DESIGN

When I submitted the latest design
For my ghost I included a note
That many things were negotiable
I am willing to be real or imaginary
Or some combination of the two.
Palpable? Impalpable? No great matter.
I am willing to wear full armor
And walk battlements armed cap a pie.
On the other hand, I can manage
As a trick of light or a pale shadow.
There is just one thing: I must have pockets
Or where will I put stones and bits of metal?
Where, when I visit my parents' grave,
Will my left hand go while my right
Swoops and points, unfolds and clenches?

FLIGHT

Over the years my father convinced himself

That he’d never woken hovering over his bed

Still, he wondered.

My mother had an ancestor named Aaron

Who weighted his pockets with stones

To avoid floating off.

Savonarola’s jailers found him asleep in his cell

Gently bumping against the ceiling.

They burned him anyway.

When King Sweeney recovered his wits

He ceased being able to fly. When I go mad

I will remember this.


(And then, an old poem about the King:

You think, perhaps, that it is easy to be mad;

“Farewell, Reason! I’m off; I’ve slipped your chain.”

I tell you it is not. Three years, seven months,

Six days I have followed Sweeny, who was King

And now lives in trees. Madness, like much else,

Takes practice. For the first six months, Sweeny

Could understand never a word the birds said

And feared their endless tweeting would drive him sane.

He could fly as soon as he and reason parted

But was clumsy at it, crashing into trees,

Perching awkwardly at night, liable to fall.

He flies well now; threading through the forest

Listening to the curlews and laughing at their jokes

(His courtesy is royal; curlews’ humor is dull).

His dreams tell him he will be king again

Unable to flutter a foot above the ground.

I prepare against that day.)

PERVERSITY

Stubbornness keeps the stone silent
If it wanted, it could sing madrigals.
Let the desire exist for an instant
And the cold heart bursts into flame.
Late nights, when they're off duty, my sins
Mutter over their muddy coffee
That if I'd only repent they could
Enjoy retirement, grow wings, move
To some gated Southern town.

VISITORS

From out the November dark three knocks;

There has been rain; the moon is in the road

But the women in the doorway are not wet.

The young one is a sorceress; she will speak truths,

Go mad and die by water, her pockets

Crammed filled with stones.

The next will never find what she seeks

Will love well but not wisely, she will live long;

St. Peter watches her grave.

The oldest, great-hearted, died young; on this night

All three stand at your door, waiting.

Why have you not bid them enter?

ONE OF MY FATHER'S AND ONE OF MINE

THE EGG AND THE STONE

"Oh eggs, never fight with stones!"  Chinese proverb

Always suspicious

Wary and vulnerable

Eggs walk on eggshells.

Stones crowd the sidewalk -

Eggs slink by invisibly

Wishing they were stones.

Stones and eggs once friends.

When friends fall out, eggs notice,

It's not stones that break.

When eggs tell stories

They tell of the giant egg

Who will avenge them.

Egg philosophers:

"To improve our characters

Heaven sends us stones."

Eggs negotiate:

You don't drop us out of windows

And we won't splatter.

Seeking a way out,

Eggs make rules for stones to live;

Now - teach stones to read.

Eggs resolve: We're soft -

To stop stones from killing us

We must become stones.

A PHOTOGRAPH

The hat looks proper – perhaps a bit jaunty

With its brim curled slightly, but unbattered

The white-haired man beneath it, the artist Cezanne,

Seems drunk, though cheerful, leaning in a doorway,

Emerging from a shadowed house into the light

Of a dazzling Provencal morning.

Photos can lie; perhaps he is not drunk at all --

Still, he has donned the clothes of a larger man;

His cuffs spill over his shoes; the bottom of his vest

Is unbuttoned. The chair he holds was stolen

From a dream Van Gogh once had;

All wobbled lines and strange proportions.

So small an old man in such large clothes

Might be blown for miles. I  believe Cezanne,

Knowing this, grasps the Dutchman’s chair

So he can sit when the winds are done with him.