Each new year brings Now this garden grief Nourished by regret Each year, this day, here— Standing, kneeling, sitting—I Spend tears, words, wishes All meaningless now, In the barren garden grief Flowers never bloom Seven years gone now-- Nothing roots, though it has tried, In the garden grief inside
Consequences of time
Climb and mount
About the throat,
Following the path
Of arteries and veins,
And as if by magic,
Enter into the blood
To provide a dram bit
Of bitter choking poison
To the will of moving blood
That slows and stills
In the knowing.
Marshal forces Of the earth, moon, orbits of planets, Laws of time, All we hold mighty and true, Stop everything in its tracks, Turn it all back Before the start of any of it, Falling away, Marshaled from memory.
I first wrote this a few years ago after reading Elizabeth Bishop’s work once again. Well, after revisiting Mary Oliver and gaining familiarity with Pablo Neruda this summer, I once again returned to Bishop’s work and then had to re-watch Reaching for the Moon. So I decided to dig this one out and tweak it and revise.
In this thing called losing, Bishop said we become masters And that losing isn’t a disaster. No, not a disaster. Losing socks and such stuff. I’ve lost earrings, bracelets, Expensive ones too, didn’t care Beyond maybe a minute or two, And never was it a disaster. And no pain beyond a stab of nostalgia Did I have upon saying goodbye To three houses and two cities, And never did I feel it a disaster. And yes, it was no disaster To bury my mother, A father who really wasn’t, The man who really was, First one brother, then the other, Then lastly, a wife. With each, my body and soul Savaged by a catastrophic hurricane, yes. But no, no disaster. No disaster is it, I’ll admit, For a tiny bit of soul to erode As I buried each. But nothing, nothing did I ever master. Except, maybe this— I did not look for them- Looking to forget them Since they were gone, Emptied of this earth. No, I did not look to forget While driving home In darkness under a full moon Lighted with regret Of a new unfamiliar scent. Yet the swirling of this sad scent Is no, no real disaster. No real disaster is it— That I look to forget A lost return now. A return to life Captured, fleeting, lost-- Filled with a scent Of hope or a fool’s thought— Matters not but now lost. And in this thing Called losing, In which I am well-schooled, As are we all, I have tried to make an art, To make an art of all this loss. Yes, this may be no real disaster, But Bishop lied. There is no art in losing, No art at all, That I can find to master.
to feel that glow,
let it flow within
and know in peace,
the truth held within it,
rolling slow warmth
like the sun in springtime–
that glow, that warmth—
nearly, yes nearly extinct,
such a rarity to be found
though some try incandescent tricks
in mocking mimicry
its rarity rivals the hunt for new alabaster,
which always served a cold master
and there are no dreams glowing still
of truth to be held within the fragile
beaks of hummingbirds forever
searching the lush gardens of Babylon
for a heady nectar that does not exist
When the prowess of early morn
And the touch of dawn’s fingertips
Overwhelm my heart and soul,
I am reminded of some story
I heard somewhere as a child—
From a book or cartoon
Or some sitter’s wild
Imagination of bedtime tales,
The story of the gargoyle
Who was beckoned
To a place in heaven
By an angel fair.
And there the gargoyle stayed
For a day or three or more
Or maybe a week or three.
For a moment,
The gargoyle knew sweetness and joy,
Thinking, perhaps, for once, just this once,
The universe had smiled down
Upon one of the gargoyle race,
And felt the cracking of stone begin.
But the gargoyle, being a gargoyle,
A somewhat silent, stony creature,
Soon bored the angel who withdrew,
Having angel business to attend too.
The gargoyle knew. Knew from the start too,
But had hoped it was not to be held true–
That angel and gargoyle were not a pairing to be made.
Such creatures being out of each other’s realm
Cannot last but a season or two.
So, the gargoyle fell to earth again
To crouch forever upon a building,
Keeping watch upon the city and the sky.
The gargoyle knew this was the nature of things
And thought itself blessed for ever having known
The sweetness of an angel.
For what angel had ever doted upon a gargoyle?
The gargoyle asked.
For years, the gargoyle crouched,
Watching the city and the sky,
Remembering, reliving the sweetness
Known of an angel.
Yet wishing such sweetness had never been tasted,
Never been touched,
Forever was too long to remember
The memories encased in stone
Where wind and rain would never touch,
Would never wear them away.
Thus, the gargoyle paid the price
For allowing stone to crack.
Winds and rains came today.
I tried to follow the trail
They made.
But on this first day of May,
I was not strong enough–
To let the wind take me,
To allow pelting rain to abrade away
All my accumulated grime.
No freedom could I find
Within this day of winds and rains.
Pulled my anchor from this harbor
Years ago.
Yet the current pulls me back,
Some irritant speck,
Yet to yield a pearl,
In the soul,
Some rough edged
Needless need chafes away
Until confession is made
And a pilgrimage to graves
Must be paid—
There is no why to this–
This steel wrought laundry list
To be run down and checked through
A visit, a meal eaten
At the landmark restaurant,
Where new owners chiseled hieroglyphics
over a history of years when
the landmark lived across
A narrow brick paved street
And my family lived upstairs,
Erasing my mother’s sacrifice
Of bloody fetal tissue,
My fraternal twin,
On the bathroom floor there
While I hung on to be born.
But such bloody sacrifice
Doesn’t sell cheeseburgers,
Greek salads, and over easy eggs,
A fairytale of family ownership-
Sells well and makes for spots
On reality television shows.
A drive by the childhood home,
Sentimentality at its highest,
Revisit the torture chamber
It became—
A wooden yardstick and when it broke,
A metal one I had to buy to be taken
Across my back by a drunken mother
Until the skin broke open to bleed.
.
Why the drive by?
Who the hell knows?
When all I’d like to see
Is it all disappear—
Then the statue of Christ
In Hopkins Hospital lobby, a must see.
Where I stood as a teen
Confessing the darkest
Thing upon my soul—
A part of me wishing
My mother had died
In that surgery of fifteen hours
The other part thanking Jesus
she had lived.
Then the graves,
To place some flowers,
Talk a bit to the air,
Turn my soul inside out
To find it dusty and dirty again.
We can think our souls clean
Until turning them inside out—
That is where we find the grime
Of all the living done.
I visit my brothers,
The man who was my real father,
Then on to the man I thought was,
And then my mother,
The saint she was,
The monster she became.
At her grave, my soul aches the most,
Tweezing thorns left from her old rose bushes and my own,
Turning itself inside out,
Leaving all the grime and dirt behind,
Or so it feels.
Then on to visit with what is left of the living.
And though, I love the living,
There is little, so little–
To charm me into staying.
But the currents, the tides
Of some blood element,
Like an ancient memory,
Bring me back
From time to time.
This is Baltimore—
for me.
Give me a minute.
Let me have another cup of coffee,
Will you?
Before I slosh on after,
Down the trail–
Again– maybe.
You say, a guard now stands there,
Of the newer variety,
Who advises of the locust thorns,
The kind that pierces the shoe
And can go straight into your foot?
Could have used that advice–
Once or twice
Maybe thrice
In life.
But now I’ve rubbed my thumbs
Over the sharp tipped thorns of regret
Until callouses formed.
Then I moved on to other
Fingertips until bloody, raw,
Proving to myself the sharpness of thorns.
So now, you say this stony guardian warns
Of all the thorns
Along the paths and trails?
Might this guardian advise of a thornless trail?
I really wouldn’t care, but the soles of my feet
Are without callous, and I’d like to keep them so.
Send me down a muddy, sloshy trail where
I might just fall and break my neck.
That would be simply fine,
If the soles of my feet
Remain as soft and unmarred
as a baby’s behind.
Sit among the willows,
drifting in ghostly silence,
each wrapped comforted
by misery’s blanket.
Except I am no longer,
listening to words
carefully scripted,
tumbling into deceit’s
delicious dishes
easily prepared
by your thin lips mouthing words
filled with ghost meaning.
Regurgitated regrets
bitter in the soul and heart–
I can tell you that.
A thing you would not
ever know, catalyst of misery,
your starring role.
Except–
tell-tale signs of age
now crackle through songs of your
sweet, deceitful voice,
makes harder to catch
victims snared in misery
of life trials made.
Stop floating among
the willows, thinking yourself
Calypso casting
spells of delicious
deceit, when you’ve aged into
Macbeth’s witch drifting
in the ghostly fog of ego.
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