Poetry

The old oak tree dropped a limb

across the wall our father built

Unstacked stones and rising guilt

in the shadow of a fading giant

How many years since we last went

to stand beside the polished onyx

and listen to the broken promise . . .

This, all this is yours,

if you can keep it.

But fathers' worlds are not for keeping

Their dreams just rust while we are sleeping

No man owns what he did not make, 

but dead men have no claims to stake

The stones from father's wall will be 

a fine foundation for my garden shed. 

At a hospital just outside of Washington, you showed up four minutes after the polls had closed. 

I could hear the election results being reported on the T.V. at the nurse's station down the hall.

You cried and they whisked you away to a corner of the room. They weighed you and measured you and cleared your nose. They cleaned you and you cried.

Your mother laid exhausted but smiling. 

A nurse handed you to me and you cried.

I sat and held your head close to my chest so you could hear my heartbeat. 

You stopped crying and we rocked and listened . . . to the silence, to our heartbeats, and to the election results faintly wafting through the hall from the nurse's station.

Caught between the cold gray rocks and a cold gray ocean

Still breathing, living . . . there is hope,

Hanging on at the edge of yesterday in the shadows of steeples, spires, grand marble pillars, and the homes of men long dead,

Men who did not stay caught between New England’s dark winter and the sea

Hanging on at the edge of the Atlantic

Lashed in place with a tattered line, strong enough to hold but frayed enough that the knots will never be undone.

Hanging on at the edge of the Atlantic,

Watching ships fall off the horizon toward a warm and raising sun.

Climb the hill above the village and the harbor

You’ll find a toy train set laid out on a green carpet

An imagined station master moving pieces from here to there and back again.

Cars following improbable paths 

Lives invented and then passed

Ships at sea sunk on the whims of a child.

Climb the hill above the village and the harbor and you’ll see.

Old woman, I cannot help you.

I would like nothing more than to bend the universe to your will,

or mine

But the universe belongs to a gang of thugs, and  

They have no interest in your small concerns, 

or mine.

Yes, yes, yes, old woman, 

we will do what’s right. 

To put your mind at ease,

We will do what they do not want us doing,  

Maybe the thugs are sleeping. 

We set out when we shouldn’t have

Dark clouds threatened.

But we reasoned 

strong winds push and pull faster than a gentle breeze.

When time is of the essence,

Men make foolish choices.

When reading the clock, but not the tide, 

Men . . . and nations make costly mistakes. 

The wind blows hard along the shore

Fathers and sons and uncles fish

Astonishing proportions reveal themselves from beneath the waves

Frightening proportions, things too large to live on land

Shapes too strange to have survived 

And yet no stranger than those young boys imagine between the stars reflected between the ripples on the sea

Sharks strike hard and fast

Too fast to see them coming in the dark

They come from below and startle you 

They’ll bump the boat and move on

Or they’ll take the line 

Either way, a young boy feels lucky.

“Kick the pile,” he yelled.  

“What have we got?” he shouted from the wheelhouse.

“Some porgies, a monkfish, and lot of Butters . . . Oh, shit,” came the reply

The fish grunted as it clamped its teeth around my foot.

Not to be undone, I stabbed with a fish pick to its eye, grabbed its tail and flung it 

"That shark was worth $300!” he bellowed from the wheelhouse.

“Have you still got all your toes?”

I am the beach

For as long as I remember, waves have crashed against my soul

Pebbles have gently pelted every corner of my being

The granite cliff that once stood here has subsided

And been replaced by fine gray sand that plays and dances in the roiling waters as they come ashore

I am the beach

And you are my ocean

Through our long entanglement you have rearranged me and made me what I am. 

The gate to the old basketball court is broken

Its hinges have rusted and the wood frame is gray from weathering

The ghosts of laughing children, now Boston lawyers, play in the sun

As an old man watches from the window

The woods have begun to encroach

And the deer have taken to nibbling at the shoots growing between the crakes in the asphalt

It was only yesterday he laid out the survey lines and dug the soil and broke the stones to make the ground level enough to keep a ball from rolling down the hill.

“I’ve been lucky. It lasted long enough.” 

What’s mine is mine,

What’s yours is yours,

That’s fair now, isn’t it?

What was my daddy’s is now mine because he gave it to me,

What was your daddy’s is now yours,

It’s a pity he had so little to give, now isn’t it?

What was my great granddaddy’s is now mine because he took it from an Indian,

What was your great granddaddy’s is now mine because he was an Indian,

It wasn’t fair, but then is not now and we can’t change the past, 

Not to worry though, 

The government will let you build a shiny new casino, 

So, what’s mine might someday be yours,

But not if I can help you pick the pockets of fools whose granddaddies came after mine, 

Maybe we can get the government to shut the schoolhouse doors, 

Then the sons of fools won’t do the math at your Black Jack tables.  

I am them,

They are me,

We are one,

But they do not see!