I’ve seen her,
but she hasn’t been back in a while, Lori says.
The mantle of mutinous leaves and stems
is a reflection of the blazing passion of spring.
I want to keep my heart that way,
recalling a wistful sentiment
of past innocence.
So many changes happen when we fall in love.
Our days are filled with passions, supplicating our lover
for more love, more,
and as years pass the vine leaves
of our well-gardened soul chill
like beggars’ rusty-edged cups
rattling against deserted-street curbs.
I toss crumbs to sparrows beneath the apple tree,
thinking of
the great concrete and iron baseball stadium in Wisconsin,
how Lori and her family took Gabe and me
to see the Brewers play,
a magical evening
of uniform composition,
from the white-chalked lines, to umpires, to players’ uniforms,
to the broad vista of infield and outfield clipped grass
beautiful as a bride and groom before the preacher taking vows,
the scoreboard, cheers and moans of the crowd,
hotdog hawkers and beer caterers,
me imagining
Little League kids whacking that ball,
skittering around bases—
game days
that’ll never be forgotten,
just as acrobatic marvels on the monkey bars and swingsets
or that first time upturned in a canoe at the lake,
fun times
that transcend all our adult worries and broken pledges,
experiences that tune our souls
to a poetry humming, hound-howling our lives
at the moon;
how our lives fill the empty nest of each day,
brim it with mottled-egg dreams of our naive childhood
that ripen our lips like long-ago first kisses,
reddening as the years gray and wither,
and aged twigs begin to fall from the nest.
IT’S AN EASY MORNING
In the overcast sky, in those clouds
that hang over the Sandia Mountains,
a sax blows notes like raindrippings
from pine needles, darkening boulders
reminiscent of medieval churches
with worn tapestries, shimmering blue
glass altar objects, feathery
designs in the altar stonework,
making me think of loves I’ve lost,
loves who committed suicide—
in solemn procession through my memories
cloaked parishioners under hypnosis
carrying broken hearts to outside grottos
where the Virgin Mary smiles
out on field birds
and livestock sluggishly wakening at dawn.
I praise short lives, and believe
their souls blend into the gray
Rio Grande, coursing between broad,
hefty cottonwoods that crowd the banks,
emptying into the ocean
where I hear them whisper
when I walk the beach,
what my expectations are,
asking if I’ve changed,
do I believe in God,
ebbs and tides of their voices
irreplaceably etched in my bones,
exhorting me to write
as real as the sand my feet print.
SOMETIMES I LONG FOR
THE SWEET MADNESS
The mystery that would spiral
my soul into a seashell
some seafaring explorer
would blow in his coming,
his arrival, his company,
his joy, his discovery.
I carry myself out in winter light
hoping music of any kind finds me,
leads me into its song,
just a note scored on paper
some child somewhere
in some faraway country
cries out at sunrise.
I MOVE THROUGH
the day in a fog, realizing
unless my fingers touch something
I’m lost. Unless I pick up a scent of coffee
or my eye catches the honeysuckle tendril blossom
swaying softly by the outside gate, my life
rattles hollow and haltingly.
I’m used to
passionate engagement, not this boredom.
Even my dog has slowed; how he used to
wander, thrashing out fowl from fields,
barking robustly, blue flames spiraling
from his ears and short tail:
he’s a bird dog in a rabbit world,
and his age is starting to show in his lazy,
closing eyelids, in the way he muses
whether he should rise when I come out
with his food. Could it be this suburb we live in?
We both count the days when we can move again
by the river, well up in the mountains,
away from all this order and structure,
to piss freely in the yard, to lay back on rocks
and stare at the stars, caressing stones
as if they were a lover’s hair.
I AM UNEASY
this morning,
my heart a radar disc assaulted by strange
blips and beeps from quiet suburban streets
and cleansed, law-abiding citizens.
Even their dogs are shampooed and combed,
which I don’t criticize
since mine are grungy, mean-eyed, bore-tempered,
claw-tusked mongrels
who don’t give a shit at midnight: barking curs.
I suppose like me they feel ill at ease
with this altar-boy life.
One of the many defects I have
is I chew my fingernails, chewed to the cuticles,
snubbed-and-clipped, blunt buns
I nibble and yank at
unable to resist the morsel of torn flesh
or sharp fragment of fingernail,
spitting a piece out of the window,
tapping the steering wheel with bloody fingers
as I drive into the crazy city
acting like a trained, bill-paying citizen
when I’m really a bandit wanting to blow up
the Gas, Electric, and Telephone Company buildings.
THE FIRST HARD COLD RAIN
came battering
over the west mesa dunes and black volcanic rocks,
west from Gallup clattering the decrepit
shag-steer corrals. The sound of
bailing wire whipping windows
in the suburbs woke me,
and I want to thank the Lord for this
miserable morning, beautiful
in its dark raging, staining
mock-adobe, stucco-suburban two-stories
where lights in windows flick on
and responsible parents rise
to breakfast and work.
I’ve been anything but responsible,
neglecting laws, cursing authority,
jeering meatless, ham-bone statesmen,
spewing my gangland rhetoric
cloaked in a smile
for cookie-jar enticements
/> and dinner bells ringing beans,
chili, and tortillas, but that’s not what makes
this morning so miserable.
You see, after the smoking,
teenaged, snub-nosed days cool,
and I find myself
comfortable in my destruction
and shortfall of accomplished goals,
the serpentine, blue-scaled rain snaps
the screen door and pops chimney tin,
shimmering streets I look out on through my window
in t-shirt and underwear. Memories
of old friends sharing Tokay wine
in Texas barns on alfalfa bales
come back to me, or traveling
in that beat-up car
when sunrise over Big Bend cliffs
made me believe in miracles
big as Texas. Realize:
I don’t need to be what you expected I should be,
nor apologize for my cat-burglarizing days
or my raccoon-pilfering-dog-food-
from-the-bowl-on-the-porch ways. Realize:
on dark, rainy mornings like this, men like me
are nothing more than birds in a fruit tree
they tried to chase away.
But we got to bite the ripest fruit first,
spoiled the farmer’s weekend at the grower’s market
when he had to explain to customers about them damn birds
that got his fruit, trying everything to keep us away
from gorging on life. We
who refused to be caged canaries
didn’t mind getting our feathers wet
just to feel what it might be like
to fly into the storm.
Storm-ravaged, that’s the image I was looking for
when I said goodbye to my son this morning
as he was leaving for school,
my youngest still asleep in bed, when I made space
for my children to start their journey.
I don’t mind this miserable, cold rain
so beautiful in its discomfort,
its sweet ravage familiar to me
from those steel-toed, heel-rocking,
bloody-knuckle years when I rode
at night through the Sandia Mountains
whurrumphing my Harley, gatling-gunned back,
throttling for a taste of real life,
to fly like a bird. Call it art,
antisocial. I call it love.
PART 3
IN ’98
How all the beauty
ended up out
on the garden trellis
like an unused fishing net,
my dreams rusting, red tricycles
in backyard weeds,
dry-docked old boats on bricks,
stray dogs chasing cars
that keep getting hit.
GHOST READING IN SACRAMENTO
For days I feel a ghost
trailing me, memories aching and joyous,
from kitchen to basketball courts
to walking paths to driving around town,
a presence hovers about me
like the incipient, tight-furled rosebud
on the verge of breaking free, and I realize
miracles come in colors, soft bruises—
the mean scowl of a drunk
in a corner booth in a bar,
the elation a kid feels freed
of morning chores, leaping and running
out to the playground. I feel startled,
surrounded by memories,
like one of those sailors who finally comes ashore
to kneel before a humble altar, surrendering to feelings
that the world is too large for him to see it all, a man
whose heart once radiated stamina, strength, and firmness
yet now like a sail is folded to the mast:
from Charlie whirling in old songs
mimicking oldies but goodies
to Gilbert’s miner’s grubbing for gold
in his coal-shaft past
to your solitary dance
in a room filled with dreams
to David’s hunting through jungles of cells
tracking a cure for AIDS
to that guy in Sacramento
who made us all realize something more beyond ourselves,
who drew our thinking out of our eyes
in tears, his voice a sudden catching,
kindling and flame,
reminding us of our own flickering journey.
THE TRUTH BE KNOWN
I quit writing to study cooking,
to learn how to make a delicious tortilla,
to devote my time to creating magnificent gardens,
fragrant, enchanting patios for friends
designed with the moon and stars in mind.
Down at the San Jose Community Center,
I shoulder a satchel brimming with poems
I’ve composed to teach kids how to read and write.
I buy them pizza and soda,
to make writing a pleasurable experience,
associate it with food, friendship, and laughter.
The next morning I wander store aisles,
reading book spines, searching for poetry
to give to adults pursuing their GEDs,
but the poetry either lionizes the poet
as a savior of Mexicans
crossing the border
or makes the images so exotic
it compares the ordinary fork and spoon
with dormant volcanoes,
losing my attention in the process.
We need a shoe to be a shoe,
for the poet to describe the foot
inside, the miles walked, the weariness
that seeps into toes, heel, and calf,
the tired dreams those feet lug every day.
I return to my abandoned cabin,
become a wild man
dancing Irish jigs to nature,
babbling nonsensical Yeats rhymes to myself.
POETS CAN STILL HAVE
A GOOD HEART
and have a past riddled with violence,
a strong heart and have known addiction,
a good heart and have known drunks and thieves.
Do this: stand
before a group of Uppidees,
admit you know someone with AIDS,
someone in prison,
someone homeless,
someone with mental illness,
someone handicapped.
It means
while most turn away their hearts
you face life, use the sweet impulse of pulsing blood
to live your life,
not to live a lie.
I’m in the garden this morning
pleased the roses are so bountiful,
awed by the lilac’s treasure of fragrance,
honeysuckle vines flourishing,
climbing over each other up the wall
toward sunrays, shivering with hungry freedom
for the open-road radiance.
I don’t remember my dreams this morning
but keep a journal next to my bed in case I do.
Its empty pages welcome images, voices
sifted and tunneled through my waiting pen.
I intend
to compose poems
of friends who died in recent years.
I keep talking to them, hearing them in my head,
admirable acquaintances I wish to honor,
ones who stood, who labored against oppression
with heels dug in dirt against retreat:
voices, brilliant comets
subverting the dark.
IT MAKES SENSE TO ME NOW
That evening
I drove down from San Francisco to Los Angeles
and dropped in to visit Luis,
who told me:
It’s your turn to carry the torch.
Years later
the significance of those words
flared like a stick-match in the dark
the day Paz gave me a painting
of Nahuatl Dancers
tethered by the ankles, who fly
around the pole.
The lead Dancer, El Maestro, stands on top:
he’s back from visiting the sun,
bearing a message for us on earth.
At dawn
I make my way downstairs
to make coffee, nodding
my respects to El Maestro:
bunches of flowers on his hat,
yellow/red/green/blue headband tassels
ribbon out in wind.
He beats a small drum and blows his flute,
a single eagle flaps by clouds behind him
as he balances on the pole;
the reddening, orange-gold sky ablaze
with light.
I wonder what his message is
and how it pertains to me.
Now
I drive twice a week to San Jose barrio
volunteering to teach reading and writing,
and I remember
one evening
I asked the children and parents to write a letter poem
describing their journey to America:
risking lives, homes burned, fleeing death squads
after husbands and brothers were murdered,
the women raped. I’ll never forget
when
this little girl, too shy to read aloud
her praise and love for her mother,
had me sit on the floor next to her
as she stood on a makeshift stage
in a bookstore. When she uttered that first word
a glint of light sparked across her brown eyes
into the world, as if it were golden
speech without sound. I sat amazed
at the light in her eyes, igniting a memory in me—
Singing at the Gates Page 8