My mother and father rasied me
to believe that on Easter Sunday
He rose from the dead.
My wife is raising our children
to believe that He has yet to come
down to this Earth and save us.
Me, I believe in soft green grass
rising again from the brown earth
and in this blue sky arcing over me.
Each day is holy and the sky is infinite.
I turn my face up into it and smile
as if the warm sun were the face of God.
the birth of morning
a song sung in the tree tops
by Spring’s heralds
chills hang still in air
as trees show their first new buds
but snow is coming
will this life continue
or die under April snow
only the Earth knows
nonetheless birds sing
their overture to warm Spring
whis’ling through graveyards.
David Shumate is alone in his basement typing at his computer and smelling the vinegar he diluted with water and then used to mop his floor. He is writing about me in my basement smelling vinegar and tapping on this keyboard. He’s composing another of his prose poems, this time about my wish to do this full-time, to quit my teaching job and provide for my family through words on a page. David Shumate will publish that prose poem in a book that will come out this summer. It will win an award and he will appear on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show. Housewives across the nation will buy the book and sit at kitchen tables to read the prose poem on page forty-seven about me in this basement. They will smell the diluted vinegar on their own floors. Each woman will close her eyes and imagine making all my dreams come true.
Morning dogs wake happy, their tails already
beating out the pulse of the new day
while their owners, awakened in the dark,
stumble out of bed, into clothes, down
to the kitchen and the pot of coffee.
The morning dogs are already by the door
dreaming of adventures and release
while their owners use the bathroom and
find shoes, a coat, hat and gloves, and
reluctantly open the door on the new day.
The morning dogs accept the indignity of
the leash but pull their owners forward,
leading them to special hidden places,
wondrous scents and just right patches of grass
on which they relieve themselves.
The morning dogs don’t want to go home yet,
but they turn from further exploration,
leading their owners home, returning to the
rag rugs spread before heating vents
onto which they curl themselves.
Their owners must now face
the endless obligations of this day
and the next and the days after that.
The morning dogs sleep through until the joy
of their owners return signals another walk outside.
the ticking of the clock in this tired body.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
buds explode in blossom.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
leaves fall. down. down. down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
snow. deep, silent, waiting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
the body continues, the body goes on.
as prompted by One Deep Breath
I remember a show on television
called Room 222. Dad thought
Karen Valentine, the star, was cute
and so I did too figuring that
like everything else, Dad just knew.
This morning I stepped on the scale
and saw 222 under me. Dad is much,
much heavier, but this is not a way
I want to emulate him. It is the thing
about him over which I worry most.
So I took myself out for a run and walk
thinking that if I can just run far enough,
he and I will slim down to the shapes we had
when Karen Valentine taught in room 222,
when Dad was a man who would live forever
and always watch over me.
breathe in, breath out and
keep going the doctor said.
the secret of life.
the sun is gone now
and grey clouds filled with snow storms
breathe cold winter wind.
my daughter reading
a story she wrote herself.
I’m holding my breath
breathe in, breathe out and
you will come to understand.
It’s just that simple.
The talk on NPR is of
Bong Hits for Jesus and
the boy wanting attention
who painted those words
onto a sign for all to see
and not run afoul of the laws.
I wonder if Jesus is listening
to this same NPR station and
to these questions of right and wrong.
I wonder if Jesus thinks much
about this sort of thing or if
he is concerned with other things.
My hope is that if he listens,
he understands why we do
all of these things and still
has some sort of love for us.
My hope is that a god, any god,
would be understanding.
If he stopped by to listen to NPR with me
I wouldn’t ask him about bong hits or the news.
Instead I would brew coffee, offer
toasted bread with butter and brown sugar,
and listen to whatever he chose to say
about loving my neighbor and forgiveness.
If these words were a poem
they would be broken into
lines (and maybe even
stanzas) so that you
would digest them slowly
like a cat toying with
an imitation mouse that
you both hope is filled
with sweet catnip.
If these words were a poem.
I come across the word and linger
for a moment, for another, and for
another still. I know you, I say
to the word. I’ve looked you up
before, and yet it remains just beyond
the reach of my memory. It is the girl
on the other side of the cafeteria.
We are back in middle school and I
am sitting before a pizza-like thing
while my friends talk their talk.
I sneak glances at the girl who
just might be glancing at me, but
I can never quite know for sure.
Her name is Sanguine and she
is getting up to go to her next class.
The bell has rung. Our time is up.
