At Gloaming Read online

  I see you at the periphery of the gathering,

  at the edge of the bonfire, seated on a hay bale,

  just this side of invisible,

  not quite here, not quite not here.

  Your presence is pervasive,

  though the fiddler’s dog sleeps peacefully

  beside the fiddler’s tapping toe,

  paying no attention to you at all.

  From All Appearances

  Roger’s family and friends

  gather together on the bank

  of La Prairie River,

  remember him

  with stories and songs,

  poems and prayers.

  Roger is the only one here

  who, from all appearances,

  is not here,

  though his presence is pervasive.

  It makes me wonder

  who else that isn’t here,

  is here.

  A Dream of Roger Young

  Old friend,

  thank you for visiting last night,

  and for bringing our long-gone dogs,

  Pluto and Frodo, with you

  for a romp in a sun-dappled wood,

  a splash in a singing creek,

  as we relived old times.

  I know how busy you must be

  with so many dreams to enter,

  so many people missing you.

  And I know it won’t be long

  before I join you,

  seeking sleeping lovers and friends,

  just to remind them to remember us

  as they wake with bemused smiles,

  bittersweet light in their hearts.

  A Poem at Ann’s Passing

  On the day of Ann’s passing

  crabapple trees dress in pink blossoms,

  each petal seemingly illuminated from within.

  Cat birds and cardinals sing their mating songs—

  glorious warbles sung with urgency and soul.

  On the night of Ann’s passing

  moonlight is eclipsed by shadow,

  the way the light dimmed in her eyes;

  but then, moonlight is re-kindled,

  the moon continues its journey

  like a shining spirit set free.

  Apple blossoms, song birds, return when they should,

  moonlight always triumphs over darkness.

  We are bequeathed beauty, song and light,

  to furnish the house where memory dwells.

  Let us share this softening of our hearts.

  Blueberry Muffins

  She left a bowl of blueberries

  on the kitchen counter,

  went to the post office with her husband,

  just to ride along.

  How was she to know

  he wouldn’t see the flashing light,

  that she’d never get back

  to add flour, sugar, milk and eggs,

  baking powder, salt and soda?

  She’d never have left the kitchen

  in such a mess if she had known.

  The day of her funeral

  her children are milling around in the kitchen;

  the counter and kitchen table covered

  with cakes and pies and six kinds of cookies

  brought over by the neighbors,

  but everyone here hungers

  for one of her blueberry muffins.

  Pretender

  The widow turns on the kitchen radio,

  tunes it to a ballgame while she watches TV.

  The radio bothers the hell out of her,

  just like it did when her husband was alive.

  But after the ballgame and her shows are over,

  when she turns the distractions off at bedtime,

  the house is so quiet;

  she’s the only one in their double bed

  and there’s just no way

  to pretend her way out of that.

  Veteran

  He returned from ’Nam,

  discharged honorably, he was told,

  though he didn’t feel that way.

  The first thing he did after disembarking in Minneapolis

  was tear the name tag and medals from his uniform,

  flush them down the toilet in the airport,

  stuff his dress greens in a wastebasket,

  change into his civvies

  and smoke some of the grass he’d smuggled back

  as he sat in a locked toilet stall.

  His parents waited outside

  and as he rode home in the back seat of the yellow Dodge

  his mother talked about him going back to school,

  his father, about where he might get a job.

  He sat back, dazzled by the lights of “The World”

  and wondered how he’d ever get all this blood off his hands

  and why his parents couldn’t see it, couldn’t smell it.

  Thirty years later, his parents have died;

  he’s been married three times,

  has two daughters and a son who don’t acknowledge him.

  His legs hurt, his veins are shot, his words slurred from whiskey.

  His hands shake, he can’t walk a straight line

  and yet he drives a beat-up car from one bar to the next,

  caring only about the next drink,

  hoping his disability check will last the month.

  He keeps his bloody hands in his pockets.

  Etched in Granite

  Name after name of those who died

  in a far-off jungle war are etched in granite,

  a wall to justify death; the names,

  those that politicians call fallen heroes.

  But there is no wall, no memorial

  for those who came home, eyes open,

  bodies alive, souls dead,

  got drunk and stayed that way thirty years,

  strewing the wreckage of failed marriages

  and neglected children in their wakes,

  dead souls taking decades

  to leave bodies ravaged by misery

  married to guilt and shame.

  On the wall I’ve built in my heart

  I trace your name with my finger.

  Lunch at Kay’s Kitchen

  (For Dan V. and Dan L.)

  We were all so glad

  you guys could join us for lunch,

  though in spirit only, thanks to

  Misters Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

  You didn’t need a menu,

  didn’t order a Rueben

  or a plate of ribs,

  didn’t finish a meal with a slice

  of Kay’s famous rhubarb pie,

  but you sat in the corner booth

  with us in the same way

  you live in the corners of our hearts.

  The Mourners at “Shiner’s” Funeral

  are old, themselves;

  many walk with canes,

  some use walkers, some wheelchairs.

  Some are aided by daughters

  in their fifties or sixties,

  who guide them through the ritual.

  These old men and women

  have lived in this town,

  gone to this church all their lives;

  they know exactly how it will be

  four days after they die.

  Fixing

  Each nail and screw,

  every nut and bolt and washer

  is sorted by size,

  stored
in bins with its own kind.

  All the hand tools

  are hung on brackets in pegboard,

  their outlines painted in white.

  The tablesaw and sander

  are pushed against the garage wall

  and the workbench is clean

  but for a single short one-by-two,

  cut at a forty-five-degree angle,

  a small pile of sawdust.

  I wonder what he was making, repairing.

  Did he die with a blueprint in his head,

  buzzing around like snatches of poems inside mine?

  Will someone find my notebook one day,

  this jumble of symbols

  that could be put together any which way,

  try to make sense of it,

  try to figure out what I was fixing?

  Don’t Forget

  In a dream

  my father knocked on my door.

  He looked so good,

  so real,

  so alive.

  Shocked, I stammered,

  Dad, I thought you were . . .

  Dead? I am, he said,

  but I was feeling a little faded.

  You’ve not been thinking of me.

  I thought I’d pay you a visit.

  It’s true, you know;

  the dead do live on

  in the memories of the living.

  Don’t forget us.

  III: When the TV’s Turned Off

  Between Melancholy and Nostalgia

  I want you to hear this poem

  like you might hear a train in the night

  an hour before you see the light

  of its great diesel engine

  rockin’ through a vast grassland

  where the dreams of coyotes

  outnumber the dreams of people.

  I want you to hear this poem

  in your sleep.

  I want this poem to wake you

  so that you curse it,

  so it puts a feeling in your stomach

  somewhere between melancholy

  and sweet nostalgia.

  I want you to think of faces and places

  that have come and gone

  like a hundred-fifty boxcars

  loaded with grain from a plowed-up prairie,

  saw logs ripped from a mountain.

  I want you to wake from a dream

  you can’t quite remember,

  a dream that lingers

  like a humming in steel tracks,

  leaves you a little wobbly

  when your feet first touch the floor.

  That’s how I want you to hear this poem.

  Blame the Poem

  Dead-ass tired by noon,

  though not from shoveling snow,

  digging out the car,

  carrying in firewood,

  all before breakfast.

  I blame the poem

  that woke me at 3:00 a.m.

  like a dog whining

  to be let out to piss.

  It wouldn’t let me be

  until I got up and scribbled the words,

  then kept whining and scratching

  until I got it right.

  Nude Modeling

  I sit perfectly still,

  bare naked, atop a stepladder,

  my robe draped over a rung.

  My ass is numb,

  I stare dumbly at a crawling clock.

  One pretty art student,

  swishes charcoal in her sketchbook,

  winks at me and laughs.

  I feel movement

  where anything but perfect stillness

  would bring growing embarrassment.

  But, I think, it could be worse.

  If this was a poetry reading

  I’d be baring my soul.

  Dental Insurance

  You just go to a dentist’s office,

  lie back in a reclining chair

  and two beautiful women,

  one black-haired, one blond,

  give you laughing gas

  and say Good night.

  When you wake up

  the pain of that ol’ wisdom tooth

  will be gone.

  We’ll give you some drugs

  for the soreness.

  Don’t go to work tomorrow.

  Apple Harvest

  The apple tree in the backyard,

  so heavy with Harelreds,

  we need to prop up its limbs

  with two-by-fours, one-by-sixes,

  a length of old rain gutter,

  a broken stepladder, shepherd’s hooks,

  whatever we can find

  to keep the apples’ weight from breaking branches.

  Yet the branches droop lower every day.

  To lighten their load, we pick some apples before they’re ripe,

  leave them in a pile on the ground,

  a sacrificial offering to rabbits and raccoons,

  to deer, in the hope they will leave some fruit to mature.

  All this, and still the serpent is not appeased;

  it picks the finest apple from the tree,

  offers it to my wife,

  who, in turn, offers it to me.

  She has a look in her eyes I can’t resist,

  Eden be damned. I want what she proffers

  though there is no end to the grief it will cause me

  and now, I’ve been told,

  any future apples must be earned by the sweat of my brow.

  Everyone Forgot

  A serpent, disguised as a girl,

  went to school

  with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil

  in her backpack.

  She was gonna share it with her boyfriend,

  but the teachers found it, ate the fruit first

  and taught this knowledge to all their students

  year after year after year.

  Everyone believed in these teachings

  but everyone forgot this knowledge

  came from a serpent,

  metaphorical though it was.

  It wasn’t long before

  the teachers had killed all the snakes;

  they had no choice, they said.

  The Implications of Washing Dishes

  You’re washing dishes in water so hot

  it turns your hands red, wrinkles your skin.

  This implies you have

  food

  water

  pots

  pans

  dishes

  silverware

  a sink

  a residence.

  This implies you ate today.

  You’re washing dishes—

  two plates

  two glasses

  two knives

  two forks

  two spoons.

  This implies

  you’re a lucky fucker, buckaroo.

  You’ve got someone to eat with you.

  When I Met You

  My first job out of the army

  was a paper route

  delivering papers to paperboys.

  I had this beater ’61 Chevy pickup;

  I put my dogs in back,

  but they’d jump out at every stop,

  following their noses into the neighborhoods.

  I’d holler

  “Barney! Frodo! God damn it, get back here!”

  It was 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., />
  they’d eventually come back to the truck

  and luckily, nobody called the cops on us

  for disturbing the peace of suburbia

  or leaving dog shit on manicured lawns.

  I usually rolled a couple joints

  and had to add a quart of oil to the truck

  to get through the route,

  get back to the farm, go to sleep

  with both dogs on the bed.

  This all ended when I met you.

  Sister Bay, Wisconsin

  While we watch from the Irish café;

  an old man in gray walks past the blue harbor,

  sailboats rock at anchor, gentle as cradles,

  gulls fly above, underbellies sunlit pink.

  A green truck drives through this painting,

  three black-and-white goats

  perfectly balanced in its bed.

  Our eyes turn from the window, meet

  above the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth.

  The morning holds all the promise of a kiss.

  Winter

  We leave our footprints in the snow,

  our boots, just inside the door.

  Caps, coats, mittens,

  we hang beside the wood stove,

  fling the rest

  on the floor beside the bed

  as we disrobe each other.

  Your wooly sweater, your bra,

  my red long johns, flannel shirt,

  our socks, our jeans,

  all touch, entwined,

  but not dancing, possessing

  none of the rhythm of our skins.

  Lost Key

  Panic stops my heart, I choke on my own breath

  as I reach into an empty pocket.

  I try another, another, every pocket,

  then search them all again—no key.

  I’ve lost the way to enter the house of your heart

  after living there all these years;

  I’d just assumed the door would always be unlocked,

  that I could walk in anytime because I once gave you a rose.