Pensees from my mother

I lie in bed
knowing the truth
that those who come visit,
bright faced and light voiced
with words that miss,
that fail to arrive,
I do not hear.
And then to atone
they bend to bestow
a farewell kiss on my brow,
a move to make up
and blur the fact,
I know that they will live on
and I won’t.

Today is also Valentine’s, and so
For the schoolchildren little candy hearts
As we remember from our happy youth
Teenagers like them still, and so they should

Now lessons follow: the four elements
Of Anglo-Saxon poetry, history
Chemistry, a turn in the auto shop:
Yeats’ happy “ceremonies of innocence”

And in the afternoon, Mass, and ashes,
And the cleaners tidy up candy wrappers

                             Instead of corpses

For Thomas V. Morris and William J. Bennett
In gratitude for a wonderful summer at Notre Dame



O, thou dry Jansenist! A night of fire
Left in your pocket like a shopping list
Sitting quietly in a room, will never burn
To set your sere and withered soul alight

And one might wager that your calculator
In brass, for counting brass, touches not the heart
Which has its reasons which the mind knows too
Pensees which never make a night a day

Forgive thou, then, this lettre provinciale
And count it as a friend’s memorial

The last act is tragic
All over forever

The 8th grade act a bit magic
Her name, in fact, was Heather

Since the last act is tragic
It's nothingness, not heaven

But if you see Wendy Darling
Tell her thank you, thank you,
                 thank you


              For 1986 and 87.

For Thomas V. Morris and William J. Bennett
In gratitude for a wonderful summer at Notre Dame

O, thou dry Jansenist! A night of fire
Left in your pocket like a shopping list
Sitting quietly in a room, will never burn
To set your sere and withered soul alight

And one might wager that your calculator
In brass, for counting brass, touches not the heart
Which has its reasons which the mind knows too
Pensees which never make a night a day

Forgive thou, then, this *lettre provincial
And count it as a friend’s *memorial

fear death when it is far
but not when it is near

one must be a man
even if we disappear

Pascal the hidden thinker
his pensees I still revere

vive La France of trenchant thought
musique indeed unto my ear

I love the sound of words
Music even more

The pleasure in the poem
Like a woman yelling More

Life indeed is pain
Hath the rain a father?

I’ve been quite close to insane
The beauty is why I bother

To soldier on and write
On my sturdy new cell phone

With these words I now reach out
From my small apartment all alone.

                      Pensees.