S is for Stone

 (c) 2005

I want to tell you about the stone in my shoe,

the skipped stone once submerged

on the lake bottom.

 

It accompanies me.

This was the heavier of two stones

dropped from a bridge.

Though both splashed at once,

the lighter was the one to envy—

light enough to carry.

 

Stone requires fortitude to hurl away.

God knows I know it.

 

Its gray holds variations

that night and depths conceal.

 

Closed in the palm

it speckles salt and pepper

through my moods.

 

I have missed few chances

to study this stone.

 

It cannot be ground to dust by will alone.

Fire will not burn it.

It resists polish, bears no usefulness

 

except to be wedged into my sole.

 

R is for River

 (c) 2005

A river is any fresh water stream

whose path was not drawn on a blueprint—

not in the shops of carpenters

or leatherworkers.

 

Developers would pull the river taut.

 

A river empties into another—

into lake or ocean.

It shapes cliffs, beaches, villages.

 

A river is never river alone.

 

Trout breaking surface

suggest hymns.

The acoustics of stones

mirror the current.

 

A river go underground.

When it returns,

it carries the weight of earth.

 

As the river ages,

it expands the valley

giving all of us a place to sit.

 

School Locker

 (c) 1993

Finally, I dream the locker unlocked—

decades of forgotten combinations,

attempted safe-cracking,

faulty x-ray glasses—

 

only to find the wrong contents—

 

a rusted five-use painter’s tool

for unscrewing  plates and filling holes—

 

a ream of paper.

Once embryos

of novels or essays—

now blank.

 

Read into them what you must.

 

I can’t.

 

Crumpled candy wrappers

scattered inside the locker.

 

Contents I could not go on without—

now unneeded. 

Elevator Dreams

 (c) 1990

I cling to broken handrails—

there is no bottom.

 

At nauseating speed,

it takes me everywhere

except where I need to go.

 

I press down—

 it rises,

past floors

that weren’t there before.

 

I will be late.

I will lose my job.

I will miss the sale.

 

Long after closing

it lets me off

on the wrong floor.

 

Is this protection—

or abduction?

 

A man is following me.

 

I grab what I can—

wigs, hat, dark sunglasses—

trying to disappear

into the crowd.

 

But there is no crowd.

The store is empty.

 

The exits are chained.

 

The only way out

is the elevator.

 

I have no say

where it goes.

GRACE

 (C) 2003 

I am already off-kilter—

 

the divorce,

my roommate, getting married, asking me to move out—

 

the ludicrous dates,

one ending in assault—

 

work and school overextended,

dental bills mounting,

debt—

 

I think I’ve had enough—

then today

 

my unemployed, brooding, eighteen-year-old

tells me she is pregnant.

 

This is not the straw that will break me.

 

Walking downtown—through Pike Place,

the smell of piss and rot

reminds me

that bottom is still a long way off.

 

I give spare change to a man

who smells like six beers too many.

He asks how I’m doing.

 

I say my day’s been crappy—

then hear it.

 

He could tell me to fuck off

or grow up—

but instead

 

he slaps my shoulder, says

remember—God made us

to be gods.

 

He hits the other side,

just in case I’m not listening.

 

You got to focus on the good.

You got to insist they respect you.

 

He shoves me sideways—

hold your space, he says—

they gonna take, take, take.

 

Hell, my “they” is me.

 

Instead of a few quarters,

I give him a twenty—

 

it isn’t as much as he gave me—

eye contact,

encouragement—

 

some strange grace.

PASSAGE

(c) 09/11/2021

An eight-foot stretch of green shag

flanked by celery-colored walls,

unadorned--no family photos,

no orchard or forest painted by Grandmother.

One brass and rubber doorstop.

The hallway was an in-between place.

The living room--

raucous with saxophone or drums,

bursting accusations of infidelity.

The kitchen--

no one cooking a decent meal.

We foraged: popcorn, licorice, soda.

For the grown-ups, beer.

Enough, and still a kind of scarcity--

war yelps and yells as we claimed our food.

From the kitchen past the bathroom 

to Momma’s bedroom--

silence pervading like rotting onion.

If noise is living, 

no one lived there.

Sometimes I saw it--

a shape like a woman 

moving from obligation

to the bathroom

where water might

bring a husk back to life.

I always turned away,

looked over my shoulder--

red linoleum, yellow table--

out to the neighbor’s lilac

overhanging our fence.

There--

 I saw the possibility of a way out

tenuous and so fragile 

I was afraid for years to take it.