If only I could stop remembering

 

From Here to There, and Back Again

I found an antique door to match
The others upstairs and finally got it hung
In my 116 year old house
With some penache
 
Restoring something to its original
A cause celebre, or chasing after the wind
Says King Solomon. Nonetheless
I’m looking up
 
The neck muscles groan a little
And a headache comes on, but the tangles
of the hammock don’t keep me from
Rocking a while
 
With another cup of coffee
Remembering what responsibility was
When the kids were young, when rocking
Was not for me
 
It would all be capacious, this space of life
Except that the man on the internet cautions
To carry a load heavy enough
To hurt a little
 
Even if you’re taking up a burden
From here to there, and back again
To fog the lense, the omniscient lense
Of your pathos
 
And so, I have hung a door
With precision, drilled the latch strike, refurbished
The dusty innards of the mortise lock to click snug
Shut like 1905
 
If only I could stop remembering
The laughter, going back and forth to Minneapolis
And the amazing smile of the woman
I have loved

This is us in the future, taken out to lunch by human kin who we will never know.

Lunch With A Cranium

We wander underneath the shivering limbs
Of České Budějovice, hungry in the belly
Overstepping the pits of an archeological dig
 
Or is it plumbing work, unlicensed
Raising our cousins from the raw soils
in heaps, to poke up from their piles?
 
Unholy holes, everywhere we have roamed
Earth’s pregnant past, in the cities,
Depraved villages, fire-scared caves
 
And burial pits filled with taboos
Since the first seeds were strewn
By subjects of crown or headman
 
Along the church wall, in the shadows
We stoop to inspect an adult, by size
Stained ochre in the darkest way
 
I hold you in my hands, precious being
Gone from the memory of mind
Your cranium as empty as ours of you
 
No doubt you have borne the cold
So we bring you to lunch; you sit beside us
Under a warm coat at the wooden bench
 
We talk about times before the nation state
How you would have enjoyed the knedliky and beer
On a more animated day
 
A shame has come about. I carry you across
Samsonova Kašna to drop you off
With a prayer of soul and bone
 
At church, in your conversant pile
With your kinsmen—the beggars, serfs and wenches
To rest in peace
 
Thanks for joining us for lunch
It’s been so long. Let’s get out more
To convive again
 
 
     Although we did return the cranium safely to its
     exact spot in the ramshackle pile of dirt and bones,
     I regret this adolescent-minded misadventure and
     strongly believe that the ethical mores of any
     community should be respected.

When the phone is finally caged, you are free as pulsing jazz at dusk, with all its tentacles.

 

When The Phone Is Finally Caged


When the phone is finally caged
And you are free as pulsing jazz
At dusk, with all its tentacles

You may then be aware
How the room surrenders to poems
Your eyes widening with each

Each better than the last
In an evening collapse of color
As the cicadas go calm

And birds land in your palm
With kisses from Grandma
Caressing pecks, twenty-three

Years later, fresh with onion
But tonight, in New York City
Your friend who has it all

Speaks of pain meds
And anguish, angustía
In Spanish

In Spanish, they say,
We make the dust
Glow if we can

In the disappearing moments
So thank the gods at dusk
And the poems, their birds and kisses