The Angel in the Larch
We don’t allow gods in our house,
but maybe we should. The angle
of light is correct. The shadows
cast by the larch absorb
excess heat. An angel seated
on a bough regards us with pity.
Yet our tiny house lacks room
for the alpha god most people
hire to stir their soup and souls.
We could hire a dumpster to fill
with heaps of books to make room
for a mermaid sort of creature
that could sleep in the basement
wrapped in a damp sheet. For some,
maybe for us, this is god
or goddess enough to encourage
our kindly if mournful instincts.
But would caring for such a creature
endear us to the universe?
This is the day’s great problem,
casting scrap iron in the streets
and inciting wounded people
to argue weak propositions.
The angel in the larch is silent,
offering neither admonition
nor advice. Ask it in for lunch.
This would be a small step toward
a more spiritual experience
we could deposit in our account.
Angels don’t take up any space
and they only eat angel food,
of which we have a pantry full.
The morning feels soggy after
a night of rain-colored rain.
The birdsong is tenuous and wan,
the daffodils droop on their stems,
but the angel looks crisply ironed
and a credit to its species.
That String-Thing
For many years I’ve dragged a string
fastened to some part of me
I can’t reach or see in a mirror.
Today, though, as I walk to the lake
it tautens, halting me in my tracks.
Sick of the last ideology,
I wield my pocketknife and cut
the string where it doesn’t hurt.
I hear a distant clatter of stone
as the colosseum topples in Rome
and the Parthenon in Athens
and Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
and the Great Wall of China.
Graves open in Boston, Salem,
and Brooklyn, releasing the spirits
I’ve admired and dreaded the most.
In the British Library, Karl Marx
returns with a puzzled expression,
and in Paris, Balzac prowls the streets,
taking copious, incisive notes.
With that long string cut, clothing
unravels on Manhattan streets,
exposing the most exquisite
and post-professional torsos.
Despite the chaos, I reach the lake
and step into the icy water
with a sigh of sudden content.
As carp try to nibble my toes
the stub-end of the string drops off,
leaving a puckered wound to heal
as slowly and scabbed as it wishes,
allowing me to mistake it
for some loving cosmic kiss.
Res Poetica
Another day slews into the ditch,
jolting its occupants
but suffering only slight damage.
That ship that ran aground
and blocked the Suez Canal,
stifling the China-Europe trade,
has been refloated. Meanwhile
the President has stayed upright
for several uneventful hours
and vaccination against the plague
continues at a moderate rate.
You feed baby food to the cat,
whose digestive system asks
the most awkward questions about
pet food from our local market.
I sit at the computer and fret
over weather and the stock market,
two factors I can’t unfold.
The light has hardened like a tusk.
Wind shivers standing timber
and tumbles birds from their nests.
My friends in the suburbs report
a sudden increase in crime
as noon shadows disappear
in the heightening spring glare,
exposing the existentialists.
Downtown where the subway lines
cross in perpetual rumbles
the odor of winter woolens
has already dissipated, leaving
only a whisper of dark nostalgia.
While you box the cat for a trip
to the vet I stare at the screen
and hope the constant turnover
of the calendar doesn’t apply
to fixed moments listed above.
Einstein’s Bicycle
Riding my bike in humid light,
I roll up the landscape behind me,
gouging a bottomless trench.
My bike is ordinary but works
in two dimensions, destroying
time and depth along the way.
Einstein foresaw this bicycle
and claimed that he invented it.
His friends in Princeton laughed,
but then no one has real friends
in Princeton except undergrads
fumbling through sexual adventures.
Einstein predicted that riding
this two-dimensional bicycle
would collect masses of matter
industrial sectors could process
into plastics so inert
they’d survive the hottest nova.
I’m not proud of complying
to this eco-hostile vision,
but am compelled to pump my bike
up the steepest hill, thereby
leveling it. The pain I inflict
on the rural landscape will heal,
but when I enter the city and scrape
the heavy streets into hay rolls,
folding skyscrapers to fit
into breast pockets, stripping art
from museum walls, I’m spoiling
too many favorite geometries.
Exhausted, I park my bike and slump
into a coffee shop while mobs
stampede down to the harbor
to pray to the sea to repeal
the more passionate laws of physics
and grant us a last chance to think.
My Annual Superannuation
No words linger in my mouth.
The aftertaste is horrible,
but I smile my toothless smile
and pretend to pity the trees
broken by post-historical storms.
But they reject my solicitude—
too busy stabbing at the sky
with their naked and pointed stumps.
You urge me to speak, but crows
pre-empt whatever I think,
and their sudden punctuation
leaves no exclamation unexclaimed.
You insist on driving downtown
in our antique Chevy Impala,
which groans on rubbery springs
and coughs up broken spark plugs
every fifty miles or so.
You park this homely vehicle
the way you’d park a devilish
child at a daycare center.
Yes, I can still think in foolish
but utile metaphors any
high-school teacher would censor
with a slash of blood-red ink.
I’m too old to express the thoughts
of stubby trees and rusty sedans,
too shy to shout birds from the sky,
but I can still claim enough
air space to make my reeking breath
a force to be reckoned with.
Yes, coffee and a plain doughnut
would settle my current unease.
Despite the efforts of thunderstorms
and the quick dim shadows of crows
following wherever I go,
I’m not that difficult to please.
Ace Tunnel
Drilled through a haunted mountain,
Ace Tunnel sighs a fetid breath.
The railroad abandoned it
and laid fresh track around it
because the murmur of the ghosts
amplified to drown out diesels
and the rock walls glowed with colors
geologists couldn’t assay.
Let’s walk through it. Moss carpets
the floor, thick pelt muffling footfall,
although voices resound in depth.
Our flashlights seem too feeble
to dent the dark, but the glimmer
of rare minerals incites us
with a sub-sexual fervor
unusual in people our age.
Three-mile trek, groundwater dripping
and the undertone of ghost
a tremor almost too slight to feel.
You aren’t afraid of anything
except the slight possibility
of a ghost train running us down.
We stumble on the rotten ties
and splash through stagnant puddles.
The phosphorescence flickers
and tints our faces corpse pale.
Despite its mildew atmosphere,
the tunnel’s innocent enough,
brisk and healthy rats dashing
over our shoes. At the far portal
we gaze out into a landscape,
then turn to retrace our steps.
But we see no glimmer ahead,
where we entered the tunnel,
and blank granite where we stood
in sunlight moments ago.
Ace Tunnel has sealed us inside
itself. The question now is which
of us will first be digested,
and whether one will suffice.