Night Kindness
In this perilous weather, the car lights on the Mass Pike are
my shepherds, whose reconnaissance I bless, mum blossoms
splashed upon the darkness, in league with their errant cousins
-in-color, the orange reflective dashes marking lanes. For miles
I gnarl my body, crunch my neck, my hands clasping the wheel
like a monkey baby would a branch. I hope for continued
function of the car’s parts, the high-speed wiper arms brooming
rain off the windshield, swaying in their frantic hula dance,
the think-on-your-feet brakes, the steering keen to traffic cones,
those dunce heads, popping up like an agility course. May as well
be a star-nosed mole, a mummy bandaged in black, or the blind
who tap and test for obstacles in their path. Please, to God,
I try to calm myself, it’s not as if I’m some sailor lost
on the high seas, or navigating a white-out on the highway
before the plough trucks arrive on the scene. Alexa’s GPS voice
stabs the silence, warns me “stay in the left two lanes,” or else
I’ll be headed to Hartford, no way to backtrack. By a whisker
I maneuver the switch, swerve on faith into a void that takes
me fortunately, in the right direction. Close, that one!
But I’ve alarmed myself and look who’s here with me,
four-legged full-fledged none-other-than Fear, loose
in the passenger seat, in the form of some yip-yap
chihuahua, wanting my lap. Dog off! I hiss.
She whimpers, judders and sparks, eyes bulged
like stuffed olives, claws on my thigh, ears ballet flats.
But she won’t budge, her royal disobedient tininess,
you are not the boss of me. No use but to give in,
coax her into the dog bed of my heart to pulse
along with my own rapid beats and breath, it’s okay,
okay, let’s calm down together, but get this straight,
I’ll forever be on the job training as your service
human, never your master so long as we drive
on strange roads in darkness that end
only when they deliver us home.
Breath Taken
We gathered around him as he thrashed
in bed, his tongue shoved aside like
a toreador whose red cape was halted
in mid sweep, clamped down
by the machine who breathed him
in and out, his hands tied to the bed
rails in mittens like a child, to prevent
him from pulling out the multiple tubes
and IVs crisscrossing him, restraints
of treatment only Houdini could undo.
But the staff were trying to keep
him alive, and as spectators, we were
captive, too, by screens, mesmerized
by his vitals and other arcane measurements
beeping and flashing on a monitor,
like a mini jumbotron, the stats dipping,
bad, badly. Desperate, we wanted him
to stay our person, to be Mitch as usual,
and rejoiced at any sign that he could
still recognize us, did you see, that gesture
resembled a wave, didn’t it, and look,
just now, when you were in the bathroom,
he turned his head to follow your voice,
because even like this he refuses to be
scissored from family, our names, our
stories. As I observe my new grandson,
who flails his arms, tosses his head,
stares at the unseen through his milky eyes,
I can’t help but compare these two beings.
That as he labored to take leave
of the womb of the world, its red throb
of thought and throes, dying pressed
out the air from his baggy lungs,
extruding life from his body. Only to become
at the last, death’s newborn, swaddled in great
darkness, or perhaps, great light,
cradled in the arms of another nurturing
mother, who rocking him to sleep,
assigned him his own chemical crib
within her vast molecular nurseries.
Clown College
First-grade class circus, costumed as a clown
in my father’s clothes, gowned in his outsized
shirt to my ankles, I lost touch with myself.
Easy to. My hands, star-nosed moles, tunneled
through the sleeves until they reached the cuffs.
On my head, a bowler whose brim eave-covered
my eyes. Signature red nose, a rubber ball, two holes
for nostrils. And the classic prop, his baguette-like
shoes, my small feet scooping all that extra space
just to keep them on, shoveling air, as I shuffled
across the floor in front of the classroom.
Performed pratfalls. Getting up, going down.
They told me I had to be a sad sack hobo.
Frowner, Emmett Kelly style but I had no idea
who he was. Obedient, I repeated this routine
to silence, which is to say, no laughter, the kids
didn’t get I was supposed to be funny. Because
I was too young to be a clown, too new to walking,
really. In front of them I watched alone my own first
pointlessness, I flopped. If this poem were about
filling my father’s shoes symbolically they weren’t
very big. He called himself a failure. Woe was he.
But how is it that every time I put those shoes on,
even my own, they grow bigger like they say
the universe does, and all the effort, luck, nerve,
gifts in the world won’t make you big
enough to fit inside what’s always too much
for you, just as my skyscraper tall teacher,
tight bun, black-rimmed glasses, ruled mouth—
I still recall her name, Miss Frances M. Herman, knew
when, with a toneless not quite cruel but necessary
mercy, told me to return to my seat and sit down.
The Grapevine
We drive this improbable road, from LA
to the central Valley, through ancient mountains
beaten into a meringue of minerals: the meat
of earth, refusing to eat its vegetables. Just
imagine its ancient births: great goats of land
butted against each other, to produce this
stalemate rock, horns locked in place before
the next quake comes, these sites marking
the original violence. Wonder is not often
motherly. In five minutes flat the route starts
from 100 feet to an elevation of four thousand,
the rise that snatches my heart like a hawk
and holds my breath in its claws until we finish
below, that drawn-out denouement, the descent
when our car, lulled by the hypnotic curves,
follows a serpentine path that entrances
the steering wheel. First, heady levity then
plummeting gravity. I follow the plodding rigs
juddering from the horizontal gusts, as they keep
to the slow lane, watchful for the escape ramps
twigging off to the side, should brakes fail. Poor
truckers! You’re in my thoughts and prayers. Though
most think the Grapevine is a metaphor for what
they call this twisty section of the Five, I read that long
before the dynamite and concrete, the Spanish had
to hack a path through actual vines through the terrain,
impediments to their progress on horse, on foot. I find
new meanings for my fear: At my age I’m ripe
for the picking by those accidents that could
in any instant, pluck, crush, press, bottle me
into wine. Not this time, though! I’m not your
famous Lucy episode, your beverage! With her big
ears to the ground, Fortune heard my whispering,
my grade A gossip of a life, my scuttlebutt, you can’t
tell anyone, juicy enough to pass me along.