|
Surfing with Philip
Me and Larkin at the beach:-- him looking
for Famous Cricketers, me, a gawker
after bikinis and my neighbor's black
hearse:-- Tommy Collier and Alan could not
surf, but they did have girlfriends with sisters
my age:-- though I was too shy and would just
stare which drove Larkin crazy:-- "Still going
on!" he had screamed and startled several
pelicans into landing farther out
the pier:-- with Larkin gesturing against
the shore, I paddled out to catch some curls.
Benedic, anima mea
It wants to curse You but cannot,
to accuse You for the darkness,
to blame You for the lack of stars,
for brown sunsets, black seas, putrid
wind, dying gulls, burning barges,
rot and muck, for shaking gills, snot
on walls, scars, beached dolphin, cyclones,
flashfloods, subsea mines, spoilt herring
--but the sun rises, and it slips
away then looks to You to give
it food--instead You take away
its breath, and it dies and returns
to dust, or it trembles and smokes
--for it is the Leviathan
which You have made for the sport
of it--so who are You, anyway?
Ishmael
Whatever I see isn't made for me
after the Potomac swallows all my
cash, so I worry my friends with angels
--winged ones, free-walking, too, amber-dyed
like Leonardo's sketches, arm in arm,
fingers twining in and out--not singing.
Life is good with little cakes and herbal
tea brewed in the angelic sun. My friends'
love balloons in the sky with my angels
who walk through the clouds--until I am thrown
out of my flat, my things strewn over Jeff
Davis Highway--old pots, pans, grease tacky
card table, chairs, and plates still full of soft
angel hair all seem sprinkled with chrism.
Angel with Seagulls' Wings
After the archdeacon had laid it on,
he left for another loaf, pickles, beet
soup frothed nicely at his maid's. While outside
he found cosmos rooted in the planking
around the kitchen door. 'How long,' he wondered,
'had they been at table, 'cause cosmos grow
quickly in days, not minutes.' The slow hike
to his maid's hearth and back took just long
enough for iris to sprout alongside
the paving, and apple trees, some heather,
and honeysuckle, too, had formed and bloomed.
When he got back, the bishop and his guests
had risen. The wind stirring the open
window tossed flakes from the tablecloth, crusts
to the floor, glasses stained or shattered, chairs
overturned. He cleaned the remnants, and all
the crumbs, the seeds, the bones filled seven bags.
He heard leaves rustle, cicadas, too, saw
the ordinary sky, blue--'What to do?
What to do?'--seagulls fluttered over his
head--an angel with her mouth to the horn.
Patrick
Homecoming never gets
easier, and each time new heirlooms
you take away like Bibles
deep scarred with family births
and deaths and close relations
struck by snakes
of all things!
Get out!
Blood boils from their venom,
Hell's death, fire that burns
but never consumes.
It's not a task for a master
come home from India
nor a saint late of Rome
to cast out these close relations
who've gone giddy over fangs.
Azaleas
Look at those azaleas, their red petals
and almond shaped leaves, some green, some going
yellow to brown with tiny specks like moles
on my arms--is it disease?--same as killed
my grandfather?--mottled places appear
in fall then its leaves fall and its stems dry
--shadows on these leaves, petals drooping, rough
red marks, purple places--unrelenting
freckles popping my skin and poisoning
my humor--my arms radiate away
as I shove aside these azaleas
whose blossoms drop behind me like blood.
No God
No god in that little garden
next to the maintenance shed--a kind
of glade that shimmered from rain, no
sun, the kind of green that becomes
iridescent when shadows don't
cross it, don't raise one shade of green
against another--a green hell,
really, the color of a five
dollar bill, the color of bad
bruises or a shin gone musty
after death when the undertaker
can't bend to his machines fast enough
--no god for that glade, no sorcerer
either, nothing but a gluey
haze filled with gnats and webs and heat
glimmering in my mind--frozen
shine just beyond some red mowers
and yellow tractors, just beside
the cedar shed, a glade rising
up the hill and into woods, not
deep woods, just a few trees, then streets.
|
