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.

The Encyclopedic History of Pipe Tobacco in the Poetic Arts

Scratch the pipes; cut to the whiskey

Poesis, poem of life

Poesis, product of strife:

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy meter, ink thy lies?

In what cellars dank and dark

Burnt the fire of thy art?

On waxen wings dare he aspire?

Damn the heat! Damn the fire!

And what vision and what wit,

Could twist the meaning of thy script?

And then thy words began to beat:

Damn the accent, damn the feet!

Damn the meter, damn the rhyme,

In what sonnet was thy time?

What the ballad? What dead foot

Dare its buried rhythm loot?

When the bard threw down his lines

And water’d English with his iambs,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who set the bar, believe?

Poesis, poem of life

Poesis, product of strife:

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy meter, ink thy lies?