BETWEEN NOT YET AND NOW

I commuted to high school, taking

A bus and three subways, arriving

Usually a few minutes before

The tall front doors opened. The street

Became thick with boys – girls

Were rumored to exist elsewhere –

Smoking, shouting, drinking soda.

From paper cups shaped like cones.

There’s a picture I took

Of one of the doors’ brass knobs

Just as the principal was  turning it

From inside. In those days I assumed

He’d no need of doors since he

Did not exist until that moment

Newly conjuring himself each day

From dust and shadows. I prefer now

To think he spidered up the back wall

And climbed through an unlocked window

 

A PHOTOGRAPH BY EUGENE ATGET

A shadow stands by a cart

Considering the vegetables 

Her outline is blurred but she 

Looks content to spend eternity

Contemplating heaped turnips.

LEFT

Unused to being alone

The God of Penn Station

Sits up most nights

With shadows. He dozes,

Wakes, dozes again

Until the noise of a train

Not arriving rouses him.

ANNUNCIATE

Apparently the Angel Gabriel 

Needs reassurance. The Madonna

Has her right hand raised in one 

Of the Buddha's mudras:

Be not afraid. Her left hand warns:

Don't trust the world's illusions.

She will give the nervous angel

His cues ("Yes? You bring tidings?

Are they, perhaps, of great joy?") 

Admire his great peacock wings

Invite him to drop in again. She'll then 

Pick up her book, having prudently 

Marked her place with a flower.

 

VERROCHIO'S LADY WITH FLOWERS

Even if she wasn't centuries old

And a statue she'd be blind

Since her eyes have no pupils.

She is well aware that you

Are looking at her. She holds violets;

Her head tilts just so, waiting; 

Why do you not speak?

ADVISORY

Be wary and, if possible,

Avoid all weather today

Why should this wind not be

 

A tattered priest

 

So old and tired he's forgotten

 

Which gods made him and which 

 

He's pledged to serve?

RETRY?

Object immovable 

Remembers

Force irresistible

Nice enough 

But no spark. Still

Would it hurt

To meet again?

TOO LONG

The eulogy ran on, becoming

More improbable but not

More interesting. The man's vices,

Locked away in crates, had started 

Chanting rhythmically. By ones

And twos our shadows slipped away.

Finding them was hard; there were fights 

Over whose each one was. 

My father's friend Peter H. went home 

With one that belonged to a tree;

Beech perhaps or some species of birch.

TWO OF THEM

My grandfather could 

Set a coin spinning

Endlessly until

He touched it

One of them 

Spins yet.

My other grandfather

Was so great a detective

That crimes came to him

Begging to be solved.

His stories were enough 

To make a needle laugh

Quietly, to itself.

RENEGADO

In another life my grandfather 

Might have been a fantastic,

A Harlequin, a saltimbique

A fop, a learned fribble, a wit

A man to be loved but not trusted.

In the one he had instead he

Watched and spoke quietly,

Grew a neat mustache and never

Walked on his hands. 

 

BENT

Her father's friends,

My mother said,

Included gangsters. 

Stories rarely shrank 

When she told them;

Perhaps they were

Just crooks.