Circle of Life

Wherever you go, in this sun-blessed land
It’s hard to slip from the grip of highway
That droning sound
Crescendos with the sun, on either side,
Then dips down, but never slides completely,
Into sweet silence

You forget about it
The brain is adept at hearing
Only what it wants to hear
(Unless it’s the toll of water dripping,
But the pipes are good here)

At night, the jackals come
There are no fences that can hold them
And, like devils,
They know the time for feeding
“So you make sure you take your cat inside,” The Barsches said, when we moved in
Bringing us delicious pie
And of course, their own cat had died
And how Mrs. Barsch must have cried

We’re not that much more civilized than they are—
The jackals, not the Barsches--
But they still eat
Whatever’s meet to feed on
And disappear into the sky

So while the highway clings to earth
And cars cling with rubber teeth
To their lanes, within their yellow lines,
Blocks away the jackals come
On silent feet
To prey

And the girl next door
Opens her window
Glossed up, pristine
Young and sure
And slips into the darkness
Clutching at her purse
Some bright hope to pursue

I see her, in the oddest stroke of timing,
As I’m getting water from the tap
Sleepy eyed
In the hour of the jackals
At the low tide of the highway
At the hour of our clearest longing

A Lamppost

Silver light clangs down the street
After the rain
In the drizzle
Until, at the lamppost
The orange light breaks the night
Radiates warm
And invites
A soul to look up, to the sky
And pupils to stiffen and shrink,
Banishing the starlight
Blackening the silver sliver of moon

It buzzes in its blooming
All unassuming, though it breaks the stillness
The short distances below to peruse
In a calm and steady gaze
Cold, mechanical, quiet
Like the soundless stars

The way it buzzes, before I move on,
The way it’s buzzing still, somewhere
On the cold night
Incognizant, like a bug
Sad and senseless
Nudges me

Not to drown in melancholy
Or go down in droning

It’s been too long since I’ve written you
Tonight I will make the time
To put to words the Things that go beyond them
And see if they can steady me
(And, more dearly, find you)

A rope tossed down this long, dark well
Where, maybe you’re holding, still, the distant end
Standing in some field of moonlight
Or beneath some spot of lamplight
Looking up

I Am the Resurrection and the Life

Watching her struggle
Like an injured bug upturned on its back
Her breath searching, like so many legs desperate for something to hold onto
Reveals
The full brutal ugly of death
Which she labors into, helpless

But the nurse is smiling--
Cell phone to her ear--
As she walks by

Her charts mark the courses that are wandering ever nearer,
Inevitably, to the vanishing
Like bare strings that, broken, must fall into the dark below

That’s just the way of things
Which can be pushed aside for hours and hours
(The nurse, after all, talks about her weekend plans,
And something about a boat
And where they’ll catch it and where they’ll land)
That’s how most spend their lives:
Batches of hours and hours, pushing it down into the underground

But, then
It comes
And it comes to You

As my wife comes out
She smiles
Then collapses into the breaking of tears
That is the unsheathed honesty of a soul
With no energy left for holding itself back
(Which is what ‘normal life’ is, anyhow--
A holding back)

If not You,
No helpless are helped
If this is not truth and true
Pity us
And pity all who came before
Who labored on these shores
With no real hope of crossing

Somehow in her tears against the senseless farce of all of this
Something makes sense
As when a sky is pierced, just for a moment,
By sun
Before the black rumbles down again
And light is gone