House Fire

Secrets don’t just sit in closets or

   roll around in attic-bound boxes –

sometimes they sit on the couch with a coffee

cup, lip-stick stained, lukewarm.

Napkins go unpressed as wrinkly eyes

   swim over souls met, now lost:

gone or abandoned.

Fire, out of place, jumped up –

   trickling in to night gray.

Fled confines, some burst, still

   other seeps ashy out heat-cracked windows:

myriads along broken hearted, steaming gutters.

Nothing lasts.

Mysteries may be gloaming

   mirages, smoky off the singed

rolltop where (unpaid) bills stacked up.

No common prophecy uttered

   this unhealing modality – no therapy

found in embers of pillows;

   photos now phantom fringed, a haunting

that cannot be unlived.

A sudden inhalation cut short, crackles

   echoing, and those secrets: diffused

upward or in shards next to the hearth.

Leaf burning

early Sunday morning

disturbs no one barring

the leaves themselves who

tumble compliantly to

death.

Smoke plumes waft by

windows shut against cool

morning air; a neighbor at tea

might glance up from the

news of yesterday’s calamities –

all is silent.

I stand guard – my metal rake

also a sentry against intruders –

we the only witnesses: no town

square, no heretics, no pleas for mercy

this blue smoky morn.

The search for released seeds brings

blue wings down, red chests echo

earlier flames now turned to

semi-ash; only sighs of gray

drift upward.

Higher still a beverage service is being

offered – doubtful my smoke

signals seen from such a pass:

have I sent vulgarity

into the atmosphere?

At noon all is gray – the sentries gone in

to books or billiards or a smoke

(well, probably not) –

enough evidence

remains until dusk.

Survivor

If you live
through the unlikely event

of a water landing

and you are able to use

your cushion as a floatation

device

until you dog paddle to

salt-water choked,

shark-encircled safety

of a life raft

and

you and your two

frightened but amiable companions

live on sustenance bars

and canned

water for at least

three days,

praying in all the tongues you know

to all the gods you’ve ever heard of

while your

sunburned face chills

in the moon dark night,

then,

then, madam,

you may appropriate

this title.

A long check-in line without valet service does not count.

Half Way House

               

I don’t own an armchair. It occurred to me

the other day at the doctor’s office. 

What else is my house missing?

Plenty of clutter greets me each morning,

but hours can be eaten by such omnivorous endeavors

as clearing out. 

Something is always clean;

certain spots are often tidy;

ordered clarity lurks in the corners,

but never the three meet on the same

sunny day.

The house holds more than one soul

must needs.  Small things

carry immense remembrance, not so

the big. 

Not much care for matched sofas

and tassels

and drapes.

Floaty curtains absent in kitchen windows –

the porch is the best on a fall day;

the irregular triangle yard, a hot field in summer

outlined by tea olive hedge.

Conversation flits between laughter and the

smell of cinnamon rolls and tears spill

next to the spaghetti sauce.

At the end of each fall the ladybugs

crawl between the window frame and wall,

a pilgrimage to our side before death.  By the hundreds

they pay final respects and lay wings down

on the sills: 

their forever home – mine will have

an armchair.

Eighteen Hours: A Sigh

Eighteen hours –

one for each year,

hundreds more tears

along the highway

running between

our past and your future.

A job I’m meant to

lose.

So I am. Successful

loss.

I’ll not keen –

simple smile and sniff,

a sigh.

Untitled

Chole and tandoori pork:

pungent invaders:

fenugreek, garam masala, turmeric, cardamom:

home for you and foreign to me:

pockets of resistance to bland expectations.

I am delighted by cuisine that is not mine.

Spicy platoons of cloves, coriander, and ginger

are welcomed and blended with a deep warm chai:

alive with the heady stirrings of a country I have never seen –

cannot imagine.

Mind's eye is enlivened and then

almond cake cools.

Нельзя фотографировать: The last year of the Soviet Union

Horseradish and black bread sandwiches

  linger after warm beer and vodka –

bought with – or in spite of – талоны.

Bulldozer music with cockroach percussion –

  nothing built or razed

  just played.

Up Тверская sits Зоя Петровна

  saving final months of Soviet stamps.

Women warm three hour queues –

  hope decorated in gossipy fear.

Мясо is just that – only that

  best not to ask.  But best to just

  have суп.

Trains are officially on time but

  no one forgets the sixty hour

  overnight from Ленинград.

I regret to inform you

that the lizard has died.

Belly up this morning: tiny claws clasped

across leathery belt,

unshriven, awaiting

coffinette and eternity.

Mourners will not include the daily

four crickets – no keening from them.

Curious, though, the small blanched

body next to the water dish:

traveler dehydrated a hundred

yards from oasis.

All was as is should be – yesterday; but,

maybe the New Year with promises

of vituperation from Washington,

crassness from Hollywood was all too much

for a shrunken soul.

Perhaps, though, the loss was felt

long ago: in a life adorned with

tempered plastic,

fabricated sunshine begets instinctual

absence from survival.

And now how to memorialize he who

once ate his own tail?

Final kindness for him who abandoned

existence this cold morn: a garden grave,

marked by logs, leaves, and a makeshift

eulogy.

Now, to tea.