A Marriage Book Read online

  while her tub stayed hot

  as pages turned

  faster and faster.

  AFTER SHE SLEEPS

  After she sleeps

  no end of possibilities . . .

  Mixtures of chocolate chip

  ice cream, bananas

  and pears.

  Drinking amber maple syrup

  direct from the can.

  Ecstatic readings of Kabir

  and Cold Mountain

  with much strutting

  and waving of arms

  before the refrigerator.

  A story composed for the children

  on the cold marble table

  about riding winged snails

  on their slime trails

  into perilous encounters.

  And how bears, when together,

  tend to mumble

  which is why bears are so big.

  And ketchup on fresh poetry,

  mushrooms sautéed with wordplay,

  a plateful on the side

  next to sweet ice cream

  and burnt morning coffee.

  She knows all about it

  and it’s all right.

  Just leave the kitchen clean

  in the morning.

  LUNCH-MAKING

  Crumbs cast enormous shadows

  under the track lights

  onto the marble table—

  cracker bits from the baby,

  sugar crystals, coffee grounds,

  a towering Cheerio,

  fallen stamens under the plant.

  I did not see any of these before.

  To me they belonged in the kitchen

  with the silverware, the stove,

  the other household gods.

  The goddess sees otherwise.

  She refuses to reign in this place

  unless there are neither crumbs

  nor the shadows of crumbs.

  I have slowly seen the light

  glancing off freshly wiped marble.

  To her it is very satisfactory.

  Now lunch-making can begin.

  SATURDAY NIGHT

  Small doses

  on Saturday night

  of a fine meal and

  good theatre and

  afterward a chocolate torte

  with crème fraîche and

  cappuccino and then Irish coffee

  and when you get home

  the kids are asleep and

  the babysitter’s paid

  and a bolt on the door

  and a few whiffs of the vapors

  and magically

  in the act of touching her

  a small series of explosions

  under the fingertips

  and fantasies become realities

  in prolonged processions

  and wife

  rhymes with life.

  OH GOD, HOW DEEP

  Spring orchards leave me weak

  in blazing petals, my

  nose covered with pollen.

  Most wait to eat the fruit. I can’t,

  buzzing to the vibrance

  of white blossoms, sweetness

  somewhere deep within.

  At night, familiar incense rises

  from her branches,

  pulls me toward her like a falcon

  toward a sparrow,

  like mist above cool water.

  Yes, whispers the soft stem

  of my spine.

  Yes, I will do anything.

  Oh God, how deep.

  THEY WILL HAVE TO UNDERSTAND

  The sales managers line up

  before breakfast

  for their ad campaigns

  and the CEO chews on me

  for lunch

  and the Annual Report caws

  its insistent midnight deadline in my ear

  and when I rub my eyes

  I see only a red, crumbling wave.

  So if I run harder into the night,

  my lungs will have to understand.

  If I push my dinner

  into the garbage disposal

  and my fork slips

  and the silver spits back

  mangled

  and I kick the sink

  and scream at the windows

  and terrify the children

  and my wife steps out the door

  holding herself,

  they will have to understand.

  I do not do it often.

  They will have to understand.

  HERE, TAKE THIS POEM

  I am explaining my side of the story

  in a courtroom.

  Each dish done, oil changed, fire built

  is notched in my belt.

  Each key forgotten, garage door stuck,

  toilet paper roll unmounted

  is billed against her.

  On and on, evening the record

  against her relentless prosecution:

  underwear on the floor, hair

  in the sink, late again for dinner.

  For a decade I have tried this case.

  Judgment radiates off me like darts.

  But the courtroom is secret:

  no cameras, no reporters,

  nothing spoken out loud, ever.

  Today, the case is close to resolution.

  Today I will tell her.

  Here, take this poem.

  EVEN AS THE PASSION COOLS

  Were you to construct a temple

  of thighs,

  a Grand Canyon of thighs,

  a kachina of the thigh spirits,

  a wooden bowl of white fermented milk,

  a chalice of wine . . .

  Were I to construct a cross,

  my forearm softly across your throat,

  your menorah of wide-stretched limbs,

  the drumbeats of supplicant societies

  pulsing inside you,

  and dancers,

  hundreds of them,

  and hoards of dreamy reptiles . . .

  The temple of the Lord

  is a deep canyon,

  the church a riverbed,

  the bed the reflected river clouds,

  the coverlet the movement of sand grains,

  the song a flute of reeds,

  the bank the riverbank,

  the deposit

  a pool of silver minnows,

  the book the geology

  of pink walls,

  the astronomy a slit

  of black stars overhead.

  A coyote howls in the canyon.

  Marmots look up from their

  stiff grazing.

  Fish stop swimming and are carried

  downstream by the current.

  And particular white moths flutter down

  in clouds

  over the extended white fingers

  of a plant of spines.

  When they touch, new gods are born,

  even as the passion cools.

  THE HAND OF GOD

  . . . nothing can be sole or whole

  that has not been rent.

  —W. B. YEATS

  Blue is the color of my true love’s veins.

  Red her cracked and bleeding lips.

  Salt tides cascade through her hair.

  Hurricanes hiss at teeth and cheeks.

  As the ocean inside her rolls,

  as she makes room.

  As she makes room,

  flowering herself,

  petal by petal.

  As she makes room,

  standing on herself,

  step by step.

  Push, urges the doctor.

  Push, pleads the husband.

  Push, demands the shocked

  and dangling fish.

  She hears only

  the tympanum of her skin,

  the melting of her bones.

  Then on her face

  the hand of God appears,

  blue as the sea.

  It flows over her stretched lips
>
  and standing veins,

  dividing her with a touch

  into two slick suckling dolphins

  soft as jellyfish

  amid leaping saltwater cries beside her:

  I believe

  I believe

  I believe

  PART TWO

  She Who Thinks Like a Fish Thinks

  SELF-PORTRAIT: NEWBORN FATHER AND SON

  Can a woman forget her nursing child . . .?

  — ISAIAH 49:15

  Look at him,

  maniac sweating in

  his straightjacket,

  a scalded prune,

  ancient projectile,

  unused warhead,

  sneaky prototype!

  But the cry’s the thing,

  air raid siren terrorizing

  the night while mother

  snatches bandages

  of sleep between

  bombing runs.

  Although he can’t see,

  he searches, sonar honing

  straight for mother’s milk.

  What immense, unfunny joke

  was played on man, born

  breastless! Worse, a paltry

  mockery of the need!

  Humorless, his siren wails,

  bombs fall, as stunned father

  and son pace back and forth

  in the trembling shelter of

  their upended world.

  SHE WHO THINKS LIKE A FISH THINKS

  for Dora at three weeks

  At two in the morning, in the lake

  of my wife’s breathing, with headlights

  floating across the ceiling,

  your dark, underwater eyes sweep

  toward my face. Your fingers reach,

  then pull away.

  You cannot place me yet

  in your old aquarium cracked

  and spilled to noise and light

  three weeks ago tonight.

  I offer you my little finger,

  familiar, perhaps, as a passing eel,

  and moist breath for your cheeks

  so red and angry at the roughness

  of our air.

  But a father’s breath

  cannot yet calm

  you who think

  like a fish thinks.

  Your dark eyes

  and minnow fingers

  swim away.

  LEARNING TO SPEAK MAX

  hát is anything that can fit

  on the head and be celebrated

  burb, everything that flies through the air

  báybee is all people

  úrt is every pain

  árk is without light

  máma is she who pushed you out

  and pulled you back

  and

  dáda, ah . . . he’s the one

  who holds you

  terrified.

  IF WE WERE BEARS

  Belches like bear grunts

  rumble from me

  as I lumber along the floor

  swabbing up midnight puke.

  Whimpering son,

  pale as moonlight,

  eyes of melting ice,

  breath of fiery volcanoes,

  sweet sick boy, try to sleep.

  Let our mammalian memories

  erase the scent

  of all this wasted food.

  If we were bears,

  we could sleep inside the earth

  until we’re well again. As

  humans, we can only hibernate

  in each other’s arms till nausea,

  that red-hatted hunter,

  gives up and quietly

  goes home.

  SINGING THE BABIES TO SLEEP

  Crib in the closet, another up

  the stairs with the rope rail,

  every night home I sing the babies to sleep—

  Irene good night, Irene good night,

  with Huddie Ledbetter, Pete Seeger,

  my father, mother, cousins, and

  sisters singing Irene together by heart.

  I stroke them with my hands

  up and down unsettled backs as I sing

  (they slept on their tummies then), bathed and

  snugged by Susan into cotton sacks.

  Stop your rambling, stop your gambling,

  Stop staying out late at night,

  Go home to your wife and family,

  Stay there by the fireside bright.

  I sing until we all sleep, they in their cribs,

  and the man bent over them, exhausted from

  staying up late at night, the rambling, the

  gambling, home now by the fireside bright.

  DON’T LEAVE ALBERT EINSTEIN WITH THE KIDS!

  Don’t leave Albert Einstein

  with the kids!

  He’ll abandon them behind the

  cabbage at the supermarket

  while calculating love

  at the speed of squeeze.

  He’ll lose them in the park

  watching love bend like light

  round the swing set, astonished

  at the grip of its gravity.

  He finds love more strange,

  charmed, up, down,

  top, bottom,

  than ever known

  before a child’s birth—

  a fundamental force.

  MONSTER AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

  He stomps downstairs,

  FE FI FO FUM, demanding

  breakfast blood and bones.

  Eyes hooded by tangled hair

  flare if whims

  aren’t promptly served

  by morning slaves.

  But this round table holds

  neither knights nor knaves,

  only more monsters

  tangled in their own loose

  shirts and untied shoes

  as the school bus dragon rumbles

  and belches its hideous black

  and yellow armor

  toward our gate.

  When it eats these grisly morsels

  for the day,

  the king and queen lean low

  and clink our morning mead.

  WHEN YOU ARE READY, CLIMB

  You hug your mother like a life vest,

  shun me like deep water.

  I know. She saved your life.

  At the instant of your birth

  she knew you were too blue.

  She woke the doctor, me,

  you both so frightened then

  you cling to each other now

  as if there were no gravity.

  I wait.

  When you are ready,

  climb.

  Pull my branches.

  Crack my limbs.

  Strip my leaves.

  My roots are deep.

  As deep as I am tall.

  As wide as I am deep.

  When you are ready,

  climb.

  STRAWBERRIES

  With my children

  I more eager than they

  through the rows

  stooping with joy

  Racing back to the car

  far too many sweet quarts

  berries falling like

  red pebbles

  on the green path

  ANGEL AT EIGHTH-GRADE GRADUATION

  Two plus parrot plus

  egg plus wing plus sky.

  How much is it worth, Max?

  I know you know.

  You were born with

  the feathers of archangels.

  When your bicycle crashed

  into the streetlight

  your broken wheel sang

  like a harp.

  When your skateboard soared

  into a stop sign,

  your forearm snapped

  in a puff of quills.

  Nothing in school can ground

  that flight.

  But teachers will help

  improve your landings.

  So when you do touch down,


  nothing truly valuable

  will be broken.

  And your life, a flock

  of untamed birds, will somehow

  turn away from danger

  en masse, as if at signal.

  IF YOU BECOME A MONK

  To children, earth is flat as a yard,

  labor the distance a lawn mower cuts.

  Food is fast. Bed is home.

  Only with decades of study will

  you discover more substantial fare.

  So when you find yourself

  driving a tractor back and forth

  beneath the iron lid of the horizon,

  or driving an iron across damp sheets,

  or shifting papers against the iron

  ticking of the office clock,

  you will have a chest of treasure

  to open in your mind.

  And if you become a monk,

  what wonders will occupy your cell!

  TO A YOUNG DAUGHTER