Call
When the call came
she ran. Outside, out
the back door, screaming
No No, got to the
fence and ran back, dropped
to her knees and pawed
at the earth, clawing
up handfuls of grass.
She was howling. A
ululation. Some
thing I’d never heard
before. Like
a wild horse roped, maybe,
frantic, fighting against it.
Even space
was suffocating.
I stood by her, almost
over her. But I didn’t
dare to touch her.
It would have
been like touching the
skin of a burn victim.
There are physicists
who think there is no
time. There is only
Now. A series of Nows.
That went on and on
until she slumped to the ground.
She lay her body
down. She lay her head.
Whatever pain, the
earth receives our weight.
She quieted. She
did not rise. She peed
in her clothes and the
water from her body
sank into the grass.
Finally, I lay hands on her.
Finally, she rose.
Oh honey, oh baby
My daughter’s in the cardiac ICU,
a team of doctors, hands moving over her, swift, precise,
as I choose the wines for my son’s wedding, and the baby
points to watermelon on the counter and cobbles her syllables
into warmn warmn. Her eyelashes so long, they look like
some kind of gorgeous frilled underwater creatures.
The ICD in my daughter’s chest shocked her six times
before the ambulance got there. They say it’s like
being kicked by a horse. She started with,
I’m okay, but… the way my mother taught us
to introduce terror. And she’ll probably be okay.
She probably will. She called when I was wheeling the baby
back from the bakery, the baby was gnawing on a hunk of croissant
and its buttery flecks dropped to her chest, gold and soundless
in the din of the traffic on Mission.
Oh honey, oh baby, I kept repeating, as though the words
could long jump all the cities between us.
In our yard, my wife is filling five-gallon buckets with gravel
to hold up the poles of the chuppah
that will make a home for the bride and groom
as satin streamers lift in the winds. My daughter is happy
she can watch the ceremony from her room.
If she’s too weak she’ll see the video later. The baby
will wear pink shoes and toss yellow petals
with a vigorous huff, the way we taught her
to throw scratch for the chickens. My son will kiss his wife
and I will watch them kiss. And kiss again.
A poet once wrote despair and praise
are like the rising of two wings that beat together.
Evidently, I am flying.
Homage to the Dead Man
for Marvin Bell
Live as if you were already dead.
– Zen admonition
The dead man has been practicing for this all his life.
Even as he floated in amniotic waters, the cells of his nails and hair stiffened.
The dead man’s baby shoes were stitched from the skin of a calf.
His mother ladled the broth of chickens into his bowl.
He watched the summer sky ignite white hot and then slip through every shade of blue
until the trees resolved into inky spines.
The dead man has seen the dawn and demise of popular names.
He lost so much on the journey: umbrellas, neckties, sleep.
But ardor and abandon make up his nights.
As for handkerchiefs, he never carries one. But when you bring him your sorrow, the
earth turns more slowly.
The dead man smells snow falling and hears glaciers as they calve.
He can do both at the same time like singing and crying.
The dead man attends to leaves. The green leeching, the bright bodies falling.
The dead man knows newspapers are dead trees carrying news of dead bodies.
He tries to slide guns from the hands of the desperate and deranged.
The dead man insists that senators work a season in the strawberry fields.
He’s watched arms of dust and gas swirl out beyond Kentucky Fried Chicken,
out beyond refugees carrying babies, and wildfires raging in the west.
The twist at the center of that spiral disk is like two animals mating and a planet is born.
One day it will die. Fall prey to a hungry star or a violent neighbor.
In the meantime the dead man taps his foot as Sonny Stitt blows “Birth of the Blues.”
To the dead man honking geese and the clack of typewriter keys are music,
kids screaming on a tilt-a-whirl, the tick of a car’s hood as the metal cools down.
The dead man thinks mountains aren’t really serious.
If the dead man is afraid of death, he doesn’t show it.
These poems originally appeared in American Poetry Review.
