GREY SUNDAY, CLOSE TO TWILIGHT

The woman washing my corpse was a stranger
Oi! I yelled, Who are you to be doing this for me?
It wasn't included in the contract. I shan't pay you;
I've no money anyway.” She ignored me
Going about her business with depressing calm
Deploying any number of sponges and rags
Sometimes she just soaped her hands to wash
Some hard to reach crevice, drying them afterwards
With a yellow towel, coarsely woven.
I'd have thought it a simple matter but she was thorough
And careful. I decided to change my tune.
Plainly she was a professional, deserving courtesy
It wasn't her fault that no one had come forward
To perform this last service. How long, I asked
Have you been washing corpses? Did you once plan
A different career? Did you take corpse-washing 101
Back in college? "Little corpse," she said
"Learn how to stop talking."

ENCRYPTED

A slight mistake; instead of a man
A lead statue of a man was sent
It was late and there were no stars
Available for money (love? We had some
But not much and no intent of using it
To purchase starlight). We thought
We remembered so well that darkness
And a few drinks would make no difference.
It is a handsome statue though the features
Are slightly blurred. It cannot walk on water
That it can manage to stay afloat at all,

Vulnerable and desperately flailing,
Is a sort of miracle.

MORE DICKINSON OR LESS

If Emily Dickinson had never been
Or some other walked in her place
Never dreaming she wasn't the right
Miss Emily, her poems, unwritten,
Would -- for a time at least --
Stay together, seeking someone
To midwife them into to the world.
Adjectives and adverbs might be first to leave
They can find work anywhere but always
Are the first to be fired. Then some verbs
Would begin to wander, coming back 
When evening fell but one evening
Not coming back at all. The nouns
Might huddle together and go to sleep
Turning as they slept to stone. At last,
There'd be just small heaps of dashes,
Variously sized, lying by the road
So oddminded folk could wonder
What possible use they might have.

TO THE TUNE

When I was in law school I lived much
Among English majors. Several of them,
At one point or another, told me
That most Emily Dickinson poems
Can be sung to "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
Apparently they felt I needed to know this
Which I did. Still, they might have mentioned
That singing her poems to that tune
Was Miss Dickinson's party piece.
A few glasses of Madeira and she'd
Be up on a table, banjo in hand,
Warbling "Because I cudden stop fer Death
He kinely stopped fer me." After she died
Amherst parties became so much duller.

HAARLEM KIRCHE AGAIN

The painting's staffage are ignoring God
Since He plainly wishes to pass incognito.
As usual, He's inhumanly handsome
And, having forgotten about scale,
Stands 10 or 11 feet tall. Also,
A nimbus hovers over His head.
An officious angel having taken pains
To smuggle it across the border

Disguised as cookware
(Yes? You want to know whether the angel
Or God's nimbus was disguised?

Either.

Both.)
He ducked into the painting to be less noticeable
And took a seat behind a pillar which Saanredam

Put there in case God needed a place

To hide behind for a moment or two. Soon,

The servant sitting beside him will start her story;

It will hold him rapt, even though he wrote it.

SIMPLER

Not being a priority of Heaven
I flicker when the winds are strong
Or God is distracted. Once or twice
Birds and fieldmice have remade me
With hollow bones and feathers,
Leaving out those parts which require
Elaborate machines to properly install.

BERYL

I have two names never used but mine
Unless they've wandered off. Say them;
Let's see who answers.

                              Perhaps the names
Sitting so long in the dark grew a whole man
So they could be his names. He may wonder
Why he was named for my great uncle,
My grandfather Joe's older brother Beryl,
Who called himself Barney. My mother
Said he was tall. She'd have told me more
If I'd ever asked.

PERHAPS

What if God suffers not from the remembrance
Of nails and thirst but a lack of confidence
So that all the praise, all the epithets
Calling Him all-powerful, all-knowing,
All-seeing, all-encompassing, all-good,
All wool and a yard wide, ring hollow
Being desperate attempts to shore up an ego
The collapse of which will drown us all?
We will praise You; we will ask Bach
And Brahms and B. B. King to write You lullabies
Rest a while; do not kill us today.

IN LIEU

Since my father is dead and his father as well
To whom can God look if He needs a job
Or a friend He can trust? I don't own a shop
That makes women's coats and the angels --
For reasons I'm sure they think sufficient --
Never once took me flying. Still, I suppose
I can lend Him a few dollars and listen
If He really needs to talk about His problems.

STAFF

Too busy to properly miss or mourn his daughter

The governor of  Satsuma conjured up a servant

To do it for him. He took her on as an attendant,

Paying her from his own funds. Every evening

He wrote in her diary, imagining as best he could

The tender love between the two women. The servant –

He named her Hatsusebe, after the princess –

Outlived the governor by seventeen months.

Her imaginary ashes rest in the family tomb.

ONCE AGAIN

The cats who patrol the market
Report not seeing you again;
Nothing reminded them of you
Except three leaves and a shadow
That fled as they approached.

SLIVER

After the elevated was torn down, its massive shadow

Remained; the thrifty scrap dealers who hauled away

The girders and tracks and the rumbling echoes lingering

From long-gone trains had no use for them nor wish to find

The markets where ancient shadows were sold

Children used to pop slivers in their mouths and suck

Until their eyes and hair changed color. Some of them

Could ever afterwards curse in the languages of mice

Or understand the terrible dreams of city sparrows.

WHEN SHE SLEEPS

Baba Yaga sleeps outside under a rough blanket
Of remnant shadows pinned together with thorns.
Her own dreams wandered off ages ago
Except for one, of a night filled with snow.
Through that snow, the memory of a cart
Quietly pushes its way.

BACK

The moment comes when the fellow

Who does my life for me when I’m absent

Suddenly leaves and I’m called back

Often right in the middle of a sentence

Whose beginning I haven’t heard.

He’s usually quite careful,

Disturbing things only a bit,

Rearranging our socks,

Placing books on shelves

Upside down or translated

Into languages I don’t know.

He occasionally makes promises

I’ve no intent of keeping but perhaps

He wouldn’t have kept them either.

ANOTHER STORY

The trouble comes when a story decides you’ll do

As a minor character, sweeping aside the narrative

In which you and some drunken nightshift gods

Fled the moon’s wrath in the boat Ra built

To carry the Sun to its final place of rest.

USSHER

When God fell out of love with James Ussher
The sky turned dark for 16 seconds
And the wren, forgetting its inborn song,
Trilled something of its own composition
Making an owl swear lasting devotion;
Moss grow on the east side of a tree;
Consciences were troubled; three dreams
Were canceled and two rerouted.
Then God relented; the relieved Ussher
Went on to become Archbishop of Armagh
And deduce that the world's creation
Took place at about six in the afternoon
Of a pleasant day in early Fall.

PASSOVER

Suppose Passover was meant not
To celebrate our escape but
To mourn the Egyptians, drowned
In the Red Sea? Fat Ahmosis, say, whose death
Made the ribbon sellers weep for days;
Ya-aton, who might have been a priest;
Smard, who'd actually been a priest
Until he used crooked dice to gamble
Against the gods of daylight;
Sakhmet, who always dreamed of birds
And knew a good cure for hangovers.
Doing their jobs, all of them, and only
Slightly more guilty than the firstborn
They found waiting in the Field of Reeds.