Two Poems

I. Confirmation

When I became a soldier of the Lord,
With the oil and slap of Confirmation,
I received the invisible broadsword,
Breastplate and gauntlets, visor, greaves and helm,
That made me defender of a nation
Which hordes of devils seek to overwhelm.

What dignity for a boy of thirteen
To join such ranks as St. Michael once led
In the War in Heaven. I sat between
A boy who fainted and one who sneered
At the figure before us as it bled
From crown to toe, and all the devils leered.

That was then. But as Heaven would allow
Those boys to live, I sit between them now,
Knowing the fear of one, the other’s spite
At hovering between the dark and light.

II. Longinus

This calls for wisdom. The soldier who speared
The side of Christ lives now inside my head,
Grappling with epiphany. Where he feared
Only Caesar, he now finds the water
Joined with blood commanding in his stead,
And recalls the tale of the patron’s daughter

And the comrade’s servant who walked again.
He is a murderer and yet believes,
And from this moment will his life begin,
Though drifting outward to legend’s far fringe,
Until he is the one who gently laves
the Lord’s spent body with the Holy Sponge.

All blessings on the one whose spirit turns
In time, whose lantern flares and ever burns.
But in my heart, a fear mixed in with grief:
The soul beyond rescue. The other thief.

Love Poem: The Followers

Even when the streets are deserted,
A cold, barefoot crowd stampedes inside me.
A woman leads them and her face is slant
And shudders with such hate as burns alive
Whoever meets it with the eyes of love.
Behind her come cops and soldiers, a priest,
A teacher, some snarling shitass punks
Who claim divine permission to flog me
With sticks and cattails of razor wire.
The woman sings a lovely song of parting
That she used to sing for me alone
But now it is a public serenade -
She means for people to know she hates me,
Hated me even when we were alone,
Which we never were, someone was always
Looking, the neighbor or the stranger,
The invisible recorders of the Lord.
Witnesses, in any case, who now lean
Into the wind to observe the trial.
It is appointed to each man once to die,
And then the judgment. My judge was the life
Of my life, if only a little while.

One Night

Under the lights
Of the filling station
The mayflies swarmed,
And only the attendant and I
Were there to see them.

Everyone else was home –
The whole world, I mean, home
In perfect peace and comfort,
Or so I prayed
To the swarming mayflies
to whom an hour
is a thousand days.

I knew what the attendant didn’t
As he made my change
Behind the glass,

That we had seen the spirit
Of the Lord
In the white light of Texaco
At 2 a.m.

Or maybe he knew after all
And was likewise
Praying for me.

Fever

Daylight, but the lamp is lit
And all the world seems stranger
Now that he’s removed from it
A degree or two by a glaze of tears.

A waterfall cascades inside his ears,
Its source a hidden chamber,
And white cells line a parapet
In a desperate stratagem:
Wait for the virus to clamber
Brain-ward, and pour hot oils down.

A hard fact: They must drown
The host that they might save him;
Drown, that is, and burn.
But nothing is right for what ails
Him. The operation fails,
The lines collapse in a rout.

The patient turns in bed and grieves.
Fever is the same as doubt:
The skin stripped off,
The frontal, insensible
Onslaught of the self.

This is what’s become of his life,
Each day failing, like the last,
To drive the sickness out.

Kayaking

An hour in, the strokes began to feel
Like a sudden perfection of the arms,
Swooping forward, plunging in, scooping back
Into the greening brine. A black duck
Hunched and tucked along the low marsh grass,
A blurred white ibis scythed into the mist
That stank of fires a hundred miles off.
Our guide told us to peer into the reeds
But venture no farther lest we be lost:
That was the egret kingdom, land of no
Land, featureless, fabled and tempest-tossed,
Or so it seemed to me in my little craft,
The bark of reason that would lead me in
To be spun to hell while the seabirds laughed.

At that, the paddle took on the heft
Of a soul sandbagged by remembered sin.
The shoulders caught fire, the effortless shift
From side to side came suddenly at cost.
The lungs seared and crumbled into ash. No
Sound in that Atlantic graveyard, no ghost
Rising to shriek or scold. But all my deeds,
Bubbling sun-ward from the devil’s trough,
Were flotsam on the estuary’s crest,
Spreading at port and starboard to harass
A conscience that had just outrun its luck.
What could I do but drift across that black-
Spumed mirror and lift up my heart and arms
To heaven blue and competent as steel?

“Kayaking” appeared in the Candlemas 2013 edition of Dappled Things.

Feeding

Here she is again, old Worm-beak,
Breast the color of a mud lake,

Perched on a post of the rail fence,
An eye of shining insolence.

Frowzy, windblown, she whistles twice
Some notes retrieved from Paradise,

Swoops and spears the lawn and is gone
Into the cherry’s greening crown.

“Feeding” appeared in the April 2013 edition of First Things.

Ite Missa Est

The word is spoken and a world exists.
God says “A man steps off the evening train”
And it comes to pass, this new, sudden world.
It stinks of oil and its windows are streaked
With fingerprints and mists off the river.

The man is lonesome but he’s not alone,
For that is how God has made the cities:
Pyramids of sundry where people heave
Heavenward, and fall, and start again.

He passes the grocer, tavern, tailor.
The only light is from the Exit signs.
God says “Stop here,” so he stops to buy gum
At a kiosk humming like an engine.
He says a few words to the huddled clerk
Who is neither blind nor terribly wise,
As a lesser creator might make him.

God says “It’s winter,” so it’s winter.
He puts overcoats on the passersby,
A glowing heater at the poor clerk’s feet.
Just then a ferry calls from the water,
And they break off their talking to listen.

God says “It’s time to leave the harbor”
And the currents turn in the pilot’s favor.
A star settles over the horizon
Blinking blue and white beyond the bridges.

Time to shove off, the man says then, pushing
Into the night with a strange new purpose
He can’t quite fathom in the heart of him.

Birdsong

It was morning enough.
The finch assumed its place atop
the ornamental cherry
to warble in nine notes
what sounded
like begging:
Come home. Please.
The raven’s shriek
was purely existential,
a cracked yawp
on a bedrock of anger.
These arguments with God
happen inside, too,
but are better suited
to the trees
which swallow the dawn-
light in their crowns
and out-glow cathedrals.
Later, the cardinal made
one piercing chip
of hail or alarm
from atop a green umbrella.
He seemed
to be the sane one,
setting the questions
of love and existence
aside for mere survival.

“Birdsong” appeared in November 2011 on Troubadour 21, an online magazine of the arts

A Moment of True Joy

It happens in the commuter dark
Of January, six o’clock,
Topcoats and briefcases
Emerging from the train,
An icicle’s prism in the station
Light, a crowd gathering
By the cafe across the street.

Who is the man there
Waving his pamplets
With their indisputable
And edifying truths?
He is so full of joy
That it ripples through the crowd
Like a wave of neutrons
From a spinning star,
And soon they are laughing
And demanding, like him,
That the end come now, or else.

Walking home, they pass the library
Aglow with its share
Of human achievement,
All of which
Means nothing now
Compared to what’s coming.

Memorial Day

Tell me, Muse, in plain language,
What to say next.
It’s a broad, bright day,
The robins are at work, the cardinals,
The wrens. A neighbor casts rainbows
From his garden hose
And above him the contrails
Of pinpoint jets
Run parallel a while, then merge.
In  a season of flood and tornado
It’s a day beyond beauty or rapture,
Like something from childhood
Preserved in a box
And turned loose
To aim mirrors at the soul.
The hard sun glints
Off the windows. Carpenter bees
Hover at the rail fence.
In someone else’s house
A telephone rings.
The boy who arrives on his bicycle
Is of course only me,
His hair rough and dappled
Like the surface of a wind-
Skimmed lake.
He’s been lost in the woods for a day,
Knees bruised, neck
Red with stings.
He’s as tattered as the card
In the spokes. Muse,
Give him something to say.

Reasons Against

The heart’s glacier,
For one.

The stone in the blood.
The unnumbered hair,

Astonished at being
Overlooked.

The mansion of my dreams
Where one room leads

To another, all are ruined,
And yet I want to stay

And sleep. Also these:
One says Jesus, another says Christ,

And they mean different things.
My love can’t reach me

With her desperate words,
The stars no longer speak.

One could go on, Lord,
One could go on.

The Poet in the Kitchen

Pardon my long silence, he said.
I had to exist for a time
before I had anything to say.

Did I succeed? Last night I dreamed
that an anklyosaur
floated above my house like a balloon.
Is that any help to you?
Does it help you know God, Chaos, the Primum Mobile?

At the shore I had a vision of titanic waves
overwhelming the dunes. Perhaps this meant more
than the obvious,
but I can’t say what. Waterspouts followed,
skipping over the whitecaps,
pulling whales from the seabed.
An airplane dragged a banner
that said SANCTIFY ME.

In my old neighborhood, on my old street,
in my old house, the youthful me
stared from his bedroom window
because he knew this day was coming:
The day he would run out of insights,
curse the length of this life
and go back to washing
and drying the dishes, because at least
that was useful to someone.

Aspergillum

Come give me grace
to moisten my forehead,

aim the little flail
this way.

I have been here
since childhood

awaiting the well-
placed drop.

It doesn’t come.
It flies wide

to the left or right.
Even the bats

in the eaves
have done better,

soulless little things.
So has the man

hunched in the rear
who spent the night

and stinks of tar,
with his cart full of tragedy

and grudges.
But I am filthy

even when it snows.
When the bells ring

I wish I were up
among them

looking over the city.

On Hearing Mankind Likened to a Virus

If it’s so
then let us be true

Let us replicate
beneath this tree

with the music
of the twilight

plashing around us
houses inverted

and Leonids piercing
your pupils

Are we worth
all this my sweet

all of what the forest
holds in beauty

Gather your
clothes, it’s nearly dark

Backyard, Night

Silent so we thought
clean so we thought
but something insistent
moves beneath the rot.
It’s of God
and must be good 
worms perhaps beetles
in iridescent ardor
but this rustling
in the dark
these heaving leaves
are enough to reveal
the sodden truth
tucked in a wrinkle
the brain seldom uses:
this is the grave
yard ball, the dance
of many partners
and one can only sit
out so long

Some Fugitives

In the cave’s
mouth the cartwright
waves

his hammer:
I will make a cart,
he says,

out of snail
shell, out of
bone.

Sure as rain
it will carry
all who need.

Meanwhile,
where the virgin
stood,

children
bundle wheat
into shirts,

pour milk
into gourds,
and the last wine.

Yes, we are
stealing out
tonight,

into the moon-
wisp, the
woods, unto the

churning
constellations.
Oh cartwright bend

your elbow faster,
we can only pretend
so long

that nothing here
pains, that nothing’s
wrong.

Ida

1.

Look at the fog-
light over the hill,

more wave than particle,
warm for the season.

This haze is the fingertip
of a late hurricane

that will soon
bring plagues into our lives.

Things take on
the tint of whiskey,

and the wind grows.

2.

She arrives near exhaustion.
Let us praise her.
Sometimes the muse

is invisible, but this one
drives rain behind the eyes,
unties the shoes, cramps the fingers,

sends a serpentine
chill along the collar.

What’s this strange joy
that comes of noonday twilight,

of windows steamed
and gilded by early lamps?

Bedtime Prayer

Lord, he said, help
my unbelief.
Make it stronger.

And the Lord
consented.

He made trenches
across fields
and poured water
in them.

Men became part of them
in time,
picking lice and swallowing
their tongues from fear.

He colored the sky
with a dangerous chalk.
One could read
signs in it, or not.

He squeezed the voice
out of the linnet
who could not be heard anyway
over the cataracts.

He whispered in the dark
words that sounded threatening
in tone if not meaning.

He revealed that the stars were so distant,
to reach them
one had to go backward
in time.

His supplicant smiled:
He had never felt so
giddy, so utterly free.

Picnic

Coarse salt,
wine, bread-
heels.

God’s
cryptographers
all day

before us,
scattering
puzzles:

How does one
in daylight
reckon darkness

How did
the dragonfly
gain eternity

How do we merit
this unblemished
day

with sin
and sickness
in our very

pockets?
Love, lean
closer,

let me
tell you.

The Almanac of the Senses

Sight

The stars were black buttons.
How could a poem begin this way?
If it is set in the grave
too deep to climb out of

where stars can be seen
at the height of day
but only their gravity,
none of their light.

Smell

A sentimental moment,
The mother baking bread,
the daughter shaking cinnamon
onto the floor.

Outside, the frowzy bird
pacing and pacing.
The ovens warming.
A sense of glee.

Taste

No, nothing.
Only the memory of taste,
potato, wine, garlic.

Happiness lasted only
as long as these.

Then the specters came,
tapping on windows
and breaking doors.

Hearing

The screech and rumble
of a train. It has taken on
another boxcar,
another and another,

one per decade.
Clavicle, humerus,
tibia, skull, clacking
each against the other
because it is going uphill
and the load is shifting.

Don’t worry,
they’ll attach a new engine,
more powerful
than one can imagine.

Touch

Ash-grease, soil
that isn’t soil.
The blistered
heels of the hands,

the descent
into the grave
too deep
to climb out of.

Look up: the stars
are black buttons,
and the smoke
of an engine
rises toward them.

“The Almanac of the Senses” was included in “Two Poems,” a limited edition illustrated booklet by Prehensile Pencil Publications.