RIDER AND DRIVER

 

Since it's just the sort of overpowered black car

You'd expect Death to have I'm not surprised 

To see him driving it, his hands at ten and two;

My Aunt Rose, having called shotgun, sits beside him.

This too is not surprising though I wonder

How she persuaded him to wear a chauffeur's cap.

She nods at me and carefully turns one gloved hand

Thirty degrees to the left then thirty degrees to the right --

A monarch acknowledging a subject's existence.

She looks pretty well, all things considered,

Her eyes still blue and sharp and cold.

FLUTE

 

Silence is, of course,

Silence so when I ask

What's with the flute

You're carrying

She says 

Nothing but points

To the small drum

She has strapped to her hip 

Which I suppose

Wanted company.

ACCESSORIZING

 

1918; Max reads Charles Reznikoff's poem

About the shopgirls leaving work

So the rats and roaches can begin their shifts

Reznikoff's family makes hats. Sometimes

Reznikoff sells them. Max makes coats.

On her day off, a shopgirl -- I see her

As tall and thin and talkative, moving

Rapidly or not at all -- could wear

A Reznikoff hat and a Max-made coat;

My other grandfather, Joe 

Could make a watch for her. No;

It's 1918 and Joe is in the army. His father

Juda will have to make it and sell it

From his shop on a street that will disappear

Thirty years later to make an approach

To the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Still

We in 1918 could care less; we're thinking

Of that tall shopgirl and wondering

What, if anything, she's wearing

Besides a coat and a hat and a watch.

PRAYER

 

I have sinned, Saint 467 --

Intercede for me and I

Will build for you an altar

Between those of Saint 394

Who once lent me ten dollars

And Saints 606 and 909

One of whom gave me a cat.

PLAINSPEAKING

 

If it thought you'd understand, your shadow

Would say "Those birds in that tree over there

Are planning something -- it is urgent

That you stop and listen to them!"

Later, it might wake you at midnight

Saying, "The ghost who owes you a favor

Is at your door -- she cannot stay long --

Go let her in!"

MAKER

 

When there is one God, says Sobek, 

Holding a beer in his thick-clawed hand,

It is His nature to fill everywhere,

To be everything. This leaves no room 

For anyone else. Think how lonely that is!

You try to amuse Yourself; You invent Time

Hoping something will happen; nothing does 

Until there is something else. Usually a dog. 

Someday, though, a crocodile. Just wait

And see what sort of universe God will make

When He has a crocodile!

ROUTINE

 

If/When you find yourself

In Schrodinger's Box remember

To feed and not feed 

The cat before changing 

And not changing her litter.

Then, let her sit

On your lap, purring

And not purring until 

She falls asleep with 

Her green eyes wide open.

COMMUNAL PRAYER

Perhaps God is a bit deaf so that
Ten men must talk together
To make Him hear and, even so,
He often misses some fine nuance
Or misunderstands us entirely.

NOT BUILT TO LAST

Named angels last but
Nameless ones flicker
In and out of existence
So when God told
A nameless angel
With a long nose
And lank red hair
That He, due to His nature,
Was the only being able
To know both the location
And velocity of a particle
At the same time the poor thing
Had just time to say “Ah”
Before vanishing forever

FANNY AND JENNY AND MY MOTHER

 

My mother's stepmother Fanny

Did not, every witness agrees, love her

But kept her marriage bargain and

Taught the child all manner of things

Such as how to fold contour sheets

How to sew a dress from a pattern

How to buy meat, vegetables, fruit

How to bargain and not be cheated.

In the kitchen of her house her mother Jenny

Spent her days -- a woman so powerful

That I know many stories about her

And only two about her husband and both of them

Are mostly about Jenny anyway. She ruled the kitchen

But where her husband spent his days

Who knows? Perhaps to spite her daughter 

Jenny was madly in love with my mother

And taught her that opals and peacock feathers

Bring bad luck and that a knife must never

Be given to a friend; demand something for it --

A penny will do -- or it will cut the friendship.

TRANSCIENCE

 

For nine hundred years

The blue vase has warned

In black Persian letters

That nothing lasts.

It looks water-tight;

If the museum allowed,

It could hold flowers.

TRUE STORY

 

The rare illness that was supposed

To finish off my mother's stepmother

Found her a very tough customer

So much so that one of her doctors

Meeting her in the street said

"Mrs. Lemport -- you're still alive?"