WOOD

The trees have decided

To be men. Feet they manage

Pretty well, and also legs.

Fingers are a bit rootlike

But not badly done. The heads,

Though, are merely

Sawn off pieces of wood

Bent at enquiring angles.

AAPOW

Guzvir at the next desk says that she

Has a Chemehuevi mother and so is related

To the Actionless All Powerful Old Woman

Who made the universe. I tell her that 

At my last job I shared an office 

With Aristotle's Unmoved Mover who also

Made the universe. Perhaps we could

Get them together? Guzvir is doubtful;

The Actionless All Powerful Old Woman 

Doesn't get around much anymore.

LABOR FORCE

Growl and grunt of the old dead 

Returning to work since those 

Who died yesterday think death

Excuses them from hard labor.

For convenience a punch clock 

Has been installed. The old dead

Don't trust things that beep; they prefer

Things that clack. We've come to work;

We're leaving work now. Because they must,

They work with computers but they

Have taught one to think like an abacus

And set another to telling fortunes.

GUESTS AT THE PARTY

Though not in the opera, Pagliacci insists

On entering the party scene in Traviata

Banging his big drum. At least

He usually maintains the right beat;

Escamillo, who thinks he is the star

Of an opera called Escamillo in which

Carmen and Don Jose provide comic relief,

Stands by the buffet table in his full

Toreador rig. It’s only a question of time

Before he throws an arm around Pagliacci

And the two of them burst into song.

POST M

After I've died it may be that my image 

Will stand in a temple as an example 

Of what not to be. Over time

Some, through ignorance or perversity,

May send an occasional prayer my way 

And I'll become one of the oblique gods 

Lord, say, of Seashells or Narrow Alleys

Or of Three Almost Indistinguishable Shades

Of Yellow. If that happens, I intend

To hire a cat -- perhaps several. A god

With cats must be taken seriously.

PAGING

After slipping on February's stairs

The Queen of Coins 

Was rushed to St. Vincent's 

That it closed six years ago

Doesn't matter. 

The ghosts staffing it now 

Say they know what they're doing.

CONCERNING DANNY DEEVER

Do you know Kipling’s poem about hanging Danny Deever?

It’s in the form of a dialogue between Files-On-Parade

And the Colour-Sergeant. My father used to sing it

When he was putting me to bed. This was a lengthy process

Involving a book being read, perhaps two, a story --

Which my father would invent – and some songs.

Occasionally, bits of poetry would sneak in;

Someone must have told him, correctly,

That Macbeth soliloquizing about the futility of life

Might be just the thing to make a three year old sleep sound.

My father was the youngest of nine children which meant

He had four living and one dead older sister

And two living and one dead older brother. The dead brother

Was named Moshe and was called Morris and remained

After he died one of my father’s favorite relatives.

The dead sister, Edith, left almost nothing behind

But her name. Recently, though, she has been insisting

That she would have been tall – for her family, at least  --

And witty and  a talented amateur artist who wore

Extraordinary hats every chance she got if only

She had lived more than a few months.

By now, you may have given up hope of hearing

More about Danny Deever. It may even be

That you never began reading this poem at all

And are quietly pleased with yourself. The question

I want to discuss today is who it was who taught my father

(Nathan was his name, called Nate or Natie by his family

But never by my mother) the words and the tune?

Had I asked he might have remembered that Sadie

Or Doris had memorized it for some class and he,

With his preposterously good memory for such things,

Had picked it up when whichever of them read it aloud

To fix it in memory. Not Anne (the pretty sister) I think,

Nor lefthanded Rose, nor Harry (the family rebel).

Certainly not Joe.

I believe I will choose

To believe that my grandmother – who learned English’

From her children’s school textbooks -- was entranced

By the cadence and the drama and would say bits of it

When she was awake at 3 in the morning when everyone else

Except my father was sleeping. The tune he may have found

Years later, left in the street by some careless passerby.

CAPTION

Three giddy angels are holding a sign announcing that

G. Frederick Handel of London,Gent., has written

An opera called Julius Caesar. One angel

Wishes you to note the fact that this

Is an opera. A second points to G. Frederick's name.

The last blows a trumpet because what

Is the point of being an angel and being able

To fly if you can't blow a horn just because

You happen to feel like it? Below the angels,

A cellist tries to read the music; the harpsichordist

Is trying to determine whether she's bored or in love.

STORE ROOM

It was a hard year and God and I

Were selling brooms, or trying to.

We slept in a hospital storeroom

Whose key I had inherited. Most nights

The dreams patients had left behind

Would drift in, sitting on the floor

Or leaning against the shelves 

That reached to the high ceilings.

The very highest shelves 

Had families of bats living on them.

When they squeaked God 

Would gesture and the card games

And storytelling would pause.

I never knew if He was getting messages --

But what would bats know that God didn’t? --

Or just enjoying the squeaks as music

RECURRING

Edward Johnston often dreamed  of a boat filled

With samurai and women of the floating world. Asleep,

He knew every language in the world so when

They invited him on board he would accept

In confident Japanese. Always the cruise

Was a merry one, filled with jests and wine

And impromptu poems of refined bawdiness

Until a night when every samurai seemed downcast

And the geishas trailed long sleeves in the water

Looking anywhere but at his face and he knew

They were sad because this was the last time

He'd ever dream of them

BOAT IN THE MIST

When Arthur dies, of course, a boat

Conjures itself out of the mist (always

There is a mist)  on the lake which seems

To have no other side. In the boat are

A variety of women and, for this  day’s death,

The God of Calligraphy, the poet Kan Shojo.

 In the bow, three Japanese demi-goddesses

Are crowded together, getting in the way

Of Morgan Le Fay, who is trying to steer.

The hand that reached from the water

To receive Excalibur has returned swordless

And apparently conducts an invisible orchestra.

The goddesses sing; Morgan swears; Kan Shojo

Makes notes for a poem which will not mention

Goddesses, fey queens, swords or kings.

He will call it Boat on a  Misty Day.

TENTH

It was a good thimble though the magic

Had almost run out before we made it.

Useless in a fight unless your foe

Was very small – a mouse, perhaps

Though why should you be fighting mice?

There was, too, a needle. Our stored magic

Was quite gone by then but needles

Generally have their own. (Just try

Making a shirt or mending a coat

With a sword!) It takes nine tailors

To make a man but what do suppose

They could make if a tenth joined them?

INDEED

Suppose every person is,

As some have said,

A gesture of God. 

"Gesture" shares a root

With geste or deed

As in "The Gestes

Of Sir Lancelot du Lac,"

And also with jest.

We are the motions of God

We are the deeds of God

We are the jokes God tells

In the Platonic ideal

Of a smoky club

With no cover but

A two drink minimum.

Some nights the audience 

Sits on its hands.

Some nights, though,

God absolutely kills.

DOUBLES

The doppelganger fears

He might some day turn real,

Take a job, tell jokes,

Fall asleep or in love.

He whirls suddenly

To see if someone's shadow

Has started to follow him.

A MAN IN A TREE

In certain great houses of Poland one of the servants

Would spend his days in a tall tree, watching the road

If he spied visitors coming, he would shout or whistle

Or bang two pots together, then climb down 

To help with preparations. Visitors were precious 

Because life was boring in the country. It might happen 

That a visitors ready to leave would find his carriage wheels

Had vanished or his coachman was drunk or married 

Or had taken a vow to walk barefoot to Jerusalem.

All this was going on while my ancestors were there too

Following their occupation of surviving. Some of them 

Were more skilled at this than others. 

ON A GREEN STEM

Flora picks one last flower -- a yellow one --

And leaves Pompeii behind. In 1908,

My grandmother will find it pressed

Between the pages of an old book.

She'll later describe it to Rose,

Her oldest child, who in turn

Will draw it -- left-handed -- for Nate

The very youngest. Nate will use the flower 

As a character in stories he tells 

To my older brother, but I listen too.

TRANSMISSION

If this is June 1960– and why would the radio

Bother to lie to me? --  then

Dwight Eisenhower’s press secretary

Jim Haggerty is just back from Asia and I

Am eight years old and so unlikely

To go by myself to Yin and Yang’s restaurant

On Third Avenue, across the street

From The Paperback Gallery.

Neither can I buy a pack

Of L & M’s even though their ads

Assure me that they alone

Know the secret that unlocks the flavor

In a filter cigarette

PYROCLASTS

If Vesuvius had not decided the year 79 

Would be suitable for burying  Pompeii 

Fifteen feet deep, Marcus Cerrinus Vatia,

Enthusiastically supported by the thieves 

And his grandmother, might very well

Have been elected aedile and then 

Everything would have been different.

The Comtesse might find herself today 

A mere baronne and this poem 

Be a strutting epic of three thousand lines

PAINTING

The music hangs over the musicians' heads

Yellow, blue-green, a dignified crimson;

A griffin from another poem entirely

Has been sniffing around this one

And insists on entering. He says

He can hear the frozen music --

One of Palestrina's early motets

Rescored for clarinet, trumpet and tin basin.

There were many odd creatures in the house 

Where the painting hung but no griffin

That I can remember. The dragon that now

Lives on my shelf doesn't know him either.

GEIST

If I turn out to be a quiet ghost it will be against my will 

For I mean to be loud, rattling dishes and, if the mood is on me,

Throwing chairs down the hall. I suppose there may be days

When I look wistfully from an old picture hoping

Someone wrote my name on the back or when I stand 

Near your chair and tell you how to move your bishop

(You'll be wise then to ignore me; my brother's advice 

Or, better yet, my grandfather Joe's, would be sounder).

But, on the whole, you might start looking now on Angie's List

For a competent exorcist. He'll overcharge but you

Will probably think him worth it. Also, don't forget 

To burn paper money at my grave and to spit beans

While banging pots during the Lemuralia each May.

 We're not Chinese nor are we Roman, but it can't hurt.