IMMERSIVE
I meant to be talking of the huge cargo ship
jammed in the throat of the Suez Canal
which the full moon’s tide
lifted free this morning
and also the spring’s rare butterflies
jagging along the back fence
and my neighbor’s accordian music
seething under the door
and the ways I can’t pay attention for long
and the value of common sense —
I meant to be talking of Vincent Van Gogh
and the chipped light of wheatfields
he carried inside him
breaking apart in the noonday sun
the black wings of crows and the wreckage
of shadows, an old wagon
on fire in the ditch
or the eaves of a barn, its haymow
broken in half by time and the rain
falling on San Francisco
and the blue pigeon standing alone
under the tiny awning
where my love and I also stood
watching it come down like mercy,
like threads from some astral wardrobe
across from the old Fillmore West
drinking takeout coffee from the little kitchen
and waiting for the movie to start.
ECLIPSE
You would get used to it after a while,
the least sound of the gondola cars
shimmying down the tracks.
coal dust on the sills
and inkblot bird’s feet
randomly walking there —
desolate hills near the river.
Your long shadow keeps hiding the stars
where you’ve gone unconscious
and forgotten the ones
you were supposed to speak to tonight
in the olive grove of Zoom TV
with its mute ripples of blue and green:
the post office closed, the racetrack closed,
all the houseboats tilted aground
and the moon in full eclipse,
somewhat like your daughter at four
in the days before you stopped drinking
covering your eyes with her small hands
and telling you to guess who it is.
NEW YEAR’S TESTAMENT
The naked streets are running with rain,
the iron manhole lid on the sewer
bubbling up like a jukebox
and you’re stepping over cypress roots
knobbed and yellow sticking out of the mud.
Last night’s spasms of melancholy,
auld lang syne notwithstanding
like some secondary form of narcissism,
maybe it’s in the blood.
So much unconscious freight
you want to lighten the load
for the world today doesn’t seem old
and no matter whose calloused hands
will one day be digging your grave,
you’re trying to leave enough in the pot
to make sure the digger gets paid.
BED
There’s mist coming in from the west
and the black streets are shiny
passing St John’s apartments
and covering the April palm trees
which are drunk and walking
in our village alleys.
Instead of the freight cars’ heavy metal,
instead of the witch’s hair,
instead of the fog horn’s split bass tone
like a whale’s heart
beating somewhere offshore,
it’s the rain
someone anonymous longs for
in the small poem
falling softly all morning
onto the land and the old man’s mattress
where he spent his final days
now stashed in the open truck
to be hauled away to the Richmond dump
for it’s hard to say goodbye to a bed
with its shadows and tarnished frame
and wishing your love were back in your arms
among the soft breezes of spring.
SHE
She’s changing the sheets in the room above,
the dew settling onto the windowsill
and onto the scarlet bougainvillea
smudged with coal dust and smoke.
Sometimes I hear her long sigh on the stairs
and if I want to listen, I must be quiet,
I have to disappear.
Sometimes the damp earth of the cemetery
gives off the fragrance of pears,
sometimes the ferns’ eyelash lacework
floats through our dense marine layer
and if I were a woman
I’d make my bed there
where I could see the moon
and maybe I’d wear a blue housedress,
the only thing holding me to the earth.
