No One Came Home
1.
Max was in bed that morning, pressed
against my feet, walking to my pillow
to kiss my nose, long and lean with aqua-
marine eyes, my sun prince who thought
himself my lover. He was cream and golden
orange, strong willed, lord of the other
cats and his domain. He lay on my chest
staring into my eyes. He went out at noon.
He never came back. A smear of blood
on the grass at the side of the road
where we saw a huge coyote the next
evening. We knew he had been eaten
yet we could not know. We kept looking
for him, calling him, searching. He
vanished from our lives in an hour, My cats
have always died in old age, slowly
with abundant warning. Not Max.
He left a hole in my waking.
2.
A woman leaves her children in day care,
goes off to her secretarial job
on the 100th floor, conscientious always
to arrive early, because she needs the money
for her children, for health insurance,
for rent and food and clothing and fees
for all the things kids need, whose father
has two new children and a great lawyer.
They are going to eat chicken that night
she has promised, and the kids talk of that
together, fried chicken with adobo, rice
and black beans, food rich as her love.
The day is bright as a clean mirror.
3.
His wife has morning sickness so does
not rise for breakfast. He stops for coffee,
a yogurt, rushing for the 8:08 train.
Ignoring the window, he writes his five
pages, the novel that is going to make
him famous, cut him loose from the desk
where he is chained to the phone
eight to ten hours, making cold calls.
In his head, naval battles rage. He
has been studying Midway, the Coral
Sea, Guadalcanal. He can recite
tonnage, tides, the problems with torpedoes.
For five years, he has prepared.
His makeshift office in the basement
is lined with books and maps. His book
will sing with bravery and error.
The day is blue and whistles like a robin.
4.
His father was a fireman and his brother.
He once imagined being a rock star
but by the end of high school, he knew
it was his calling, it was his family way.
As there are trapeze families, clans
who perform with tigers or horses,
the Irish travelers, tinkers, gypsies,
those born to work the earth of their farm,
and those who inherit vast fortunes
built of the bones of others, so families
inherit danger and grace, the pursuit
of the safety of others before their own.
The morning smelled of the river,
of doughnuts, of coffee, of leaves.
5.
When a man fell into the molten steel
the company would deliver an ingot
to bury. Something. Where I live
on the Cape, lost at sea means no body.
You can’t bury a coffin length of sea
water. There are stones in our grave
yards with lists of names, the sailors
from the ships gone down in a storm.
MIA means no body, no answer,
hope that is hopeless, the door
that can never be quite closed.
Lives are broken off like tree limbs
in a storm. Other lives simply dissolve
like salt in warm water and there is
no shadow on the pavement, no trace
They puff into nothing. We can’t believe.
We die still expecting an answer.
6.
Los desparecidos. Did we notice?
Did we care? in Chile, funded,
assisted by the CIA, a democratic
government was torn down and thousands
brought into a stadium and never seen
again. Reports of torture, reports of graves
in the mountains, bodies dumped at sea
reports of your wife, your son, your
father arrested and then vanished
like cigarette smoke, gone like
a whisper you aren’t quite sure you
heard, a living person who must, who
must be somewhere, anywhere, lost,
wounded, boxed in a cell, in exile,
under a stone, somewhere, bones,
a skull, a button, a wisp of cloth.
In Argentina, the women marched
for those who had disappeared.
Did we notice? That happened
in those places, those other places
where people didn’t speak English,
ate strange spicy foods, had dictators
or Communists or sambas or goas.
They didn’t count. We didn’t count
them or those they said had been
there alive and now who knew?
Not us. The terror has come home.
Will it make us better or worse?
7.
When will we understand what terrorists
never believe, that we are all
precious in our loving, all tender
in our flesh and webbed together?
That no one should be torn
out of the fabric of friends and family,
the sweet and sour work of loving,
burnt anonymously, carelessly
because of nothing they ever did
because of hatred they never knew
because of nobody they ever touched
or left untouched, turned suddenly
to dust on a perfect September
morning bright as a new apple
when nothing they did would
ever again make any difference.
The Unimaculate
Having survived the fifties
I remember middle class houses—
not ours— with pans hung on pegboards
copper bottoms shining
like little molten sunset lakes.
My pans are scruffy, blackened
the permanent stains of hard use.
When I was undergoing eye
operation after operation.
we tried a cleaning service.
They came twice and quit.
This kitchen is used, they
said, you cook too much. We are
dirty people, we use everything
useful until it’s used up.
Cat boxes, cobwebs, papers.
Move the couch and find seven
furry mouse toys, two orphan socks
and a Sunday supplement from last July.
Please don’t look under the bed.
Ever. My shoes are not neatly
slotted in holders but crouch
in piles like a forgotten harvest.
A chair is slung with all the clothes
I wore pants, skirts, sweaters,
in layers like a geological survey
of my week. My computer
is hip deep in paper. Where
is that paperless office? In
my dreams. Or not. I trust paper.
I trust our ability to navigate
this mess and nest in it happily,
burrows of two busy packrats
for whom work and pleasure shove
cleanliness way down the to do list.
Waiting for the Storm
There is waiting before a party
to which you have invited
many, but will they come?
Will the turkey and the cheese
grow stale, shriveling on platters,
the ice melt around the bottles?
There is waiting for a lover,
late, he is late, in someone’s
bed satiated, forgetting you.
Waiting for a call, you test
the phone again, again, the dial
tone droning hopeless in your ear.
But a storm. It could pass
harmlessly out to sea, just tall
waves knocking on the beach
the wind warning what might
have been as small branches
smack broken on the windows.
It could bury the drive, ice
the road to chaos, cars spinning
out in ditches, power lines
down sparking, houses dark
and cold while fireplaces belch
and everyone shivers. We wait,
watching the hieroglyphic clouds,
reading the sky like a spell
on parchment, our future
rolling in on the wind that rushes
to engulf us. We wait no longer
as a blizzard erases the world.
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