In the mirror at the bottom
my face is only a quivering shadow,
the sky behind it clear but circumscribed.

I climb down with a bucket
and scoop it a quarter full. The ladder
is hauled up. The sand grows suddenly soft.

Some other voice replies,
Oh no you’re not. It’s bad.
You don’t like it.

No one listens to that voice,
the first voice says.

So you scurry to the basement,
to the storeroom in the back
where the old twine, twelve oak boards,
and mildewed maple syrup
lie bearded in dust

and pack a bowl
with sticky bud,
light it up.

Through the haze
you remember now why
it might have been a bad idea.

If you could, now
you’d peel back the caul
covering up the question
you can’t remember
to ask.

You want to feel better.
That’s all.

But covering up that feeling
is some ancient anger,
punky with moisture and drought
in wrong proportions.
Or ossified, steely, or just really,
really.what? Hard.

And covering up that anger
is the present one,
just a few hours old.

And underneath them both
a little fear.

And underneath the little fear
a bigger one.

But anyway, none of what now occurs
to you occurs for very long.

Giddy with the tingle
of basement molds
and the lurid 40 watt
rainbows of the naked bulbs
you rise into the steam
and conversation
of the packed kitchen.

At dinner you make
silly conversation,
give your in-laws
one more story
to layer over
who everybody
thinks you are.

I don’t know, and shuck the inquiry. I don’t watch TV, mostly ignore the top half of front page’s bait. Murders and gossip aren’t news to me, though they’re hard to escape.

Next day, on the radio, between segments on Afghanistan and holiday breads, the local spot tells how the husband’s now suspect, a professor of business and media psychology. An uncontrolled holiday argument, I assume.

It makes one reflect on the fragility of our natures, one’s unassuming neighbors, what’s ticking inside. Then quickly return to troubles of our own: rude drivers, the question of the perfect present for my wife, my own piles of papers to be graded. Every year this season grows less and less forgivable. “Let’s stop giving and getting,” I silently wish. “Let’s do something meaningful, help a family in need, write poems for each other, plant a tree.”

On Thursday, not a word, all is still on the matter.

Today, driving home, for the first time I hear the murdered wife’s name. I knew her, a photographer, an adjunct at the same college as he, but known better as wilderness defender, fighting fiercely to save the same woods where her mate delivered his final irony.

I stop at the Christmas Fair where the alternative groups sell Peruvian caps, handmade soaps, Tibetan scarves. Declaring self-reliance, fair trade, peace. The table where she would have sat selling gel prints of the Ponds in all seasons now inhabited by a sculptor who has risen from the waiting-list, peddling his coffee-can characters.

Sometimes you come home and you realize you left your feelings running and the whole first floor is flooded with feelings and you rush upstairs to turn the feelings off but you slip on the stairs and there you are, drowning in all the feelings on the first floor again, until you grab onto the tv that’s floating around in them and you catch your breath and get back on your feet, and then it’s back up the stairs, more carefully this time, and you finally get the feelings shut off. “Oh jeez,” you realize, “my feelings bill is going to be through the roof this month!” Good thing it wasn’t the hot feelings tap, you think, trying to look on the bright side.

Tuesday we beheld the beauty
of actual trees and rocks, palms
and fingers, voices, eyes.
Learned to guard against their pricks.

Wednesday we invented a fire
swaddled in mouth shapes. A pride
swelled within and was crushed. Some
chose a salve of sadness, some dominion.

On Thursday the mirror cracked.
Our trees withered or drowned.
We nevertheless denied more
than a passing interest.

By Friday we knew better. Some
lived in surrender. Some in shame only.
Some in resignation that still was blind.
Each an anchor weighing on the next.

Saturday. Did we wonder if grey skies
would part as a matter of course
or faith? Did we confuse the Sunday
of our first bliss with our last?

December 2, 2009

That’s the truth of it. At least when you really
need them. The other truth is that most days
there are plenty. Copying wrong answers,

sending pictures of their naked girlfriends
to all the guys on the team, and then some,
until her ultimate act of affection

is known from here to Naples, Fla.
Or swatting each other with hats because
that’s how guys say they love each other,

and besides, it really pisses you off.
Or stealing cash from the Senior Class
cash box, candy from the weak kid, or any

of the other idiocies of adolescence.
But when you really need them,
they’re quiet as ghosts in November.

In March your ex serves you up
with new papers, just before
the custody settlement’s complete,

just as you’re signing on a house,
just when your investments finally tank.
In April your mother goes for surgery

and comes out locked up like a budgie
in a vise – backed up, unconscious
for two days, then cranky and alien

for seven. Almost not your mother.
Then the clock rolls around to May
and you’re wondering, What next?

Why me? and Who made this big mess?
And you can’t stop wondering because
all of a sudden the knuckleheads have gone

silent. They look only at their own papers,
and keep their cell phones in their pants.
The till comes up even on Friday.

You stand there at the front of the room
almost crushed by the quiet,
the obedience. You want some chaos

to break out, the sweet distraction
of boyish mayhem that you can still
with a certain slant of eyebrow,

or a pen and report in triplicate
at worst. But they’re quiet, as though
they know something’s up,

something big. They’re like animals
in that way – wily and sweet at once,
and sometimes you wish you could

sock them in the arm, just a little.

Even the big pieces from the trunk
that I couldn’t manage to get a wedge in.

When Andy came to get the part of the pile
I’d promised him, I was out on an errand.

When I got back, he had split it all, even
the big ones. That was okay. Maybe I had

inadequate tools. Or maybe it was me.
It didn’t really matter. I had done what I could,

and so had he. We shook hands, and he left.
It was so much easier than love.