Grace Notes: Poems Book

We learned about the state tree
in school - its fruit
so useless, so ugly

no one bothered to
commend the smudge trunk
nor the slim leaves shifting

over our heads. Yet
they were a good thing to kick
along gutters

on the way home,
though they stank like
a drunk's piss in the roads

where cars had smashed
them. And in autumn
when the shiny helmets split

open,
there was the bald
seed with its wheat-

coloured eye.
We loved
the modest countenance beneath

that leathery cap.
We, too, did not want to leave
our mothers.

We piled them up
for ammunition.
We lay down

with them
among the bruised leaves
so that we could

rise, shining.
- The Buckeye, pg. 9-10
* * *

A letter from my mother was waiting:
read in standing, one a.m.,
just arrived at my German mother-in-law

six hours from Paris by car.
Our daughter hops on Oma's bed,
happy to be back in a language

she knows. Hello, all! Your postcard
came on the nineth - familiar misspelled
words, exclamations. I wish my body

wouldn't cramp and leak; I want to -
as my daughter says, pretending to be
"Papa" - pull on boots and go for a long walk

alone. Your cousin Ronnie in D.C. -
remember him? - he was the one
a few months younger than you -

was strangulated at some chili joint,
your Aunt May is beside herself!
Mom skips to the garden which is

producing - onions, swiss chard,
lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, turnip greens and more lettuce
so far! The roses are flourishing.

Haven't I always hated gardening? And German,
with its patient, grunting building blocks,
and for that matter, English, too,

Americanese's chewy twang? Raccoons
have taken up residence
we were ten in the crawl space

but I can't feel his hand who knows
anymore how we'll get them out?
I'm still standing. Bags to unpack.

That's all for now. Take care.
- Poem in Which I Refuse Contemplation, pg. 19-20
* * *

This is the weather of change
and clear light. This is
weather on its B side,
askew, that propels
the legs of young men
in tight jeans wheeling

through the tired, wise
spring. Crickets too
awake in choirs
out of sight, although
I imagine we see
the same thing
and for a long way.

This, then, weather
to start over.
Evening rustles
her skirts of sulky
organza. Skin
prickles, defining
what is and shall not be....

How private
the complaint of these
green hills.
- Turning Thirty, I Contemplate Students Bicycling Home, pg. 30
* * *

Ignore me. This request is knotted -
I'm not ashamed to admit it.
I won't promise anything. I am a magic
that can deafen you like a rainstorm or a well.

I am clear on introductions, the five minute flirt,
the ending of old news.
Broken colour, this kind of wanting,
its tawdriness, its awkward uncertainties.

Once there was a hill thick with red maples
and a small brook
emerging from black briars.
There was quiet: no wind
to snatch the cries of bids flung above
where I sat and didn't know you yet.

What are music or books if not ways
to trap us in rumours? The freedom of fine cages!
I did not want bad music, I did not want
faulty scholarship; I wanted only to know

what I had missed, early on -
that ironic half-salute of the truly lost.
- Dedication, after Czesław Miłosz, pg. 47
* * *

I've got to go
down where my eye
can't reach
hairy star
who forgets to shiver
forgets the cool suck
inside

Someday long
off someone will
see me
fling me up
until I hook
into sky

drop his memory

My hair
dry water
- Medusa, pg. 55
* * *

Billie Holiday's burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the guardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you're cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can't be free, be a mystery.
- Canary, for Michael S. Harper, pg. 64