
Redding and Bo Diddley and Jackie Wilson,
Smaller font for sure, but there nonetheless)
Getting a little air play,
Even outside of niche Detroit and Chicago stations,
And one song which peaked
All the waaaaay up at seventy-eight on the chart.
Lotta uncertain buses and club owners
Who never quite caught me later,
He muses, a touch ruefully, but he finds some solace
(Indeed, he has become quite adept
At finding comfort where he can)
But, if he has not exactly prospered, he has carried on carryin’ on,
Getting steady work here or Chicago or Gary,
The odd campus Motown nostalgia gig in Lansing or Ann Arbor,
Even six or eight weeks in Florida
(Nice to be the young guy in the room for once, he all but cackles)
Covering the tunes the headliners sang in his day,
And perhaps one could say he is a Fleance or Percival,
Plodding onward from the wreckage of great man all around him,
But such contemplation is a luxury,
The province of lake houses and brokerage accounts,
Though he is fond of holding his thumb and forefinger
Spread apart just so,
And telling the listener I was this close to hittin’ it big,
Invariably following that assertion with a chuckle,
‘Course, that might not be measured to scale.

So we have remained,
With the constancy of stubborn and vestigial elms,
Through any number of moons and Junes,
Equally as many improbable springtimes,
Madnesses of petunias and potholes,
But with a fidelity relatively unstrained, untested,
Our travails being minor things,
Trivial as opposed to titanic,
Our hithers and yons no more
Than the muted triumph of simply carrying on
And we could ask, one supposes
Have we truly loved, then?
Such questions are best left to poets and philosophers
(Grandiloquent fools with time and inclination
For such lines of inquiry)
And though the panorama of our time together
Will be an unprepossessing thing,
No strings heating up and crescendoing
As the camera pans wide in a sweeping crane shot
Of great craggy valleys, the zenith of white-capped peaks
(The lumpy moraines of our landscape,
Merely bits of sediment moved half-heartedly by the odd glacier,
Providing rather uninspiring visuals)
We suspect, no we know, know in such a way
That it is as unremarkable as blinking an eye
Or making some unconscious sound
Which annoys yet endears in the same moment,
That we would be all, give all,
Unreservedly and unhesitatingly immolating
Any thought or concept of self in service of the other,
And the notion that all of that occurs
Away from the watchful eye of director or camera
Does not diminish it in the least.

You see,

It's quite simple;

Fate will always *****-slap

Those who just can't leave well enough

Alone.

It is decommissioned, off-limits, outright verboten,
Yet is traversed nonetheless,
Its patrons a mix of the pruriently curious,
The thrill-seeker, the merely woebegone.
As they have time on their side,
The hub-bub of school buses and suburban commuters
No concern as they navigate the buckled and broken asphalt
(The conflagration underneath changing the topography
Daily, sometimes even hourly)
They will stop to paint some phrase, some bon mot
On this roadway-***-canvas:
Mostly the narcissistic monologue we bray at the universe,
The assertion that we were here, are here,
And (though it is plaintive yet unspoken) that we always may be,
Augmented with light hearted double entendres
And grim, hectoring Biblical quotations,
While not far away, the re-directed two lanes of blacktop
Carry onward, indifferently proceeding on its way
Through these stolidly scruffy old anthracite towns,
Their landscapes and the ground beneath them
Quiet as the sepulcher, the vagaries of their fates above the sod,
Stalking them impassively yet implacably.

(for Thom Hickey)

It is, one supposes, a business establishment, if just barely
Though more than one would-be shopper,
Having been squeezed against some ancient china cabinet
Or banging an unsuspecting knee
Against some camouflaged table leg,
Has opined that it as if four walls and a low-slung ceiling
Had suddenly thrown themselves about a yard sale,
In any case the place being filled with such things
Which are, if by no means useless bric-a-brac,
Rendered unremarkable, even somewhat undesirable
By their very familiarity,
And in the midst of this rabbit warren of commerce
(Holding an ancient clarinet in his left hand,
Wand-like, a bemused Prospero considering its pros and cons)
Is the proprietor of the shop,
And he notes that you have stopped
In front of some sixties flying-saucer-***-willow-tree lamp,
And he says Ah, well let me tell you something about that,
Holding forth on its manufacturer,
The curious backstory of its design,
And how he came in possession of several other pieces
At the same time, and of course they have their own tales as well,
And you can't help how this confusion of things of former lives
Has suddenly taken on a certain light, a glow even,
The illumination of shared memory,
The recollection of why such things hold a place
In our pasts and presents, and after you exit
You give in to the musing that there were some items
You did not give due consideration,
Which may necessitate a return trip.

April is the cruelest month, so some poet said,
Likely vexed to the breaking point by its coquettish nature,
Alternately promising and withdrawing
Sweetness of the warm sun, rustling green blankets of leaves,
The flirtatious, intoxicating perfume
Of the violet and lily of the valley.
For all its coy fluttering of eyelids,
April may delay but never denies,
Yielding its lover’s bounty and then some
To suitors ardent and otherwise.
Its forerunner of two moons prior promises no such delights,
No flora-and-fauna maidenhood as recompense for devotion;
It is the time of purification, of the purge,
A time where light is at a premium,
Often coveted but rarely apprehended, its fleeting manifestations Matters of obfuscation as opposed to illumination,
Soon to be supplanted by fierce meteorological harpies
Short on subtlety but long on effectiveness,
Carrying away those not equipped to resist its peculiar charms
(The too-early runt calf, the aged and nearly-blind collie
Trotting to an unfamiliar field or wood lot,
The newly-solo grandparent acquiescing to the song of the abyss),
The unfortunates consigned to some crypt
Or undisturbed corner of barn or basement,
Proper farewells set aside for some indeterminate time
When it is feasible to block out the knowledge
That the springtime is promised to no man or beast,
Especially at such an interval
Where so little seems to separate one from the other.

My worthy adversaries across the dais would have you believe
That, having fashioned mankind in His own image
And, what’s more, sacrificed His own son
For the sole purpose of its collective salvation,
Our Maker would, in effect,
Simply shrug his shoulders and send it on its merry way.
Free to fall, those arguing the negative will tell you.
Ah, but there’s more than that: not only do they insist
That The Creator has for all intents and purposes abandoned us,
But has allowed an equally powerful and diametrically opposed force
To set up shop on his watch.  
I would ask them--what drabble of Scripture,
What logical premise would you cite to support such madness?

But surely, my learned opponents would purr,
(Oh, every bit as sly as devils themselves!)
You would not deny the existence of evil in this world.  
Morons! Can it somehow be possible
That you are completely ignorant of the work of Augustine?  
Tell me, after you finish your warm milk
And button up your snuggly jammies,
When you flick off the light switch, does the dark come out?
Or is your grasp of physics and philosophy equally inadequate?

I suppose, in a last, desperate attempt to buttress their arguments,
The supporters of the opposite position
Will contend my presence in this lecture hall
Is necessary and sufficient  for their argument to carry the day.
I categorically deny the supposition!
I do not exist, nor can I!  
Hang your forensic skills on that,
You bunch of ******* saintly *******.

There were
children, sweethearts
shared Moscows, Odessas;
I told myself Ready, aim but
not fire.

Tanks roll
implacably;
Radio Free Europe
plays “On Broadway”, ode to pawnshops,
pimps, ******.

You’d had just enough change to pick it up at the Hall’s gift shop,

As you’d ate sparsely at the down-on-its luck diner

Where the bus had stopped halfway or so through the trip out

(Just as well, given the place’s obvious indifference

To culinary innovation and cleanliness)

And you’d all but sprinted with it

From the cashier straight o the batting cage next door,

Inadvertently ending up in line for the machine

Which threw curveballs

(The kids ahead of you older, most likely high school players

Who made but weak contact with the pitches,

A dream dying a little with each weak tapper and foul-back)

And you went through a handful of futile swings

Before the final pitch came out of the machine,

Spinning oddly and refusing to break toward the plate,

Hitting you in the back with a dull, rubbery thud,

And your teacher, thick-middle man

Who had played a couple seasons in the Indians farm system,

Where he had faced Juan Pizarro (Son, his hook looked

Like it was coming in from first base)

Chuckled softly as he rubbed your back,

Saying It’s like I told you, kid,

This is a hard game.

There is no question of her cycling up the hill;
She has no upscale concoction
Of carbon-fiber frame and painstakingly engineered gear-ratios.
Her bike is a single-speed Schwinn
Of as uncertain vintage
As the woman herself,
And she walks it,
An occasional spoke missing,
The paint chipped here and there,
Up where she once climbed
In a ’54 Chrysler convertible
Next to the man
She later visited at the TB sanitorium
Which once sat at the top of the street,
Two sons giggling and bickering
In the back seat
(The boys long since gone,
Having fled the snow and the downsizing
For other climes)
But now she peddles her bike
Around Massey and State Streets for a bit
Before she coasts back downhill,
And sometimes drivers glare
At her (she is, to be fair
Something of an impediment to traffic)
And carfuls of kids or soldiers in convoys
Headed up to Fort Drum
Will heckle her--Hey, lady!
The Tour De France was last month!
She no longer has any interest in
The stares or commentary;
She is focused on the bottom of the hill.

There are notions which prove impervious
To the forces of nature, the whims of politicians and philosophers
Perhaps even, in the final analysis, to time itself.  
Tell me, what epiphany is realized
Through the parsing of prepositions from the Hebrew or Latin,
Why should we hoot and shake our fists in some battle to the death
Over some microtonal discord lurking behind a bassoon?
What is revealed in the lolling gait of the harlequinesque priest
Promenading down the aisle, incense burner clanking in time?
Observe, rather, the ancient, scarf-clad women among the muzhiks,
Bent as if entreating the very ground itself,
As they feel, smell, taste the soil,
Unearthing what peasants and saints
Believe to be the fingerprints of God,
And what is revealed to them in that rudimentary yet holy act
Is that which brings down Czar and prime minister,
That which exposes the proclamations and directives of commissars
As supercilious cant, the howling of a lost child into the wind.

I am often asked, as the inn goes quiet
Where is the dignity in a life anchored
By the brothel, the public house’s riot.
I note—politely—the base of the tankard
Provides a grand, if somewhat modulated,
Viewing of the so-called unexamined life,
A happy one not discombobulated
By the constant nattering of priest or wife.
It’s not—far from it!—that my heart is not stirred
By valiant men performing their valiant deeds,
But the urge to take up arms remains deterred
By the image of a knight face down in weeds,
And my heart’s overruled by the misgiving
That the stuff of legend precludes the living.

(for dana rushin)

Well, you’ve got have that moon-June thing;
Hard-coded into our DNA, after all,
But if you stop there and say Well, here it is,
You’re just playin’ chopsticks instead of concertos,
Or parsing out Monk on a Fisher-Price piano.
Story’s gotta live and breathe, see,
Just like you and me, got to have a heartbeat,
And if the tale’s told right, done truly,
Well, it’s a light goin’ on for everybody,
Be it little girls (getting the giggles
Or bein’ all mock-stern with you,
Finding a way to work it in some double-dutch rhyme)
Or old-timers, gray-haired and coke-bottle glasses,
Some of them all but blind, leaning on their canes
(But lightly, gracefully, like old soft-shoe men)
And one of them likely to chuckle softly,
And say Yessir, that’s how it is.
You tell it now, son—story’s big as a house,
Big as the whole **** universe.

i.

I smile, sometimes, thinking of how I liked the old Byrds tunes
Back in my seminary days, for I have come to know
(Mostly by these cucumbers, hostas, and ****** dandelions)
That there is very much a season for all things,
For our run in this plane is strictly proscribed,
And having the end date somewhat fixed
A blessing from God, in fact,
For it makes one focus on those things
That are truly meaningful,
To appreciate when there is need to make fine gradations
(For if you plant the peas and parsley just a couple of days,
Indeed mere hours too early, an unexpectedly still and cold night
May steal all of your labors, leaving you with tiny, lifeless shoots
Slumped over the lip of a clay ***)
And when not to waste sound and fury, as it were,
Over the most trifling of things;
For, when the final ascertainment is made, it will not be as an audit,
(Saint Peter himself staring over his glasses
As he punches the calculator,
Clucking as he reviews the number of bottoms in the pews,
The weight of the collection plate,
The state of the cement or flagstone
Leading to the stairs of the cathedral),
But an over-long movie, the seemingly most insignificant of scenes
Screened several times (if it please God) for your viewing pleasure.

ii.

For I have sinned, yes, most exceedingly,
Dear Saints and My Lord,
In lack of thought and foresight, in the expedient holding
Of my tongue, in the unthinking failure to act.
Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea maxima culpa.
Blessed ******, I cannot,
In the self-serving pride of my guilt,
Ask you to pray for my soul,
But I would pray that, perhaps,
I will have had the briefest of moments
Where I was not totally unworthy.

iii.

I was, at one time, a different lifetime to me now
Part of the Bishop’s diocesan staff in Boston,
Great city of pristine churches
Surrounded by blooms of all the colors He could bring
And shanty Irish rough as the day the boat landed
(One size Fitz all, the joke was back in those days)  
I was more functionary than rising star in the hierarchy,
Nicknamed “The Bishop’s Travel Agent”,
My function was to find a place for those priests
Who had become , in the vernacular, “troublesome”,
Sending priests whose comforting
Of the younger females among his flock
Strayed over the line of purely spiritual
To some remote Aroostook village
Or, if such problems ran more to altar boys,
Some convent in the Berkshires.
We were, so I told myself, being judicious,
And all in the best interests of the Church.
One time we were wrong, horribly wrong;
There was a suicide, whispers,
Letters which should have been burned.
Many of my colleagues complained, bitterly,
That I had been made
An unworthy scapegoat for the Bishop,
But I knew in my soul such an assertion
Was merely halfway correct.

iv.

Yet perhaps I will—no, indeed, I must—be saved,
For our Lord is good, and Christ shall have mercy,
And exchange this long walk through foolishness and vanity
With life everlasting, even for those of us
Who have stumbled along clumsily,
Unthinkingly, unheedingly upon Your creation.
Kyrie, eleison;
Christe, eleison;
Kyrie, eleison.

v.


It is good, then; the days have been dry
And unusually warm, the nights cool
Yet without the danger of frost.
The beans and tomatoes should thrive,
And the sunflowers should grow
Well… like sunflowers, one would surmise.
As for myself, the good days
Are examples of His grace,
The bad ones no more than I can bear,
And the doctors (mere men, after all)
Minister to me as well as men can.
I have, blessedly, no trepidation
As relates to the close of my small one-act play
On this patch of earth.  
Indeed, I am often cheered
That I have seen small green shoots
Rising from the years of fallen leaves
Which I have raked up and dumped upon the brush lot
Between the church itself
And the old graveyard at the rear of the property.

It’s a story of love at first sight, or at least by the third drink
You said You’re a true gentleman ‘fore you puked in the sink.
You promised you would love me true, that I was your white knight
But now you’re sleepin’ in a different castle every night.

You left me several subtle hints that you had finally gone
Like scatterin’ my boxers and my Trojans on the lawn.
It’s a quick trip from I love you to Goodbye, and that’s that.
It seems to me you’ve drowned your torch, so I’ll just drown your cat.

The first night we spent together, hell, it was like a dream
And seein’ you in dawn’s first light didn’t make me scream.
You allowed that you could learn to like me quite a bit
Next mornin’ in my driveway there’s two U-Hauls with your ****.

Once I’d put my arms around you and whisper Mornin', hon.
Now if I woke up next to you, I’d just reach for my gun.
It’s a quick trip from I love you to Goodbye, and that’s that.
It seems to me you’ve drowned your torch, so I’ll just drown your cat.

It took only a day or two for the cracks to appear
You made some unkind comments about my Ward Burton mirror.
And you told me to turn off Johnny Cash after a song or two
The Man in Black’s in Heaven, but there ain’t no room for you.

Well, you’ve heard tell of Mr. Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street
Compared to a shrew like you ol’ Freddy’s kinda sweet.
It’s a quick trip from I love you to Goodbye, and that’s that.
It seems to me you’ve drowned your torch, so I’ll just drown your cat.

Now I see you at the Dew Drop Inn with this evening’s Mr. Right
Just one more stupid ******* screwin’ up his life tonight
‘Cause I’m sure the hell you put me through will be on tap for him
I hope that he’ll get over you, and I hope your cat can swim.

I ain’t doin’ no name callin, won’t call you ***** or hag
I’m just carryin ol’ **** In Boots inside this burlap bag
It’s a quick trip from I love you to Goodbye, and that’s that.
It seems to me you’ve drowned your torch, so I’ll just drown your cat.

(In which there is a boy, a man, and a curious box.)

I can’t imagine what the muzhiks would have thought of this.
They’d probably have me burned
The boy is not listening to the man;
He is, in a mixture of fear, wonder,
And no small measure of puzzlement,
Utterly transfixed by the box
Which sits between him and the man,
Who is fluttering his hands in some pantomime of supplication
Nearly yet never quite touching the strange box
Which sprouts two pieces of wire,
One pointing straight up toward God,
The other looped like a noose.
The man manipulates his fingers in delicate movements,
As if he was playing a pianissimo movement on a piano
Whose keyboard is embedded somewhere in the very air itself,
But the sounds… vaguely familiar, to be sure:
He hears the barking of a small dog, perhaps,
Or something much like the faraway crow of a rooster
Filtered through the half-tones of the last moments of a dream,
Yet not quite of this world or this life,
And, unconsciously, for his mother is of the old peasant stock,
The boy crosses himself, and hears himself say
In a voice not quite his own,
That surely it requires a miracle or some sort of magic
To make such a wonder as this machine.
The man stops his gesturing for a moment to look at the boy,
And then he bursts out laughing.
I didn’t figure out how it works so I could build this;
I built it so I could figure out how it works.

When you appear (as we all shall, no doubt)
Before the oldest judge in the world,
Take care to notice his appearance;
You’ll see that his robe is frayed about the collar,
And that the cuffs, though expertly repaired,
Are worn and threadbare,
For he has been upon the bench for what seems eons,
(Case files scattered about heedlessly, his gavel mislaid)
And though you beseech him
With your borrowed chants and learned pleadings,
It is unlikely that he shall do anymore than look up imperceptibly
Dismissing you with a short, disdainful wave of his hand,
For your case is like a thousand others,
And your entreaties and supplications
No longer interest him.

I can understand, then, you would find such thoughts
Sobering, Indeed disconcerting;
It is not necessarily pleasant to realize
That we are but as toy boats which,
Once pushed away from shore by some small boy
Soon distracted by other, shinier trinkets,
Drift aimlessly across a pond
Which offers neither shelter nor safe harbor.
We are, then, all on our own,
Misbegotten creatures linked together
By nothing more noble of purpose
Than our own self-interest;
Oh, do not misunderstand me,
For I am not advocating (Heaven forbid!)
Some wholesale violation of commandments:
The spectre of patricide,
The hair-trigger roiling of the blood brought to bear
By the untrustworthy business partner, the faithless lover.  
I merely suggest it is wise to remember
That as we float along the stream of this life
(It being rank and  befouled, chock-a-block
With garbage, broken bottles, discarded condoms)
No hand is on the tiller save our own.  
But enough of this dark and dour philosophy!
Let us finish our draughts and return to our rooms,
There to sleep the sleep of the just,
During this long winter’s night
Which seems all but without end.

She played, as I remember, quite well,
Her talent settling into some interval
Between “capable” and “professional,”
A knack which would have allowed her
To play coffeehouses at some middling state school,
Or accompany some infant’s lilting lullaby,
But she’d set up shop, as it were,
In rather unusual and commercially unpromising spots:
Less-traveled side streets, the odd dead-end and cul-de-sac,
Even the occasional unpaved byway
(I’d first encountered her, during my walking, brooding stage
On a hilly road just outside the village,
At a point where the tarmac took
An unplanned two-hundred-foot vacation.)
She’d set up as if she expected a crowd,
Case open like two upward palms to receive a cascade of change,
And she performed songs designed to please the masses:
Beatles hits, folk ditties our parents sang to us as little ‘uns
For which I rewarded her with a dime here, a quarter there,
And, once and once only,
A fiver I’d snuck out of my father’s wallet
(He took it out of my hide, and then some)

There had been no romance, per se;
I’d sat close to her, hand on a Levi-ed knee,
And there was the odd kiss, as much brotherly as anything else,
But there were understood limits, never spoken of,
As there was something in her bearing, her posture, her very essence
Which said This is what is, what shall be, and what only ever can be.
A reticence which exercised dominion over all things
(The whys and wherefores over her very presence an Exhibit A;
She said she lived over in Wilcox, but she had no car, no bike,
And that particular irritant in the highway
A good six miles off as the crow flies)
So there was little now, and even less could be,
As it was my final summer of a single, uncomplicated home address,
Being bound elsewhere for the first
In a series of institutions of higher education,
So there was no ever after, happily or otherwise.
I’d never heard what happened to her after that,
Where she may have gone, what may have become of her,
Unaware of any tragic event engendering heart-rendering fiction,
But midway through my freshman year, one of the town newsletters
(Mimoegraphed back-and-front missives
Which my mother sent religiously)
Noted that the last unpaved road in the township
Had  finally been blacktopped,
Which I celebrated, in a fashion,
With a ****** heroic in intent and scope
Ending, as such things often do,
In a near-compulsive fit of weeping,
And my fellow revelers asked Man, what the hell has gotten into you?
And I suspect it was being bereft of an answer
Which had set me off in the first place.

You learn, and generally to your discontent
That wishes and horses have much in common
Each likely to prove less than obliging
To take to the bit and bridle
No matter how fine the metal and leather may appear
And should the procurer demur,
He may find there are provisos and caveats
Governing that which can’t be recanted
Returns and refunds being frowned upon
As such items, being one of a kind,
Custom accoutrements which only one can don
And regrettably one is apt to find
That you may not have found a perfect fit
And once it breaks, you’ll find you bought it.

The acquisition of a son
With an adequate corporeality, albeit with certain caveats,
Certain limitations in terms of progeny and posterity,
Had awaken something in the old man,
Certain forces leading him to the altar
And, subsequently, to the nursery once more
(A second son, brought to bear in the established manner.
With a minimum of drama and fanfare.)
The child was loved, in a rudimentary fashion;
While his flesh-and-blood bona fides were beyond question,
He was a consumer, a thing of constant need
More akin to a hardship than his celebrated half-sibling,
Whose command of the spotlight
Served as a gravitational pull for parental affections.

The old man passed on after a spell,
Hanging on long enough for his second son
To stumble onto the precipice of adulthood
(His mother had hot-footed it out
Almost immediately after the burial,
Choosing to stage-mother her feted stepchild)
Though his fatherly wisdom
Was limited to matters of his craft, his business,
Which was left to the young man, though grudgingly at that,
As a sop, a means of getting shet of two unwanted encumbrances.
He’d proved to have much of the old man’s gift,
Whittling and carving puppets and toys and dolls
(Though with a certain grim fury making it evident to all
That the work was not a labor of love)
Rarely stopping to speak to or even acknowledge his clientele,
Except if one of them happened to repeat the time-worn chestnut
That the toy chooses the child, in which case he laughed harshly,
All but barking It’s the purse that closes the deal, not the ****,
And then he would return to carving some doll or marionette,
Which would always seem to have a certain wan look
Around the corners of the eyes, the edge of the lips,
The look of a child’s toy equipped with the foreknowledge
That it was destined for the back of some closet shelf,
The bottom of some attic-bound chest.

What sins have we committed, what unpardonable crime
To have brought such desolation to this once fertile plain?
(The only time we’ve ever known has been this burlap time.)

We receive no epiphanies, no glimpse of the sublime;
Just great black walls of dust and grime again and yet again.
What sins have we committed, what unpardonable crime?

The wind and dirt makes madness of our days and our nighttime
For reasons that our governors and preachers can’t explain.
(The only time we’ve ever known has been this burlap time.)

We’ve topped the dead with crosses, covered dead stock with lime.
From whom should we seek redress,to whom do we complain?
What sins have we committed, what unpardonable crime?

And so we’re left this Sisyphean peak to try and climb;
There’s no rainfall to save the crops, no cash to purchase grain
(The only time we’ve ever known has been this burlap time.)

We’ve lost interest in the answers, the reason or the rhyme;
God has, it seems, forsaken us, has forsaken the rain
What sins have we committed, what unpardonable crime?
(The only time we’ve ever known has been this burlap time.)

Step lively, now, as good news is not of a mind
To wait upon delay and dithering
Nor to pay any heed to your day's peculiar grace
The ticket for your promised land
Is one-way only, and you need to clutch it
For all you are worth, and travel light;
If it don't fit in a paper sack, you don't need to take it along,
No need for any suitcase
Packed with your yesterdays, your Yes, ma'am,
Your No, sir, your Might I have my pay, sir?
Because your satin-shoes, lose-your-blues,
Done-paid your- dues day comes just once
And once only, so you best move with some dispatch, child.

I have often wondered
(Though this one time out of respect for the deceased,
I suppressed the urge to ask the question)
Why in hell preachers never seem to own any old pairs of shoes;
Certainly, they must be cognizant
That the when the Lord brings rain
(Though never when, where, or in the proportion we would like,
His way being not our way and all that *******)
The mud is sure to follow, and yet I have never seen a preacher
Who didn’t approach an open grave in shiny new calfskin loafers.
To say that having a man of the cloth approach
The solemn duty of uniting a man with his Maker
Like he was tip-toeing through a mine field puts a burr up my ***
Is to make understatement ******* near an art form;
I have stipulated in my will that I’m to be buried
Smack-dab in the middle of my cow pasture
(The farm itself, sadly, a bit easier to reach
Once the town—over my strenuous objections, I may add—
Decided it was necessary to pave
My section of the Crow Mountain Road)
So when the time comes for the minister
At the Presbyterian church over in Delhi
To spirit me away from this vale of tears to the arms of Jesus,
Hopefully he’ll do so with good honest cowshit
Splattered on his suit trousers.

Car-di-o-meg-a-ly.
That is, apparently, what old Doc Cathey
Scribbled down on Henry’s death certificate,
Though I suspect he simply picked a page
Out of his medical dictionary
And wrote the first thing that looked plausible.
Given that the man was big as a house and soft as a newborn,
It’s **** near a miracle he lived as long as he did,
And he sure as hell didn’t do anything for his longevity
By taking on the cares and worries of every loser and fool
Like they were so many stray kittens.
For myself, I learned long ago where value lies:
You come up to my place,
I can show you an Ithaca Double Shotgun from the 20s
With the blue still on the barrels,
Worth **** near a thousand dollars now,
And Liberty Head ten-dollar coins
That you’d swear were freshly minted.
Now that, my friend, is the kind of thing
Which appreciates over the years,
And if I die alone and unmourned,
Well, that’s pretty much how I came in,
So I’m more or less ahead of the game.
What killed Henry? Well, I’m no M.D, praise God,
But I figure it was his failure to take into account
That saintliness doesn’t pay off
Until a body’s gone and become past tense.

It makes sense that it should end in this way;
No fingers to point, appeals to hear.
(The critics have spoken, we’ll close the play.)

Tell the dour old priest to go away,
I’ve no time left for repentance and fear;
It makes sense that it should end in this way.

There’s no final role I need to portray
As my whos and whys are perfectly clear.
(The critics have spoken, we’ll close the play.)

No fretting about a life gone astray;
I plotted the course which I chose to steer.
It makes sense that it should end in this way.

Let others live to fight another day;
I’m at peace with all that which brought me here.
It makes sense that it should end in this way.
(The critics have spoken, we’ll close the play.)

Above the Arctic Circle, where the Laplanders dwell,
A place where sunlight never melts the tundra’s icy shell
And Beelzebub himself eschews, strongly preferring Hell.
Yet evil is no stranger here
Due to a beast the natives fear:
The dragon of Parikkala.

The provincial church was burgled, a most confounding case
Church poor boxes relieved of gold and scattered ‘round the place
The cleric who resided there was gone without a trace.
‘Twas nothing the good priest would do
The evidence all pointed to
The dragon of Parikkala.

The sheriff was a bruiser by the name Jyl Purrakut
Rumored to be the owner of a house of ill repute
Such assertions (quite naturally) he’d angrily dispute:
Not down to me, he’d all but hiss,
You know who is to blame for this
The dragon of Parikkala.

Banker Aric Toskala charged outlandish interest rates,
And those who did not pay on time met most unhappy fates,
Tossed rudely from their homes and forced to sleep on sewer grates
Confronted, Aric explained why
It seems his brain was addled by
The dragon of Parikkala.

Young Jana Makkarainen, from a fine family in town
Was victimized unknowingly, her life turned upside-down
Resulting in a swelling underneath her simple gown.
My maidenhood, the girl would cry
Was cruelly stolen from me by
The dragon of Parikkala.

In this cold, humble northern burgh, sin is the soup du jour
Although the town folk, one and all, are wholly chaste and pure
And so a host of gloomy fates they stoically endure
Yet they are blameless in the least
The fault lies wholly with the beast
The dragon of Parikkala.

Ain't much

separatin'

junkies and geniuses.

Still, dude hit pavement right on the

downbeat.

She is lying on her side, propped up on one elbow
(Her visits are infrequent, always unannounced,
But welcome all the same, more or less)
Affecting a smile which is as adorable as it is inscrutable,
Abed with but not quite next to me,
As she insists on a bundling board between us
(Not due to any chaste modesty on her part, God knows,
But, as she says in her best Blossom Dearie sing-song,
I don’t bestow my favors on just anyone.)
She floats back to this plane of consciousness
From some reverie, some flight of fancy
Her gestures and expressions
Reflect the practiced repertoire of the veteran actress.
Tell me a story, she exhorts
(I have asked her in the past why she never regales me with a tale,
To which she fixes me with a nearly benign
And wholly silent smile.)
And so, having received my marching orders, I proceed.

We knew these guys, I began
(Thus signaling yet another tale
Residing firmly in the once-upon-a-time camp)
Who moved off campus to an old house near Analomink.
A shambling old thing
Which had been added-to and cobbled-together
To the point of an adequate habitability,
(Not that the code inspector could find the place,
Let alone bother with it)
Providing shelter from the elements
As well as the occasionally inconvenient
In loco parentis  of Residential Life,
Leaving them to certain extra-legal proclivities
In the consumption and manufacture of sundry consumables
(The back yard was a warren of copper kettles, tubing, and wire
And the word was they made their own acid in a back bathroom)
Their Merry Prankster-esque weekend excursions
From campus to liquor store to homestead,
Carried out in various states of impairment
And general disrepair of the central nervous system,
Becoming the stuff of legends and let-me-tell-you this tales,
As these were heady, open-ended days,
Mortality being a thing for hundred-level classes
In Norse mythology and cellular biology,
But one time the boys made one of those Saturday night decisions
To combine microdots and cross-country skiing,
And one of them, known to all and sundry as Mad Jack
(Georgia-bred and majoring in academic probation,
His undergraduate career a reverse Sherman’s march northward
From one undistinguished institution to another;
He’d left us shortly thereafter
For some state school just below the Canadian border)
Had failed to show back at the house.
There was frantic, perplexed debate what to do next;
Surely the authorities should be notified,
But that would require an on-site presence of the gendarmerie,
With the subsequent prospect
Of dismissal and possible confinement.
Sunday afternoon came, all whistling freezing rain and wind,
And, just as they were ready to lift the receiver and gravely dial,
Jack burst in the doorway, grinning and chirping madly
About how he’d hooked up with a townie divorcee in Stroudsburg
Dude, you’re full of **** and covered in mud,
One of his roomies stammered,
But Mad Jack simply chattered on, saying that her boyfriend
Had showed up unexpectedly,
And that he’d had to beat it through a window
Standing half-dressed in the cold for a couple of hours
While they’d argued loudly and then equally loudly made up.
Hell of a night, huh boys?,
And then Jack laughed the laugh of the living,
******, isn’t someone gonna get me a beer?

So whatever became of all your friends?, my companion asks me
I shrug my shoulders, empty palms extending upward
As if expecting someone to toss a quarter
Or some other alms my way.
Don’t know for the most part.  Jobs, marriages, life its ownself.
She fixes me with the better part of a pout,
Not much of an answer, is it?
I have very little to say for myself at this point,
Save to offer up another little shrug,
And she says Well, we do what we can with what we have,
And before I can ask her what she means by that,
She has turned away from me and burrowed into the sheets,
All but indistinguishable from the covers themselves.

Proffer
the moon, and stars
As love-tokens; I give
you dirt from near this undisturbed
rose bush.

There’s tale upon tale told
In praise of Washington’s Big Train
And the horsehide deeds of Old Pete
Shall be told often and again.
And honest Matty, the Big Six
Hurl’d more than a gem or two,
But they can’t match The Rainmaker
Tossed by Pittsburgh Dan McGrew.

He’d come by train from Keokuk
As green as a patch of clover;
And though he stood ‘bout six-foot-three
Weighed one-forty or just over.
He sauntered up to the owner
Mister Dreyfus? I’m Dan McGrew,
And I am the damnedest pitcher
That anyone has ever knew.

Old Barney found himself amused
By such a gangly cow-town rube
So the boss man and Freddy Clarke
Thought they’d have some fun with this ****.
There’s Wagner—can you strike him out?
His reply left them in stitches.
I reckon that won’t be too hard;
I should only need three pitches.

Oh, so your fastball is that good?
Skipper Clarke said with a chuckle
Don’t throw one, so Clarke said aghast
Can your curve make Hans’ knees buckle?
He shook his head, Nope, don’t throw that,
As he grinned like a wiseacre.
Got just one pitch, that’s all I need,
And I call it The Rainmaker.

They called the Dutchman to the plate
To knock him back to I-o-way
And he swung early and swung late
But couldn’t put one into play
And Wagner grunted, moaned and screamed
But found he couldn’t hit his stuff;
Whatever this Rainmaker was
It sure was plenty good enough.

He tossed the ball twenty feet high
Just a soft lob with a stiff wrist
And a slight twitch of his fingers
To give it just a little twist
Oh, it might swoop like a falcon
Or drift as softly as a dove
And often it would come down wet
From touching rain clouds up above.

The clubs in the senior circuit
Found themselves flummoxed by this lad:
He no-hit the Bees in Beantown
And drove the Cubs and Redlegs mad.
He hasn’t got enough to hit!
They growled in Brooklyn and Philly,
But his ledger said otherwise;
A gaudy twenty-six and three.

The final day of the season
Found the Buccos and Giants tied,
And no one doubted who would be
Taking the hill for Pittsburgh’s side
For New York, Matty took the hill
And both hurlers were simply great
Not one batter had crossed home plate
As the two clubs completed eight.

The Giants bench hooted at him
That beanpole throws like a girlie!
But he got Doyle to pop up
And then fanned Snodgrass on just three
The next Giant to reach the plate
Was the hard-hitting Red Murray
And John McGraw said Now he’s done,
Red will chase him in a hurry.

But Murray tapped the first pitch foul
And missed the second one outright
The Pittsburgh bench now taunted him
Good morning, good noon and goodnight!
McGrew than tossed one up so high
His catcher swore it clipped a bird
And then Dan strolled right off the mound
As not a soul uttered a word.

The old ballpark is long gone now
And those who toiled the same;
That pitch still lives in infamy
As does the pitcher and the game.
The Bucs have had other heroes
With deeds and feats of great renown
But they still speak of Dan McGrew
And his pitch which never came down.

It was the season when a young man’s fancy
Turns to hunkering down as the land around him locks,
When the envoys of the abyss
Stalk elderly relatives and spindly late-born calves.
He’d happened upon her
At Aubuchon’s Hardware over in Gouverneur,
Picking up bits and bobs to tie up those projects
(The endless caulking, the pitched battles with plaster and lath)
Which had trickled over the spillway of spring and summer
When she more or less materialized,
Like the sudden bloom of some ill-timed crocus
Popping up through fallen leaves.
She’d quizzed him on the merits of levels, cup hooks, and spackles
(The story being she’d leased a gerrymandered third-floor studio
Over the Rent-A-Center on Clinton Street)
They’d chatted in the middle of an aisle for a half-hour or so
When she tittered You know, I could really use a beer about now,
Which became several, then burgers, then his house and bed
Where she settled in for the duration
(She’d had her suitcases in her trunk, and he came to surmise
That an apartment hadn’t been in her plans at all.)
He’d learned about her what little she chose to share:
A nut allergy, a borderline prodigal capacity for whiskey,
Certain boudoir practices and positions,
But her whos, whats and wherefores an admixture
Of carefully chosen quarter-truths and outright fictions;
He’d noticed, inadvertently,
That she had a half-dozen driver’s licenses in her purse,
And she’d been furiously tight-lipped
About where’d she been and come from,
Save one drunken mention of how she’d lived down near Ithaca
Just long enough to stand on the very precipice
Of one of the town’s plethora of gorges
Before deciding not to go headlong over the edge,
‘S no real point, she demurred,
In anything that puts a period on sumpin’.

There was no question of some Snow White happily-ever-after;
She melted away as abruptly as she’d arrived,
Leaving on an implausibly warm late-February day,
A deceit of sunshine and southerly breezes
Which belied the month-plus of hard slog ahead.
He’d cherished no illusions
Of going after her, of tracking her down:
There was small chance she’d given him her real name,
Assuming she knew it at this point,
And she’d changed her cell number in a matter of hours.
He’d done his best to simply chalk it up as a lesson learned
Or a hell of a hell of a story to share with the boys at Nina’s Hotel,
But she had become (or, rather, the notion of
What she might have become,
As all faithless acts require acquiescence to the existence of faith)
A giant hogweed in his very sinews, invasive and implacable,
All but impervious to destruction and subsequent reclamation,
And the throes of her remained as confabulations
In his mind and heart and groin
All through what turned out to be
The longest of long North Country winters,
With flurry and sleet enjoying dominion over new blooms
Until well into the middle of May.

Mom-Mom cleaned and dried me with a kitchen towel,
Like I was a **** butter dish,
Once I popped out ‘round dusk one day
(My mother’s waters broke, then she crossed them)
And she Sunday-school sing-sang all about the light,
But I found this world all whispers and shadows,
(Hazy grays cast by the tenement buildings and church steeples)
People talking around me and maybe about me,
But never to me as such, and at some point it seemed
That only the greasy old Bronx had some sense in its hiss and burble
(It said to me Child,  you cannot carry over me
Until you give yourself to the water fully, unabashedly, unashamedly.)

It was only gonna be a little three-hour jump
‘Till the barometer bottomed out and the Minnow went bump
But you make chocolate milk when life gives you turds
Ain’t nothin’ like Thurston Howell and The Thirds.

When that sightseeing gig hit a bit of a snag
It stopped that tight trio from bein' everyone's bag
Because, Daddy, those cats are just too cool for words
Ain’t nothin’ like Thurston Howell and The Thirds.

TH III drips with sophistication,
But it don’t stop the man from syncopatin'
They trumpet like elephants ‘n twitter like birds
Ain’t nothin’ like Thurston Howell and The Thirds.

It’s Thurston on the keyboards settin’ the pace
Little Buddy on drums, the Captain on bass
Wowin’ folks drinking coconut shaken-and-stirreds
Ain’t nothin’ like Thurston Howell and The Thirds.

They blow sixteenths and eights and do it in style
Cooler than cats on any charted isle
Keep your Goodman Quintets and your Thundering Herds
Ain’t nothin’ like Thurston Howell and The Thirds.

West Center Street was, not so long ago,
A kaleidoscopic flood come three o’clock:
Children in waves of blues, greens, and golds
Set free from Margiotti Elementary,
The more subdued hues of the men
Finishing first shift, at the Montmorenci Mills
All filling the sidewalk
Like some great jigsaw puzzle in continual motion.
Now, the color seems to have left us for greener pastures,
Only the faded, unevenly washed yellow buses
Which take the children
To the central school over in St. Mary’s remain,
Solemn faces forlornly pressed to the windows
As they pass the ungainly and obsolete building
Now dark and silent, squat and hunched-over,
And further on the mill, gates padlocked,R
rusted pieces of chain-link pointing accusatorily downward,
As if the fault for its closing
Lies with us and us alone.

Ah, but it was different, near enough in time
That the memories remain sharp, clear, biting
And they come back in curious bits and pieces,
Like how the Market Basket stayed open twenty-four hours
So the third-shifters could shop for groceries
Without having to short-change themselves on sleep,
The lights in Carter’s Depatment Store,
Bright as Heaven itself to six-year old eyes
Fixed wonderingly on an electric football game
Or a toy bridge of the Enterprise, complete with a transporter
Which made Spock disappear As Seen on TV,
Or how, when we went to the Friday fish-fry at the Kinzua House,
We would stop at every table,
Fathers exchanging greetings, finishing those jokes
Which the noise along the line had left incomplete.

You left, just like everyone else, but not for good, of course;
It was just a temp job to make some money
Until you’d saved up enough to help out your mom.
Once you got settled, you’d come back home
To visit—by Christmas, at the very latest.
We waited outside of the old Rexall for the Trailways bus
That would take you to Erie,
And after the shortest half-hour I’d ever known
We kissed at the curb and embrace
Until the driver intimated with his horn
That we either needed to say goodbye or get a room.
Still, I knew you’d be back, as, after all
There are bonds that time and distance cannot break.


That is all over now, and those dreams
Our parents clung to like rosaries,
Where our lives were better than what they had known
Have moved south to Charlotte, or Houston, or Birmingham;
The Market Basket closed, boarded and de-windowed;
Hell, you can’t buy a single gallon of milk
Between here and Ridgway,
And the Kinzua House long gone as well,
Save for the tattoo place that occupies the space
Where the bar once was,  
And once in a while, though less so every year,
You’ll catch one of the old-timers, frozen in time,
Staring at the smokestacks of the old mill
Ancient obelisks like those
Looming over the graves of the town’s founders
Tucked away in the old section of the cemetery
Up on Bootjack Hill,
The paths chock-full with weeds and briars,
The grass unmown for some three summers now.

*When I got your card, it was postmarked from Denver;
The temp gig hadn’t lasted as long as it was supposed to,
And it’s not like Erie is a boom town, after all.
Still, you were there long enough to meet someone,
Someone, you noted who was looking ahead,
Not over his shoulder all the **** time;
Besides, you noted in your one
And ultimately failed attempt at humor
You remembered how our Geography teacher had once said
That all the land east of the Missisippi,
Even here in the foothills of the Endless Mountains,
Were simply mounds of dirt, old and dead,
While the Rockies were young, vibrant, still shifting and growing.
The card was one of those that come blank on the inside
So you can compose your own witty epithet,
As there are some sentiments so dreadful in their foolishness
That even Hallmark won’t touch them.

After so long we have returned
To reclaim all that we once spurned.
We cannot change what might have been;
Come meet me in the cool green glen.

The prudish reserve of our youth
Revealed to us no golden truth
With words writ large by flaming pen;
Come meet me in the cool green glen.

The modesty of childhood days
Has vanished like the morning’s haze
Let us embrace what we feared then;
Come meet me in the cool green glen.

The path of cautious restraint
Now bears the slightly tarnished taint
That falls upon all mortal men.
Come meet me in the cool green glen.

So all our reticence and fear
Has led us once again to here.
Just in time may not come again;
Come meet me in the cool green glen.

As far as these children are concerned,
It is the sky itself that is ringing;
Not knowing how on a very still day such as this,
The moraines and drumlins
Will play catch with the sound of the bells
Emanating from the tiny old church over in Peruville
(Indeed, they are likely unaware the chapel’s existence)
Nor would they give the matter a second thought,
For they have mounted their bicycles,
Pointing spoke-wheeled steeds
Toward the small single-block downtown of their hamlet,
A journey of epic proportions requiring all due haste
(Though, unlike in our day, there is no long hair
Flying unkempt in the breeze,
As we have imposed the sensibilities of helmets upon them)
Though we know it to be a half-mile, at best,
As the crow flies, covered in three, perhaps four minutes,
But they are not concerned in the least
With the mechanics of straight line measurement,
The vagaries of acoustics, the minutiae of glacial residue,
For they have not accumulated the wisdom of the elders,
The practicalities of the sciences,
The ability to construct elaborate boxes of equations
Or any of the other bright, shining theoretical bracelets
Which fit, albeit a tad snugly, on our wrists and ankles.