Altar of earth, altar of the palm.
Rite of the nimble elbow–
God resides in the forearm,
Waiting like an owl.
In the lucid gloaming,
In the throttled air of hotels.
In the river of the quiet smile,
Which flows on, on in my
Mind. Like an actual river–
Always where I need to find it,
Never the same substance,
Always the same way.
The shadows ring with noise.
It’s time’s breath, which grows
Louder even as it makes other
Sounds, like my mother’s voice,
Fade into hushing light. No, nothing
Fades. Things are observed
Like shadows. Just as this
Poem is not about fading
But uses ‘fade’ four times,
So our lives use the words
Of things we’re not about
To frame what’s
Four times denied,
Four times forgiven, four times
Larger than what appears real,
Like shadows on a late afternoon
Just past rain, where loneliness puddles
And is stepped over by those on their way.
Belief in one God is still heavy. –Amichai
Faith’s long half life sits in the mind like ice in a drink
At this bar. Slowly diminishing and diluting
What it was meant to enhance. The sun glares
Through a glass of wine like it is upset about wine
In particular. Was God ever happy with wine?
There are few things that lay on a marble bar-top worse
Than dust though the guy from Pennsylvania is
Coming close, leaning into his third whiskey.
Ages of dying and thoughts about dying
Have led to this unpolished drinker,
His eyes marbled with the present.
I walk out into the world and follow my shadow.
My shadow anticipates my every move.
It walks onto private property with impunity,
Patting the dog on the head.
My shadow peeks into open windows
And is sliced like bread by vertical blinds.
My shadow breaks into parked cars, diving through
Windows and emerging uninjured, hands empty.
My shadow enters the shadow of a house
And disappears and comes out a shadow wall
Where there is no door.
My shadow never talks about what it saw in there.
My shadow heads to the cemetery in the morning
While the light is low and its mind is long.
My shadow favors loblolly pines, because even
As tall old trees they are always learning to dance.
My shadow is clumsy too, it trips over gravestones
And slides down the grassy slope as if
Towards death. As if death were a game
That had an end. Or a goal. I turn around
And walk up the hill, dragging my shadow
Over the wet grass and home. It is at these times
My shadow wishes the clouds would come closer.
1
The shapes at the water’s edge
They are not your memories
They are the clothes of the drowned. Forgotten
Because they are no longer needed.
2
After a long walk through life you were tired.
You paused, hand on knee, to rest. It took
A little longer than you thought to catch
Your breath and the trees had been bulldozed
And the spiders had covered you with the silk
Of memory. I came with a single dream’s knife
And cut a slit so you could back out. Later the city
Builders saw the shape standing alone
Like a magnificent cocoon, covered
It with stone and called it a church.
3
Your soul comes to you
Like bees finding their hive
Assembling into shapes almost
Making sense to your eye
Defined by a sweetness it will never taste
And a sting it will not survive.
4
The onomatopoeia of forgot,
Regret. They sound like things
That almost are but aren’t
Solid enough to take steps
Or kneel on stone in prayer.
5
I invalidated a receipt once
By writing a poem on it.
No further exchange was
Necessary or authorized.
Like a cowbird I laid that egg
in the nest of your eyes
And you have raised it
Into something that flies
Away from you, recognizing
Neither of us as its maker.
for Yehuda Amichai
We start to see summer like a tree we are driving by
As we turn from one street to another: a name changes
But what we are doing is the same. The blue spruce
On the corner flips the finger to the season:
It’s all digits and no fists, even its million middle fingers
Are made of more spiky blue fuck-all-of-its.
On the sidewalk the day feels strange,
It’s a day of everyone turning as if they were just stung
By something so small it couldn’t be swatted.
And the hurt look hiding the fear the nest is near.
Every morning the street wakes up and forgets
Everyone who has run over it before but if you walk here at night
You can hear the moans of everyone who could not turn back
Or forgot they ever came this way and don’t know
How they got here, honestly, and that sincerity is what
Seals them into the street’s surface. Regret is parked
On a side street, the windshield reflecting Mars, the gas station
“open” sign, streetlights on passing clouds.
It feels good to walk past all this and know no one
Is waiting at the edge of the dark street that is this line
And my pulse will roar on like so many late night
Truckers on I-81 squinting through exhaustion.
At dusk the house blinks, as if it is just waking up
Though like an owl, its eyes were open all day
And the house only sleeps deeply for about eleven seconds
At a time. Like the owl, the house can rest
Half its brain more fully by closing one eye.
How the house’s dreams must differ from ours–
What would our dreams be like if we could see only
What our left brain or right brain most desired?
Like the house, the owl knows nothing beyond
Containment. Its mouth is small and full of earth.
Like the house, the owl makes its home
Close to the dense trees where the paths
Are too narrow for larger things to bother it,
Blends in with its surroundings. Why do we
Think the owl is wise and the house empty
Of soul? Even its rapidly beating heart, matching
That of a baby, and its ferocity at its nest
Staring down the hawk will not obtain it the favor
Of the God of the woman in the house. The moon
Can be seen through the top loop of the porch swing’s
S-hook from where the shadow crouches, feeling
For a spare key. The owl’s pupils flare, then its lower
eyelids rise as it settles in again; the thing on the porch
has scared the prey from the yard. In one room above
The house begins to dream.
Cicadas worry the heat from the bark.
Who am I to say where you are tonight
When gloaming’s slow folding unbuckles
Into night? The moon, only twenty minutes
From being a vague figure for lust, is now keen
song on a blade and without warning
Crickets and tree frogs push the black train
Forward. We all hear that same sound.
I know I will never completely reach you
And I know I will never leave you.
What that leaves us is the only word the
Screech owl knows before the circumstance
Of light floods across your lips and the sun
stumbles forward at the height of a man’s mind.
Unrecognized local number texting
‘Why did you change to “might come”
this weekend?’ I froze. Daydreaming
Of visiting my father on his 85th birthday.
Death’s number is always local, no
Matter how far away he seems.
And yes, he saw my mother fall,
Perforated inside, and went into the
Woods with eyes half seeing,
To the retired cop’s house for help.
And sometimes I see him there
Among the scrub oak, out
Of options, unsure, trying to lead
Death away from the house
And that was the time I came.
Citizens emerge from bars to high-five the protesters
Who stop short of the monument and line of riot police
On the other side it will be easier to tear down an entire school
So it costs nothing to remove his name from it
Movement trips a security flood light outside my dream
Deer walking silently through a dark backyard
Translations from the English 