The Ontology of Three-Year-Olds in Mass

You ask me, “How was mass,”

and I don’t know what to say.

Are you asking about the homily,

whether the priest inspired, entertained?

Are you asking about the quality

of the presence of I AM?

How should I respond?

What could I ever say?

But I think that what you mean is something like

how did the kids behave?

I’m glad you’re home;

welcome back

to the day-to-day.

But still, you framed it up that way:

How was mass?

I don’t know whether to answer the question that you meant

Or the one you asked.

Shall I say that God is always God,

that mass is always good

(even if my countenance betrays my mood

which perhaps betrays a lack of faith

perhaps because the two year old

perhaps attempted to abscond

with, perhaps, the purse and hair

of the parishioner she could reach

with her toes—

can you imagine the indignity of someone else’s

toes

in your

hair

at mass—

that she—the two-year-old—forgot to put her panties on,

and I only noticed when she found a way

to hang

upside-down

from the pew, my face, the missal

by her toes—

yes, you’re counting right:

that’s three times I had to turn her over,

peel her from my face—

why, I wonder, did the Almighty see fit

to give toes to toddlers)?

These things have nothing

whatsoever

however

to do with the metaphysical question you just asked.

And so I stutter in the kitchen,

end up shooed away.

“She doesn’t understand these kinds of conversations,”

I hear him say apologetically,

and I’m grateful because here I am,

months later,

still wondering:

How was mass?

And thinking

(irrelevantly)

Thank God she’s three!

The End of Beauty

We would stand on the lawn looking up

like the opening scene of an alien show

every day.

We looked strange, I knew,

but I couldn’t help wondering where

the neighbors were—

how could they ignore this?

As other-worldly as an alien

invasion or a Raphael,

as fleeting as childhood

and immortality,

a gift fit for gods

but we live close enough to peek

to taste the spilled ambrosia

to see the colors altered

by an altered sky.

Why would we go past this,

go beyond—to what?

We don’t believe in a beyond-truth or

a beyond-goodness, but past

doesn’t always mean surpassed:

maybe we’ve just missed our turn?

Maybe if we stand on the lawn,

they’ll notice us, and no one

will overshoot their destination

or at least they can make a u-turn

at the end of the street,

pull over before

they give up and deem beauty medieval,

antiquated,

before they decide we’re too wise for thunder gods

and roses. I used to walk past

them, there at the front of the grocery store

where penitent and forgetful men can buy

redemption

before they get to the chips and soda

and forget.

I used not to notice;

they’re not advertised, after all, to women.

We’re meant to walk past,

Distracted by children and grocery lists,

beautiful bursting blossoms

invisible to us

(except for office parties,

customs of social investment,

when we walk into a separate place

with petty cash

and make petty choices

for the requisite office acknowledgements).

We manage to see

past beauty

even when it surrounds us.

But if you stop to touch or smell,

you'll find roses

are soft like silk

and hold memory like picture books,

like the soft folds of my grandmother’s face.

How did we ever start with stone and papyrus,

when the touch of a rose petal holds

more memory and allusion

than a library filled with coded paper,

when it must have been that way

in Egypt, too?

But we’ve gone beyond beauty. Why?

Because we’ve found something better?

Never.

We in this century have realized that dancing in the rain,

leaning over to sniff the rose,

touching the shiny flow of silk

and satin in the fabric store,

the use of exclamation marks!

Sensory stimulations are childish,

And the worst thing in this post-modern world

is a child.

The Problem of Burying the Dead

Tell your children when they’re born

That now someone will have to bury them,

Death more clearly foreseen, more demonstrable

than birth.

Every time a person is born, a problem is created, re:

who will bury them.

They cannot bury themselves

(so much for bootstraps)

And their progenitors are never

happy volunteers.

In fact, it is usually the progenitors

seeking solutions to their own burial problems

in-house,

who compound the problem of their own birth.

Someone has to bury them,

so they breed.

Lt. Powell

When I was a kid, I was his Crunchy Girl,

And there was nothing but him and me,

Coffee on the porch.

When I was older, I began to realize I could reach through him,

Touch a World War.

I realized that his own memories would have

Touched veterans of the Civil War.

I did not come empty-handed, though—

Through me, he could touch the future.

What strikes me in the realization that we are pools,

Surfaces that go deep,

Is that his stories never focused on the

Major Events he’d witnessed,

Never on the World War

Or Vietnam

Or integration:

He told me how he struggled to make a living,

Buried the dead,

Fell in love.

Of all the stories he had to share,

Of all the things he had seen,

What he chose to pass to the future

Was the first sight of a long-legged girl

with black curls

in a yellow linen dress.

Theory of Education

Set before their eyes beautiful things.

Let them hear beautiful music.

When gray concrete-ugly engulfs them

With landlords and the unemployment rate,

When last year’s emergencies

Are still this year’s considerations,

When the compass fails to bloom,

And there’s no pavement, road, or sign,

They will find home

In the forty-first symphony,

In the Mona Lisa’s smile.

Career Counseling

They told me not to write for a living,

to do it for no one but me.

I never heard anyone say to the preacher

His sermons should only be written for him,

Find a congregation to listen

By preaching submission to birds.

I never heard anyone say to the teacher

Her lessons should only be written for her,

Find a classroom to listen

By teaching addition to herds.

For years now I’ve written

These words on a page,

And nobody reads them but me.

For years now I’ve kept the words hidden

For everyone knows they’re a joke at best

Something unreal from a past we rejected.

Now I sit in the dark,

Drink scotch from the bottle

These are the things I do for me.

I don’t conquer the demons for free.

Oneness

so long now I have tried to think of it:

the luminous soft oneness of the race,

in human how we all the same and love,

as much as you, could I love anyone?

If I could see the Oneness then in them,

the thing I could the spark I see in you.

It’s dawned on me at last, at darkest dusk

how like the Oneness be reflected may

on sunset shells of lake, contained;

not each one all restrained to note in all

a single soft-sung harmony, your song,

though part again alone may never sung

be sing the only what-if piece you hold?

and lose?

Oed' und leer and cold das meer and dark,

das piece where harmony von meer your sang:

The sea is cold and dark.

Receding

It started with a sunset—

you thought that was the best place to ask

and a trip up into the mountains

canoeing over glass.

You receded just a little,

moving out of this world by degrees.

At first it was just the spring:

the blooming made you sneeze.

You and I wove wildflowers and stars and iloveyous:

the world was all around.

We had promised forever,

and the world still echoed our words.

There were summer barbecues

and walks upon the beach;

you receded somewhat more,

and we were cautious in our steps.

The world was still there in you,

glorious autumn pouring down,

photographs in rain,

but you were less in it.

I still felt no constraint,

because the receding happened bit by bit.

Only when the winter came ,

when all the days by artificial light were lit

when babies who’d tumbled in like heaven

had grown too big for bat and ball,

time somehow passed while you were sick—

only then did I recall

the last time we were in the world.

There’d been snow upon the mountains

and babies in our car.

There are no babies now,

no snow or mountains,

and quite a lot of time has passed

since we left the shadow of the peak.

When I go out, I go alone,

and even shelter fails to keep you warm.

Each day has become a waiting game

Of holding breath, but

when I recall the sunsets

and nights beneath the moon,

I realize with sudden clarity

that I am losing you.