Digging
We archaeologists are in
the field,
roping off, digging,
uncovering
shards of pottery and
glass,
washing, wiping them
clean.
Today, we find a ten year
old
Coke bottle, the tip of
an Arapaho arrow.
Yesterday, it was a wine
glass, circa 1970,
and a fossilized
crustacean
from when this was the
seabed.
Up top, we're all living
in the day
but just below the
surface,
earth can't keep its
modern from its ancient,
its everyday
throwaway
from its rare and
valuable.
A kid drank
soda,
an Indian fought against
the inevitable,
someone sipped champagne
at sunset,
the roiling sea carved
out the earth.
And all on our
time-table.
A Father Explains To
His Children That Hes Leaving Their Mother
The room was
silent,
smelt like the hours
after a fire.
He felt sick to his
stomach.
The kids faces were
blankly pale.
No one moved.
They needed to digest the
words,
knead them into
sense.
The children
looked
back into the
past,
forward to the
future,
before settling on the
present situation.
He gave them
time
to arrive at where he
already was.
Finally questions began
to emerge.
They probed at imaginary
situations.
He appreciated
that.
This way his answers
could be imaginary also.
My Ocean
Nights
First, some tumbling and
tossing
like a swimmer in
breakers,
then consciousness fading
bit by bit,
becoming more driftwood,
mollusk shell,
dissolving but not
drowning in the deep,
then bobbing up as
dreams,
a yacht, a
schooner,
sometimes a row boat with
a hundred oars,
steering this way and
that,
picking up
passengers,
dropping them off
silently,
or sometimes with a loud
splash,
while all the while lying
under one thin sheet,
staying dry, firmly on
land,
where I celebrate my
finest drenching,
where the rolling oceans
buttress me.
Vinyl
On a rainy November
afternoon venture
into the music flea-market, he sidesteps
two dozen tables
overloaded with cheap CDs,
looking out for precious vinyl real music he insists
on calling it - and
theres a crate that calls out to him
like a drowning child, so many albums
as well-worn but
comfortably fitting in their sleeves,
as his blue jeans and ancient reefer jacket,
all with cover art that
holds nothing back
and label logos as familiar as his right hand
and he gets so close he
can smell the mastering,
feel the groove in its physical namesakes,
as he ferrets out more
and more connections to his past,
loads up on a soundtrack to his next late night home alone.
Big Brother, Quicksilver
Messenger Service, the Grateful Dead,
old loves restless for a brand new needle.
Adults And
Kids
Kids are
fascinated
by building
sites.
Were drawn to car
crashes.
Theyre awed by huge
machinery
hoisting giant steel
girders skyward.
Our eyes cant look
away
from heaps of crunched-up
metal.
Their heroes are decked
out
in greasy overalls, hard
hats.
Ours are dragged
out
through shattered
windows,
except theyre
victims,
not heroes.
Kids dont notice
the sign that reads,
Ten days without an
accident.
Nor are they old enough
to be disappointed by
that.
The Phones We Live
With
I hear the phone ringing
in the house next door.
No one is home. No
answering machine picks up.
It rings on and on and on
just like in the old days.
Before cells. Back when
you had to be home
or you would miss the
call altogether.
The ringing stops
eventually.
My neighbors will never
know
that someone wished to
speak to them.
Im not sure which
way I like better.
To be so wired into
everyone I know
that my time is not my
own.
Or to be free of ways of
getting to me
and maybe missing
something I want to hear.
Thats when my phone
rings.
Number recognition
screams Telemarketer,
I dont
answer.
Ignoring the annoying
thats the third way.
The Odd One
Out
A bunch of young
women
in the coffee house
all except one
is either gabbing
into their cell
phone
or on a tweeting
frenzy.
That odd one
out
is writing something
on a notepad.
No way
that its just a
to-do list.
From where Im
sitting,
it could only be a
poem.
Hair long and
silky,
eyes dark and
thoughtful,
cheeks the pink of the
dog-rose,
lips shyly
parted
Maybe it is a to-do
list.
But one of us, at
least,
is writing a
poem.