....From The Tree Of...............Love & Family
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_______________________________________________________ Predestination If we could go back to Babylonia- in rich silt black as a moonless March and try to disembark from a journey begun long before that, if we could separate our souls like we'd cleave wood with axes, our two fates that were never chopped apart or stopped to think of anything at all beyond the being one in one, forever traveling, seeking out the other- the beard of Nebuchadnezzar would be a thing we'd doubtless find held only kisses in the curls. In every roiling cloud we'd read a biblical assent and God's nod once, entirely pleased with both of us together as He fashioned, and He'd put us back hip to hip hooray- for whatever's to be will be. Widower Ample room to throw a smile across this table, nevermind the bent one bowed over bowl, alone. Queer old face of spider wrinkles, eyes sunk far into the flesh, maybe reading the back of his own skull in lieu of someone no longer there in chair across from him, fussing up the air with with long ago twinkle, fast, faint touch of hand where hole is now. It makes my heart hear oom-pah, oom-pah-pahs to see your face, so that one so husked and waiting for the dray with black-plumed horse pull up short outside his door, does hush this meal with honest kyrie. Come hold my hand and look out loud at me. Virgins Once I remember the walk: knock-kneed in the fog of the tracks, carrying a blanket. You were a stork. Long-legged and thin. Nervous as the night a-twitter with crickets and my worrying out loud about the last gush of period earlier that day, but none since, and we didn't really mean to do the thing- we hadn't planned what night and a bit of mysticism marbled through with early lust and trust would conjure, fumbling there in wonder at the side of the tracks on blanket scratch and weeds that tickled bare-legged rolling. What I remember is a heavy moon, hanging like the udder of the sky, heavy with light and the fine line of your profile, so that moon eye that often seems quite sightless, saw me, as I began to do what flesh would have no matter what- and you burst into me with a gasp of joy, mouth wide and wordless, save for a smile I'll never forget and your step was high and happy, tromping back to the car and all of it with none of it, ever truly the same again. Vulnerability The under leaf, that's where the pores are. Tiny mouths desperate for a drink. You can see the tree turn silver, low sides up and waving at the skies; rolling over underbellied openness, exposing it as I do to you roll out my broken thoughts and snapped days right in half, like beans with all their crispness left and say, "Here all of it is. Now judge or love me. Company Mating is trying to crawl inside the other, escape the prison of skin, be way in at center, where it's warm. There'd be two heartbeats, not one so pitiably small as it waits the last drum tap, alone. What I want is company: skin so warm around me when the end chill comes- not chase death. It overtakes us all, but make it stay till I can say goodby to the one who'll be the part of me remaining. Memory Of Metal I remember the sound the rubber dispenser made in the men's room of the greasy spoon we used to hide in; stealing time for one another. Thin walls, thin line we walked then. The whole restaurant could hear the coins drop, the whole noisy, metal process: feeding quarters, machine ratcheting to drop one perfect sin into your waiting palm, backpocketed. That ritual just before we left coaxed smiles from faces looked like dreaming inside sleep, over coffee, as we walked through that gaggle of misfits to my apartment with its new bed, nervous bliss. Lace Panties A valentine is paper, lace, some verse, a cupid or two and hearts galore, poured out like little candies. But I suspect the honest valentine, the one that Hallmark couldn't sell, is lying at the bottom of the bedcovers kicked off in a moment, wet with just a bolt of you out of the blue and never, ever- stupid. What Will Be My cat curls around my legs, has rubbed there eleven years. Eleven is not so long for a cat, yet I know he's old. The face, owl-eyed still looks the same, no wrinkles, cataracts give him away. He vibrates on my lap, greets my homecomings in a seamless pull of days that seems a piece of end less ness so that one day door opening to a silence so absolute my own trembling will have to do. Absence is a presence too. The Man From Outer Space My uncle was a bastard, born before my grandma married. Four more sons and a redheaded daughter saved by proper marriage in the eyes of Christ, and only Christ knew who the man of standing was who'd squirted out the bastard known as Russ. Grandfather kept her secret and raised the boy as though he'd been his own, but Russell knew. His eyes were blue. His hair, blonde and he caught air instead of arms in every hug. Depression years brought drink and coal in winter, gathered by lump after the coal truck passed them by. The scuttling boys, thin-dressed, all knees and shame, brought bucketfulls to heat the woodframed, rented walk up. Grandma prayed. She birthed the twins. Her husband strayed to bottle. When Russell was sixteen, my Grandpa told the boy that he was not a son of his and stomped away, not to recall when sobered up, the thing that Russell feared- the thing that made him dif fer ent. Russell bent in ways that afternoon. Each year, he sent a postcard to my grandmother on his birthday. She would cry and read the childish scrawl across its face: Who is my father? Grandma never told a soul, but Russell, he told all the world and Martians, too; he'd sit in a lawnchair under summer skies and watch the stars, convinced that they would come for him. At Christmas time we'd get a carbon copied note, a tract of how the rats would overtake this world or Russell would show up right on our doorstep, fully headdressed and he'd tell us he was Indian; greet us with Yo Haw Gee Nay!- a phrase he said, his people taught him. Stand there, palm up- grinning like he'd had a hit of benzedrine. Later, when he roamed the streets my sister, at the hospital, would process Russell's rectal swabs for chlamydia and STD's; we heard he'd done a stint in jail for corrupting minor boys- I always thought he looked for brothers young enough to love him. When grandma died, Russ came to church in rumpled suit and crumpled face, shambling to communion rail. I've never seen a face so full of woeful sorrow as that man who claimed he came from a different planet. I don't know if he came from space, but I know that's where he lived. Spoonfed Miraculous to watch a mouth that never tasted texture before, get busy, pushing tiny tongue through lips, taking little sips of air. Busy cheeks beneath crossed eyes that watch intently at the spoon's approach, the silver delivery of rice cereal for the first time when, for four months, there had only been the snuggle/suck of flesh. Warm stream of liquid from the mama breast, which once held all the comfort in the world. First, entirely inside, then inside arms that once, for each of us, were the hammock of heaven and that for ever more we pine. Bliss of being held against the body, nuzzling sleepily, now is mouthing soggy grain; will spend his meals at table, not in worship of the one who holds him, feeding both, and must for both their sakes, let go one small and softened grain at a time. On To Page 11 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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