THANKSGIVING

Puddle ducks are surefooted

And run well. Black ducks

Are often seen with mallards

Who are the most common ducks.

Black ducks can mimic mallards

Pretty exactly and are said to be

The wariest of all ducks 

Widgeons, though, are nervous too

And quick to take alarm. Their flight 

Is erratic, filled with sudden turns; 

They are not above stealing food

From diving ducks such as  buffleheads

And mergansers. Shoveler drakes 

Call out loudly, going woh-woh or tuck-tuck;

The hens, when they get a word in, quack feebly.

THE WOMEN ON THE BOAT

Every time an Arthur dies Bedivere

Throws the sword into the water

Where a hand reaches up,

 Catches it and brandishes it

Three times. A boat

Sails slowly towards shore

Crewed by three tall women

Except for the times one

Or another of the queens

Is occupied or ill or

Would rather not spend her day

Rowing to the Isle of Apples.

Those times one of the women

May be short, even stumpy

May, in fact, be Baba Yaga.

She makes a passable crone

Once she puts away her pipe

(And just where does she put it?

She has no pockets;

Better not to know, perhaps)

And as long as she doesn’t smile.

Matron is more difficult

And she’s an impossible maiden

Preening and being brazenly bashful

Fluttering her lashless eyelids

Still, she’s always available

And the contract requires

Three women and a boat

Every time an Arthur dies.

TWO FRENCH SAINTS

St. Genevieve is the patron saint 

Of Paris because when Attila the Hun

Approached her prayers, it's said,

Made him march instead to Orleans.

She was hard to drown, performed 

Miraculous cures and healings,

Could read minds. Her presence

Made candles light themselves.

It is impolitic to mention her

In the same prayer as St. Aignan,

Sandthrower, cloudwatcher and

Patron of Orleans who felt that,

At 93, he was too old

To have to save his city again.

Every November 17 Orleans sells

Gingerbread pigs in Aignan's honor.

Don't even try asking for one in Paris

MEANWHILE, IN THE WORLD OF IDEAL FORMS

The cat of whom 

All other cats 

Are shadows 

Lived for a while 

With the Platonic Ideal 

Of Plato. Plato-ness 

Felt that catness

Should feed herself 

Or perhaps subsist

On the idea of food.

AT THE TOURNAMENT

Since fair maids were thin

On the ground just then, needles

Stood in for them, holding

Themselves straight, flirting

Bright lengths of thread.

Pins kept their heads down

As became the common folk.

The princess stood alone

A twist of embroidery thread

Trailing from her eye. She had,

It was whispered,

Acquired a taste for blood.

BUYING FROM IFRITS

After the Third Avenue El was torn down 

People on its route woke up often, saying 

"What was that noise I didn't just hear?"

Ifrits came by, knocking on doors

Selling the echoes of trains going by

None of them from the Third Avenue El

But sufficiently like to allow some sleep.

The foreign train sounds brought with them

Improbable things and to this day 

Third Avenue ghosts will sell you a ticket

To places you've never heard of or knew

How much you wanted to see.

PATRONS OF THIEFTAKERS

Protasius and Gervasius came to see Bishop Ambrose

In a dream, interrupting one in which the Bishop

Had been teaching some bears to sing counterpoint.

They entered with a flourish of horns and choirs 

Of seraphim. The bears refused to leave the dream

And sat towards the edges of it, growling 

But quietly. Even bears know better

Than to challenge martyrs and seraphim.

Protasius spoke for both, saying that he and Gervasius, 

His twin, were martyrs who died when Nero

Was Emperor. (“No,” said Gervasius; “it was Diocletian.”

Ambrose suggested a compromise; perhaps Marcus Aurelius?)

"Anyway," Protasius went on, "we're dead and buried

In your cathedral without markers. Felix, though,

And Nabus, have railings around them and an inscription

People stand on us to speak with them. Perhaps

You might want to do something about this 

Remembering that we, though patrons of haymakers 

And thieftakers, include swords and clubs

Among our attributes." In Milan now

The brothers have a large, slightly gaudy shrine;

In one corner someone has carved several small bears

Who seem to be singing in counterpoint.

THE CREATION OF THE REST OF THE WORLD

Before the world was, Wales was;

I have this from Hunt who’d seen

A Welsh genealogy. Towards the middle

God creates the Heavens and the Earth.

Not an over-proud folk, the Welsh;

Perhaps they welcomed the rest of the world

Suddenly appearing, slamming into place

Around Wales, which had always been.

Or perhaps it happened by degrees

The rest of creation coming into focus

And trying to look as if it, too,

Had always been there.

                                Some Welsh farmer,

I expect, pulled down the family Bible

(A huge thing, with all the pages blank

Save for the one in the middle labelled

“Births and Deaths”) and wrote

“Up all night with sick cow. About 10:30

Rest of world appeared. About time, too!”

CHARLOTTE

There’s an old ballad called

"A Corpse Going to a Ball."

It's about Beautiful Charlotte

A farmer's daughter in Maine

Who, ignoring her mother's advice

To wrap herselfin a blanket, boards a sleigh

And arrives at the ball a frozen corpse.

Afterwards, the poem says,

She never spoke another word

This seems unremarkable,

Even tame. Better, perhaps,

Had she delivered a speech

About dressing appropriately

During a New England winter

Or danced a bit stiffly

(I expect a waltz would be difficult

But perhaps she could've managed

A clumsy jig).

With no help from me,

The ballad became popular.

You can still find in antique stores

Small naked porcelain dolls

Called Frozen Charlottes.

AN INCIDENT

A ship carrying twenty thousand sheep 

Bound for Istanbul's slaughterhouse

Sank in the Bosphorus. Some of the sheep 

Swam to shore; men dropped their coffees  

And ran into the water, desperate to save them.

AN OLD FRIEND ON THE TRAIN

When the train stops at Bayside

My friend David boards though

He died three years ago. In the precise

Hierarchy of high school

He ranked slightly below us;

Our fathers were professionals

His was a printer whom money

Had forbidden to go to college.

We had houses; his family lived

In an apartment. He was pleasant-looking
And athletic and not tall. His family

Were all musical. He played everything;

His father taught recorder on weekends.

He had an exaggerated hatred of falseness

And made me feel guilty when I sang

Molly Malone; not being Irish

I'd no right to a brogue. More than any of us

He was wary, mocking belief, scorning love

He was sturdy, ran doggedly; he was at home

Playing football or the piano or

Standing under the glaring lights

Of the empty parking lot where those
With nowhere to go spent nights

Teasing and testing each other.

Grown-ups said that he, unlike his friends,

Had a head on his shoulders, a head

That had been screwed on right.

He later turned himself inside out;

He later took the word of a malign ghost

Who broke him in pieces.

This never seemed right to me.

Once, a girl told me that I was special

And David was just David but still

She'd rather go out with him.

OCCUPATION

Sometime in early 1917

The Emperor Franz Josef

Began playing himself

In Esther's dreams.

He was a bit sheepish

But explained that as a ghost

He found himself at loose ends

And lonely. None of his courtiers

Turned out to have liked him

"Heaven," said one, "means knowing

I need never listen to you again"

Other emperors were no help

Charlemagne goggled at him

And spoke, anyway,

A weird proto-German

The Emperor Rudolph

Was always in his lab

Attempting to transform

This into that and back again.

Charles the Fifth brooded endlessly

That the Hapsburgs no longer

Ruled Mexico or the Netherlands.

My grandmother assumed

She gone a trifle mad

Sooner than she'd expected

Despite repeated assurances

That he wasn't an illusion

But merely a ghost. Once

She woke up with

A yellow and blue medal

Held in her left hand,

The Order of the Iron Crown,

First Class, making her

A privy councillor

Properly addressed as

"Your Excellency."

AMUL

There are Yiddish tales that begin

Amul, amul iz geven a yid

Once, once, is given a Jew.

Given: the Jew is postulated;

What follows from this given Jew?

Will there be Jewish jokes?

Or prayers or the heavy smell

Of new-baked challah? Or was

The Jew given as a gift is given?

Given a Jew, they said thank you

Though they already had two better ones

Given a Jew, the universe looked

For a manual but couldn't find one.

Perhaps, given a Jew, one should wait:

To see if a story turns up..

WHY I'M LIMPING

My right ankle buckles because 

It sees no reason not to. It may be

From long brooding over

That dare when I was nine 

To jump from a garage roof

Or perhaps it's enjoying

Cheap and obvious symbolism.