I was fifteen years old in November of 1963, and I remember that announcement by our school principal as though it were yesterday.
Over the years , it became a questions we would ask each other: Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?
It joins similar questions over the generations: Where were you when Pearl Harbor was attacked?
Were you at Woodstock? Where were you when the first man landed on the moon?
Where were you on 9/11 ?
The whole thing about witnessing history.... Were you there? Then I remember that song we sing on Good Friday: "Where you there when they crucified my Lord?"
Ten years ago or more, I wrote a poem the spins from that question:
Were you there?
Everything must change.
Put yourself on any road, and something will show itself to you.
*
Seeing with glasses the first time,
I looked across the street and saw each
leaf on the tree in the rainy October afternoon,
each leaf significant and clear,
each leaf straining for its clarity in the October air.
Specific, yellow, red ,brown and green,
sharp and present.
Even the meanest, most rain beaten leaf
speaks.
*
My last apartment had a bay window,
high ceilings, shutters,
and polished wood floors.
It was like a small ballroom
On the round wood table, a vase
with one tawny pink peace rose,
unfolded in the afternoon sun.
*
I have a way of seeing through my hand.
A silent dark world running parallel to this one
where we stand upon the lawn
and watch the bright stars
dancing overhead.
The air is thick with voices,
as the students write,
one pen writing in the other's ghost.
*
Without my glasses I have two right hands
twin figure skaters as they hold a pen
so I must touch to see which one is real.
The morning dove speaks deep within her throat.
The river flows by like a giant' s dream,
and if I dipped my hand in, what would come?
*
An ordinary gesture
carries tremendous weight,
hands on my neck and in my hair.
Everything must change.
Put yourself on any road, and something will show itself to you.
*
Seeing with glasses the first time,
I looked across the street and saw each
leaf on the tree in the rainy October afternoon,
each leaf significant and clear,
each leaf straining for its clarity in the October air.
Specific, yellow, red ,brown and green,
sharp and present.
Even the meanest, most rain beaten leaf
speaks.
*
My last apartment had a bay window,
high ceilings, shutters,
and polished wood floors.
It was like a small ballroom
On the round wood table, a vase
with one tawny pink peace rose,
unfolded in the afternoon sun.
*
I have a way of seeing through my hand.
A silent dark world running parallel to this one
where we stand upon the lawn
and watch the bright stars
dancing overhead.
The air is thick with voices,
as the students write,
one pen writing in the other's ghost.
*
Without my glasses I have two right hands
twin figure skaters as they hold a pen
so I must touch to see which one is real.
The morning dove speaks deep within her throat.
The river flows by like a giant' s dream,
and if I dipped my hand in, what would come?
*
An ordinary gesture
carries tremendous weight,
hands on my neck and in my hair.
Whose wealth do I want?
Whose power do I want?
Whose name do I want in my mouth?
*
Everything was spilled.
Now I am not there again.
I am somewhere clean and orderly,
where everything happens on the inside,
where it can't be seen
in a long anonymous
interval
of paper towels and long hallways.
I remember the years
vivid with stains,
witnesses to messiness,
where everything was out of place,
everything was touch, everything was spilled.
*
I was somewhere else,
swinging on a swing
in the cold November afternoon, sick of watching
the funeral on television.
*
The weekend of
I was at a wedding
in a yellow striped circus tent
on an elegant lawn,
a glassed in world,
champagne glasses and butlers, white linen napkins.
*
When the plane disappeared into the building,
orange chrysanthemum of death
and catastrophe,
I cancelled my trip to the discount store,
watched numbly the man dive headfirst
to the pavement.
*
It was not before my time,
but it was not in my place.
Just don't ask me to touch those wounds.
They will stain me with your passion
worse than mulberries,
worse, worse than wild blackberries,
worse even than black walnuts,
and I cannot look at my hands like that.
*
Wine has an undercurrent running through its taste
which makes it wine.
You can see lights through it. There are lights in its taste.
*
I remember
before I went to school, when I was three,
visiting my mother's ancient aunt
in the Masonic home,
in
My father and I walked the foggy
misty gardens.
Many steps,
smell of boxwood.
How does boxwood smell?
Sharp as goldfinch comments,
intimate as bodies close up, crunchy and green,
dark green, that's how boxwoods smell.
And we heard the sad murmur of the mourning doves,
flutelike and saying,
everyone dies, everyone gets old,
most of us get blind.
In the dark hemlock of age,
arbor vitae of love,
blue spruce of winter,
boxwood of borders,
a name that means twin.
I don't want to put my fingers
into the holes in your hands,
and even less do I want to put my hand
into the wound in your side
that speaks death to me like
a misplaced mouth.
I will be glad to say that I believe you are back
from the dark,
and I will be glad to say I believe them when they tell me
they have seen you.
No comments:
Post a Comment