Mrs. Lot
There has to be something said for Lot’s
wife, for looking back, not moving on, for,
in other words, nostalgia, that onetwo
threefourfivesixseveneightnine letter
dirty word, when even Jesus for whom
she serves as reminder says to remember
her, and why else if he didn’t mean what
he said, understanding, of course, women
apt to cling to their homes, not having
in those days much else to cling to—and
what if they clung—like Lot’s poor wife whose
name we don’t even know to recall, she
having to pull up stakes and get out
just because some men liked other men, that
being none of her affair, beside which
she’d never liked Uncle Abraham’s loose
foot she swore he was born with, and so
she has long gazed back on the past which she
couldn’t put back any more than a pulled
tooth, for which crime she stands changed to a briny
pillar, still turned toward her yesterdays and
her God who surrounds her on all sides—right,
left, front, and back—her sad but salty stare.
Subterfuge
I remember my father, slight,
staggering in with his Underwood,
bearing it in his arms like an awkward bouquet
for his spastic child who sits down
on the floor, one knee on the frame
of the typewriter, and holding her left wrist
with her right hand, in that precision known
to the crippled, pecks at the keys
with a sparrow’s preoccupation.
Falling by chance on rhyme, novel and curious bubble
blown with a magic pipe,
she tries them over and over,
spellbound by life’s clashing in accord or against itself,
pretending pretense and playing at playing,
she does her childhood backward as children do
her fun a delaying action against what she knows.
My father must lose her, his runaway on a treadmill,
will lose the terrible favor that life has done him
as she toils at tomorrow, tensed at her makeshift toy.
Morning Person
God, best at making in the morning, tossed
stars and planets, singing and dancing, rolled
Saturn’s rings spinning and humming, twirled the earth
so hard it coughed and spat the moon up, brilliant
bubble floating around it for good, stretched holy
hands till birds in nervous sparks flew forth from
them and beasts—lizards, big and little, apes,
lions, elephants, dogs and cats cavorting,
tumbling over themselves, dizzy with joy when
God made us in the morning too, both man
and woman, leaving Adam no time for
sleep so nimbly was Eve bouncing out of
his side till as night came everything and
everybody, growing tired, declined, sat
down in one soft descended Hallelujah
Renewal
I, like a stone
kneel while the waters
of prayer wash over me.
Like a hare havened
in its own stillness
I freeze against
Thy whiteness.
Once more myself,
I feed upon
Thy manna of the minutes.
Bagatelle
FOR HELEN GREVE
Of all the days dropped in time’s pocket
this day will seek acknowledgment
with a child’s shy asking,
because the love between us used
no word uncommoner than coffee,
and was never traced by graphs of huge emotion.
Yet some fancy will recall this day
hallowed past recognition.