 1
ah, back then
who you were was dark,
and curly haired, and
full of dells and smiles.
Then you had all
within your arms.
**
three centuries in the making
see how time fits the brow
of the ship, the sails filled with wind,
the breath of God more than
a prayer mouthed by the sailors
in their hammocks at night
and the stars!
Can you look back
through the haze of incarnation
to the way night filled the sky?
Stretching beyond the sweat-stained
decks, deep velvet, full of secret corners
**
you slept with me only once,
though to say we slept, well, no,
yet it was dark and clouds
feathered our limbs
**
I call out, phantom visitor!
I feel my chest move
complete the mystery —
lives apart and centuries now gone
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 2
Every day he awakes
to a world that hurts him.
His smile a brave flag
flying above the empty fort,
his ammunition: shrugs,
shuttered eyes, and words
thought of too late
that bounce
inside his active brain,
painful as glass.
His enemy them but not just
them, his enemy also
his own unthinking
hands and words,
a mind that skips
about, missing connections,
crammed too full with books and
math equations and
magic cards —
the sweeping vistas
all the roads
where he shoulders
a backpack and cycles,
friendless.
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 3
Why can’t I let go of it,
that failure that made me a fan?
That long lost summer
when everything seemed fresh
and possible, a new Boston,
and me new to it,
when the streets emptied
and in every bay window
the blue light, the blare,
the roar rising up, each catch
and pitch a leap of all
our faiths, explosive nights and
the morning conversations
on the Green Line, the excited
d’ja see? can’ya believe?
the whole of New England
out on their tree lined streets,
rubbing their eyes in hope
the radios on the beach towels,
the girls riding up Prudential Tower
knowing the stats, the scores,
the last few days when no one
spoke of anything else,
and then that final exciting,
intense, cruel moment
when it was still ours to lose
so many thousand eyes
following the ball
unbelieving, the despair
escaping all our throats.
So many years later
still I cannot let go.
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 4
In time, the reasons for this
will become as faded
as your first memory of home,
shadowy image
blurred blue carpet
immense stair tower
the way light hides in corners
the pain will release
finger by finger
turning you to the void
of other days
mornings will come
when you will wake
and think of something else
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 5
Balancing two suitcases,
she got off the bus —
picked the town by its honky-tonk name,
following a fifties ideal from some
soft-cover, soft-core romance
and all those sit-coms:
little house, picket fence,
children tow-headed, freckled,
honey, I’m home…
To leave the neon backwash
that was all she knew,
she bought three sundresses
and a pair of calypso slacks,
got on her back once more
for the price of the ticket
and now, here she was.
Little houses crowded
right up to the sea,
the Main Street candy shop
had a screen door that banged,
she ignored the satellite dishes,
the tourists with their cell phones,
applied for a job at the local stationery store,
selling postcards and pinwheels,
put her hair in braids or wore it
smoothly back with a blue headband,
walked home in the purple twilight
to the windswept boarding house
honey, I’m home…
but he found her, anyway,
coming up from behind,
the big black car crowding the narrow street.
He knocked down the postcard stand,
made her laugh at the screaming proprietor
making a mess on his own floor.
After awhile, she threw the pinwheel away,
walked the streets under neon lights,
kept the sway of the sea in her hips,
called men honey even when they told her to stop.
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 6
The first a memory of New Orleans,
a bench in the thriving square the stage:
the singing rich, the notes rise up
a thick gumbo voice all bass and throb
beside the fountains, the palm readers
casting forth mascared, dripping beads,
the artists scanning for a hopeful face,
to ply the tourists with the stuff of dreams
and the third song soars and makes
the dome of sky an amphitheater; pennies
count for gold, the buzz greets her,
walking up with her guitar
behind him, the world wrapped inside their hug,
the jazz they make, not tinsel for the rubes,
a deep, abiding tambourine and strum;
the crowd deepens and the pigeons, ephemeral, all rise.
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 x 7
The day the dream died,
I sat under the mulberry tree in
yellowed lace, dainty biting into
bread and butter.
The day that hope died,
you were far distant, your sword
steel gray and wrapped
in rags for a scabbard.
I refused to answer the door
when you knocked,
you would not stoop
to call my name.
The day love died,
I buried you, silent, drank
wormwood —
you danced on my grave,
kissing the country lasses,
toasting the boys with flagons.
Hate cast its milk-blue shadow
as we passed one other
alone together in a mulberry dream.
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 8
How else would we know?
So few signposts in our lives
this emphatic, the single
word vibrates off
and rings, silent,
eight-sided in our ears,
reddening our field of
vision, until the whole world
seems contained by it.
Stop.
A heavy clasp upon the shoulder,
the small palm curls, trusting,
inside a guiding hand.
Look.
Danger comes too close daily;
there’s never enough time
to be truly cautious.
Plunge in, trusting life
to pay off, luck to hold.
Listen.
The sirens of our lives do fade.
Turn away from the highways.
Follow the line of stop signs
through the summer streets.
Turn in. Go slow now. Stop.
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