Dad

We came down in the morning to crumbs on a plate

and a type-written letter praising us for being good.

It was signed in a scrawl we only saw once a year,

spindly and tall with curlicues on the “S” and “A”

that we knew were not from our mother’s even hand. 

Somehow we were unconcerned that he had had been

watching us to be sure we behaved, were deserving.

There were footprints on the hearth, the deep ruts

of men’s work boots imprinted on a pile of spilled ash.

I believed much longer than I should have, convinced

he wouldn’t go to so much trouble to sign the gift tags,

to shake ash on the hearth and step into it with careful

heavy feet, and hide carrot tops in a bowl on the roof

to discover when cleaning the gutters months later.

That streak of magic that no one expected made us so

easy to fool.  I drank up every bit of proof that it was real.

Yet when I finally accepted the he behind it all, there was

no disappointment, just the low, blue flame of wonder

at the efforts of that distant man, incapable of deceit,

who had been watching us year after year, his three

good girls, finding a way to tell us we were deserving.

Trees to Hide the Horror

In the steaming Shanghai morning, my boss leans over in the cab

as we wind through layers of highway stacked throughout the city,

past dizzying round towers and crumbling concrete, over the river

whose mottled water is full of ships and slicks like a child’s finished bath.

“When foreign officers came to visit,” he says, “Mao would plant trees

to hide how thin the people looked, how poor and broken the land.”

Later that day, on the broad bright highway in Shaanxi, we drive by

dozens of white billboards casting shadows on the powdered earth.

GIVE FULL SUPPORT FOR SUCCESS OF SAMSUNG PROJECT! 

ACCELERATE XI’AN’S TREMENDOUS DEVELOPMENT!

Shining factories and fabs rise from the plain like high-tech mirages,

enticing wanderers with their promise of vast, deranged progress.

We stop at the high arched gates separating Xi’an’s commercial zones.

The sun is relentless.  Men and women crouch in the soil by the road,

chipping at the wiry weeds, shifting the landscape to one of lushness

and prosperity.  In the distance, dozens of half-done concrete towers

loom over the plain, ready to house the workers who will pour in

from the provinces.  My boss leaves the van and snaps endless photos.

That night we eat rice-crusted short ribs in a theater where the actors

blow fire from behind green and gold masks.  Poised at the curtain,

the silks of their costumes changes like magic, red to purple and blue,

but I see the stagehand snatching the garments off from behind,

layer by layer.  I think of trees in trucks, forests razed here and raised

there, factories built and words printed with sheaves of paper money.

Kamaishi Seashore Song

As the ground stilled, stunned

the water receded. 

Above the sirens

and gnashing of roofs

into walls,  

her voice,  I breathed. 

I’m not

a young man.

The shore bowed

with an artist’s deference

and the wall behind her

opened like a mouth.

Orpheus shaking

in a wet underworld,

I lifted her,

heavy on my back

when I expected

lightness.

Throat to my ear,

she hummed the song

and I climbed

as the town became shore,

I climbed

and she became weightless,

I climbed

bearing the song that contained both our lives,

I climbed

as water roared like applause, rising like an an audience on its feet.

Blanc de Blancs

Against their advice, I bought a jasmine bush

from the highway nursery, the air jungle-wet and chemical.

I drove it to my sister's to pot it with bagged soil

and installed it at the base of my single kitchen window.

My imaginary garden filled the room as I slept,

but it didn't take root, the leaves turned ashy, brittle.

I slid the window open, wedged the pot against the sill

to trick the bush into believing it was outdoors.

The bottle was an afterthought, wrapped in pink cellophane,

embossed.  I bought it for the name, an elegant hyperbole.

I displayed it on the counter, expecting it to light the room

as leaves dropped off the dying plant that half-leaned out the window.

Queen of my castle.  The bottle I saved until Christmas, by then

the jasmine was a film of dust, a few scratches on the sill.

I Love You a Million

When I miss you
I trace your messages back,

especially the last ones,
uncorked bottles

polished clean by the river
of your love.

Only a few
plucked from the water

among scores
bobbing out to sea.

We knew it was big,
we inheritors, we lucky ones,

but for all it contained
how big was your heart?

The Next World

"Every morning the world is created."- Mary Oliver
"Yes but by whom? Who let me start over one more time?"- John C. Morrison

I think about it
every night,

staring at the stairwell
lit in the facing building,

who is next,
what is the next world

to which
I'll say good-bye.

It's luck,
the inhale of day,

exhale of stars,
a roulette wheel

whirling
as we sleep.

Here's the secret:
it's not only

in the morning
the world is created,

not only at night
that it's taken away.

Don't call it God,
this purr

of a gun barrel
spinning.

Some wake
to silent children,

a cracked
foundation.

Some look up
to see a hole

where the sun
shines through,

burning a ring
on the old oak floor.

Making Room

For Abilene

In the middle of the worst time,

my mother told me, “I choose life.”

I don’t remember much from then,

but when you began, little one,

something thawed inside me. 

My heart grew with you,

forced to stretch wide enough

for joy to sit alongside grief.

The day you were born I held you

until my arms went numb,

until I understood the need

for the world to make room.

You don’t choose life,

eventually it comes to claim you. 

The rest  is a frozen stream

just before springtime,

the trough of a wave, 
an exhale.