The Honey Room

Brother Al, in his hood,

is out in his field

making love to his bees.

From my room I can see him

move through his hives

the way people should move

among people.

The bees give him gold and the gold

turns orange in the jars

that he sells in a room

near the door of the abbey.

The Honey Room, everyone calls it.

Besides Brother Al, only I

go into that room full of honey.

I go in there and bend

and look through the jars

on the shelves and the sills

till there in the orange I see Sue

standing straight

in a field of her own

with a smile

for our garland of children.

In Break Formation

The indications used to come

like movie fighter planes in break

formation, one by one, the perfect

plummet, down and out. This time they’re

slower. But after supper, when I hear her 

in the kitchen hum again, hum higher, 

higher, till my ears are numb, 

I remember how it was

the last time: how she hummed

to Aramaic peaks, flung

supper plates across the kitchen

till I brought her by the shoulders

humming to the chair.

I remember how the final days

her eyelids, operating on their own,

rose and fell, how she strolled

among the children, winding tractors,

hugging dolls, how finally

I phoned and had them come again, 

how I walked behind them

as they took her by the shoulders,

house dress in the breeze, slowly

down the walk and to the curbing,

how I watched them bend her 

in the back seat of the squad again,

how I watched them pull away

and heard again the parliament

of neighbors talking.

McDiver’s Creek

Autumn’s over.

Wheatcake odors flood the wood

front porch. Andrew Block,

in mackinaw and overalls,

tamps first tobacco of the day

and estimates his morning.

In an open field beyond McDiver’s Creek

a colt, palomino apricot and snow, 

nips grass between great gallops 

and the shock of trees.


New Girl

Light ambrosia of the sun

is over all of her.

She is shy

the way the flicker

pink of rabbit eye

is shy. Within the

almond hair, cliffs

of cheek round in, where

unifies her chin.

There, two birds meet before

they carry out her smile.

That Greyhound Station

This woman

I am interviewing,

one of her front teeth

crosses over the other

and sticks out like a leg

crossed over the other.

Otherwise I would hire her;

I am certain of that.

But she reminds me too much

of that Greyhound station

at three in the morning.

There, alone on a bench,

across from me still,

her little dress up,

skulls of bare knees,

hillbilly child waiting.

The Man Who Lives in the Gym

St. Procopius College

Lisle, Illinois

after World War II

The man who lives in the gym

sleeps in a nook up the stairs

to the rear. Since Poland 

he's slept there, his tools

bright in a box locked 

under his bed. At noon bells

call him down to the stones

that weave under oaks to the abbey

where he at long table takes 

meals with the others 

the monks have let in 

for a week, or a month, or a year

or forever, whatever 

the need. The others all know

that in Poland his wife

had been skewered, his children

partitioned, that he had escaped

in a freight car of hams.

So when Brother brings in, on a gun

metal tray, orange sherbet for all

in little green dishes,

they blink at his smile,

they join in his laughter. 

Those Poems, That Fire

I stood in the alley, still

in pajamas, somebody’s shoes,

another man’s coat, my eyes

on the bronc of the hoses.

Squawed in the blankets of neighbors,

my wife and three children sipped

chocolate, stood orange and still.

Of the hundred or more I had stored

in a drawer, I could remember,

comma for comma, no more than four,

none of them final,

all of them fetal.

Love Is Another Thing

Sitting at the table

spinning the creamer

running her fingers through sugar

the kids spilled at supper, Sue

suddenly says, “Don,

love is another thing.”

Since love is another thing

I have to go rent a room,

leave behind eight years,

five kids, the echoes of me

raging at noon on the phone,

raging at night, the mist

of whose fallout ate her skin,

ate her bones, left her a kitten

crying high in an oak

let me free, let me free

Love and Slaughter

Sheep are by a goat while

cattle are like swine, prodded, yet

cattle go by hammer while

swine are by the hind leg hung

then swung about to spigot.

Quicker, infinitely cleaner, is

the hacksaw of sweet Susan’s laughter.

Mop Woman

Near dwarf this woman.

Foreign born. Minsk,

perhaps. Nose

a fist. Hair

a whisk broom

only black. Her back

an Orthodox cupola,

her arms braids of gym rope

lowered to the floor.

Orangutans could climb

those ropes, hand

over hand, no rose

no purple

doughnuts

on their hinds.

Near dwarf this woman.

Foreign born. Minsk,

perhaps.

Her hands, all gristle,

hang an inch, no more,

above her shining floor.

Mingle

Tomorrow morning when I wake

it’ll be the nurse who’s crazy.

I’ll heave my body up

on its elbows and yell

in her ear, “It’s time for your pill.

Get dressed. Breakfast is ready

in the Day Room. Juice, rolls, bacon, eggs.

You’ll find a tray with your name on it,

faces you know, a chance for conversation.

Eat each meal at a different table.

Mingle. Before you can get out of here,

you have to love all the faces you hate.”

Lines for a Female Psychiatrist

Perhaps when I’m better I’ll discover

you aren’t married, after all,

and I should be better by Spring.

On that day I’ll walk

down Michigan Avenue

and up again along the Lake,

my back to the wind, facing you,

my black raincoat buttoned to the neck,

my collar a castle wall

around my crew cut growing in.

Do you remember the first hour?

I sat there unshaven,

a Martian drummed from his planet,

ordered never to return.

With your legs crossed, 

you smoked the longest cigarette

and blinked like a child when I said,

“I’m distracted by your knee.”

The first six months you smoked

four cigarettes a session

as I prayed out my litany of escapades,

each detail etched perfectly in place.

The day we finally changed chairs 

and I became the patient 

and you the doctor,

you knew that I didn’t know

where I had been, 

where I was then,

and even though my hair 

had begun to grow in

how far I'd have to go 

before I could begin. 

My Fiance Visits My Father’s House

The two Gibraltars in the yard

never were delivered.

They have always been there.

The twenty years I lived there

the neighbors never said a word.

Their shrieks would shatter both

if they could see them.

The redwood fence my father built

is tall enough to cover his.

It will be tall enough, he swears,

in time to cover mine.

My father says before he dies

he’ll sell his own Gibraltar

and leave the house, the yard,

the redwood fence to me

to guarantee that I keep mine.

Poem for Mother, Poem for Dad

They weren’t talking at all, back then.

Deep in that house, conceiving their dwarfs,

they weren’t talking at all, back then.

And they’re not talking at all, right now.

Still in that house, rearing their dwarfs,

they’re not talking at all, right now.

And they won’t be talking again.

When the dwarfs break out they’ll stay in that house,

not moving, not talking again.

Whole and Steaming

Dingle, Ireland

The bathroom carpet,

wall to wall, is blue,

the lightest blue,

to complement

the bowl and ceiling.

Apropos the moment: 

I bend the waist

and heave the gristle

from last evening's steak.

Tomorrow I shall row again

to see those ancient men

in caps and coveralls

stand like statues

while they talk

and tap gold embers

from clay pipes

forever glowing. 

I'll go there

at the dinner hour

and see them once again

fork potatoes,

whole and steaming,

from big kettles filled

at dawn by crones

forever kerchiefed

and forever bent.

At dawn you hear 

these women

sing their hymns

like seraphim

a cappella

as they genuflect and dip

big black kettles

in the sometimes still

sometimes foaming sea.

Memories

If one could store them

in the attic without stir

and turn to other things,

to picking fruit, perhaps,

or seeding it, one could afford

the dalliance of an hour

for one would have the years

one knows will not be those

whose paralytic youth has just begun,

the years whose summer plea

for laughter and for kiss

somersault the hair

and scimitar the smile: the years

the sun, the moon, the stars

can never order stop.