PARADE

Here they come down the asphalt avenue
First the donkeys, reluctant and unpretentious,
Braying, heads down, littered with strands of hay

Then the school children waving their crayons
Grinning into their armpits, shy and wary
As bewildered pollywogs morphing to frogs

Then come the trucks and floats and brass bands
Loaded with familiar attitudes from times gone by
Like old debris floating down a grand green river

Then come the reenactments of all recurring dreams
Where the dead are alive and you fly without wings
And you flee with feet of lead from raging fiends

Then come the sped-up cloud formations, surging
And mushrooming and defying their laid-back nature,
Electric as photo negatives, blinking like strobes

Then come those picnics spent with the opposite
Sex while the ripe fruits crawled through your blood
And wrenched you up and down, clammy, gasping

Then come the times sitting silently among a league
Of mountain men who gaze at the horizon, intone
Some favored syllables, bake bread, do their laundry

Then come the host of fears, dressed up like insects,
Teasing and threatening from behind dark glasses
Rasping with unholy wheezes and bass-note belches

Then come the aspirations, gaping wide-eyed at a
Sky of possibilities, unblemished by disappointment
Gleaming and heaving gifts to puzzled onlookers

Then come the animals you’ve never seen before
Creatures of another and yet another color, stalking
Each other like crazed hogs sniffing for truffles

At last the sky opens up, not to rain but to fire,
Flames licking and leaping through every seam
Of every mangled cloud and mountaintop, while

The crowd shouts and roars and the band blasts
Crescendos of unearthly-sounding horns and the
Choir of angels belts out eerie, ambient chords.

The parade winds down with a few elephants
Holding each other in tow along with raucous
Clowns riding kiddy cars and waving sparklers

And so the crowd disperses, shoulders shrugging,
Eyes to the littered ground, faces that seem to say
“I guess it’s all over now, time to go home.”

STOPPING BY LOON LAKE

We stopped there on impulse,
Just because we saw the road sign,

LOON LAKE, which beckoned to us,
Dared us, to meander down the

Gravel road that led us through
A serene and scented pine forest

Past burned-out houses to some
Mysterious ruins by the water’s edge.

There, as evening settled in,
We sensed an eerie residue of

Scenes and souls remembered only,
Perhaps, by faded daguerreotypes.

A few old novels and history books
Have told tales about this lake,

Where tycoons and presidents
Spent their lazy summers after

Stepping off luxury railway cars,
Valets hauling steamer trunks

To trophy-studded camps with
Plush couches and ottomans, ornate

Stone fireplaces, elaborate kitchens and
Handmade quilts on canopied featherbeds.

And at dusk, from Adirondack chairs
On breezy porches overlooking the lake,

The sound of genteel laughter,
Seasoned with cigars and brandy.

The big-bellied men gave the orders
But loosened their suspenders for

Sultry summer trysts with maids,
Nannies, the wives of sycophants.

And a murder or two out of envy,
Greed, or drunken jealousy, was

Whispered of and hushed up
By the servants of wary moguls.

Today, by the lake’s edge stand statues
Of wide-eyed nudes and winged gods

And a marble staircase whose steps go
Right down into the lapping lake

As if inviting one to keep descending
To a land of naiads and sunken palaces

We seem to hear faint echoes, the
Playful squeals of long-dead children,

The earnest chatter of bustled ladies
Standing over wicker picnic baskets…

So we spent the night on Loon Lake
At a rundown inn near a row of rusty trailers.

From our beds we heard the blare of
Country music and the muffled shouts

And raspy laughter of joking smokers
Perched at the beery linoleum bar below—

Hardly the long-lost Loon Lake that
Stirs our fantasies and haunts our hearts.

Resigning our reminiscence to an
Unseemly end, we drift toward dreams

But there’s a lull, a quiet moment, and
From some dark and faraway domain,

The faint, sorrowful, rippling cry
Of the creature the lake was named for.

REGARDING FEBRUARY 2004

Wandering off several times in my mind
Without catching any one of those fleeting
Birds of thought that come and go in a blink

How many memories can I count in an hour
And the answer is none given that they interrupt
Without announcing themselves and spin around so

Madly before their flavor wanes and without a sound
They disappear back into the mist they came from
Leaving me dazed and bereft and mysteriously used

Without an anchor or a clock aren’t those birds
Like so many agitations in a temporary wind
Of swirling personal snapshots inching toward loss

Loss is big around here and I feel it gathering
Momentum like an oncoming storm or like the
Ineluctable age spots tainting a parent’s wrist

At last those elder freckles come to my own wrist
As they will to yours and your daughter’s daughter’s
Again interrupting without announcing themselves

And leaving behind a mark of not-quite-finished loss
As surreptitious as those birds alighting on the mind
Who give us something to gaze at till they fly away.

POÈME TROUVÉ

(from an alphabetical list of movie titles)

I accuse!
I aim at the stars.
I am a camera. I am a dancer.
I am a fugitive from a chain gang.
I am a thief. I am the law.
I became a criminal.

I believe in you.

I bury the living.
I can get if for you wholesale.
I confess. I could go on singing.

I cover big town. I cover the underworld.
I cover the war. I cover the waterfront.
I deal in danger.
I died a thousand times.

I dream of Jeannie.
I dream too much.
I drink your blood.

I escaped from the Gestapo. I found Stella Parish.
I have seven daughters. I, Jane doe.
I know where I’m going.
I like money.
I live my life.

I love a bandleader. I love a mystery. I love a soldier.
I love Melvin. I love my wife. I love trouble.

I love you again.
I love you, Alice B. Toklas.
I love, you love.

I married a Communist.
I married a monster from outer space.
I married a witch. I married a woman.
I married an angel. I met him in Paris.

I met my love again.

I, mobster. I, monster.
I never sang for my father.
I passed for white. I remember Mama.

I saw what you did. I shot Jesse James.

I take this woman.
I, the jury.

I wake up screaming.

I walk alone.
I walk the line.
I walked with a zombie.

I want a divorce.

I want to live!
I want what I want. I want you.
I wanted wings. . . .
I wonder who’s kissing her now.

THE MAN WHO GROWS POTATOES

The man who grows potatoes

sits in an aluminum lawn chair

on a grassy hill out behind his house.

The sun sinking in the cloudless sky

is a pale orange ball.

The man takes a gold ring

from the pocket of the tweed coat

he’s had for twenty-two years

and holds the ring up to his eye

so the sun just fits inside.

As the man uncrosses his legs

and crosses them again

the old aluminum chair nearly gives way.

Its joints are weak and rusty

and the green and white plastic

straps are badly frayed.

The man, whose wife died yesterday,

is thinking about whether or not

to water his potatoes.

THE SKY IS FULL OF TEARS

The sky is full of tears
Shooting like restless stars or
Those things that jump around
In your eye or imaginary dragons
Consorting on the moon,
Don’t you know.

Meanwhile the sky tells us
Nothing. Like a blank screen
Keeping secrets or like Jove
The absent patriarch holding
Our attention for a while
Till it’s all tuned out.

Then again the sky does
Intimate or seem to promise
What it can’t give us right now
Teasing us to recall a time
Long ago when we had no words
When eyes were all we were.

BOB’S THREE WOMEN

The night Bob’s girlfriend
Didn’t come home because
She was with some other guy,
He shouted at her in his sleep
And woke himself up.

After she broke up with him
He dreamed he tried to
Win her back. In the dream
He wanted to impress her
By taking her to his new home,
A penthouse in a tall fancy building.
Bob was proud and hopeful
Until he saw that the penthouse
Had no walls or roof.

Once Bob met a beautiful woman
Who was married to someone else.
When the three of them were together
the husband would eye Bob
Carefully. Bob thought the husband
Was jealous, because the wife
Smiled at Bob in a special way.

Bob grew closer to the wife.
He wanted her to leave her husband
And come and live with him.
Many months went by until
Bob saw what was going on.
It was not the lovely wife
But the husband who wanted Bob,
And the wife was the lure.

Bob dreamed he fell in love with a
Mysterious, seductive woman.
He couldn’t get to her because
She lived in the mirror.
She smiled at him enticingly.
No matter how hard he tried
He could never touch her.

“When you’re happy
Let your mouth go free”
Bob’s girlfriend had said to him
When they were still together.
Bob remembered writing that down
On a piece of paper
Ten years ago.

LOOKING AT YOUR PICTURE

In the photo you look about four years old.
You’re wearing a pink playsuit. (Is that what
They called those things, playsuits? A one-piece
Garment with shorts at the bottom, a top with
Two straps like overalls?) Your hair is short and
Casual, the color of sand, and you’re wearing dark
Glasses with big yellow frames that give you
The look of a budding eccentric. Your lips, either
Barely smiling or not at all, seem in a kind of
Halfway zone, like the lips of that low-key
Lady in the Louvre. Your expression is a mix
Of curious, perplexed, amused, surprised, and
More-than-ready-to-start-some-kind-of-mischief.
The thumb and forefinger of either hand are
Lightly touching, with the understated grace
Of a Bengali dancer or a serene, sitting Buddha.
You’re standing barefoot in the grass, slightly
Off-balance but not quite tipping over, left foot
Before your right, right arm before your left,
Behind you a rosebush and a red brick wall.
I keep this photo on the wall above my desk, so
Whenever I look up I see you standing there.
The picture invokes a merry mood, but at times
My eyes get damp and I have to look away.