The Republican National Convention
I tell you this
makes about as much sense
to me as a Christian
who holds his breath
waiting for Christ
to come back when
I just saw him
the other day
at that diner out on 80
drinking burnt coffee
with the grain farmers
talking wheat.
Epitaph
No, you said, the light
Hasn't died — it's just fled
Into these flowers.
The Anvil and the Lamb
Came a day when a man came carrying
What he claimed was a lamb, though anyone
Could see that it was an anvil.
What are you carrying that anvil for?
Those that passed him along the road asked him.
But this man knew that he held in his arms
A newborn lamb. He could feel its heart
Beating, smell the lanolin in its wool.
He'd heard it bleating one evening, he said,
And found it orphaned in a meadow.
He asked everyone he met if the lamb
Was theirs, and for years carried what
He believed he carried up and down that road
Frequented by farmers and thieves.
When he asked one day did the lamb belong
To me, I didn't have the heart to tell him that
It was an anvil, and so told him
No, which only deepened his belief that
It was a lamb.
Unemployment Hotline Hold Music
America is these three major chords
Strummed over and over again.
An upbeat tune interrupted
By a woman talking cheerily
About unemployment and the pandemic.
The grin flashing in the indignity
Of it all is worse than the indignity
Itself. No money without this melody.
I'll carry it with me all day,
Holding onto this hold music,
The first and possibly only
Notes I'll be given.
Campanology
I've been thinking about bells. Temple bells,
Prayers inscribed around their circumferences.
The bells in church towers, their heavy tongues.
The bells of campuses a lone student,
Late leaving the library, is stopped by,
Ringing all that reading she did deeper.
Wedding bells, bright and clamorous. The bells
Of funerals, slow, languorous. After
All, what's the rush? Cowbells in the pasture,
The bells of sheep in high meadows, the bell
That warns the bird just as the cat pounces.
The doorbell the boys ring and run away
From, the old man who woke to the ringing
Standing there confusedly in the dark.
The bells on the jester's hat, foolish bells,
A kind of anti-crown, and the bells on
His shoes, as if he's always kicking cans.
The dinner bell they used to ring to bring
The threshers in, still swaying as they walked
Past it. The harness bells my grandfather
Would dress the draft horses in at Christmas.
Bluebells in the cemetery because
She loved them. The bells they used to bolt to
Headstones, passing the rope down through a hole
In the coffin lid, so that, if the dead
Had been buried alive, the living could
Hear and come running. Bells in paintings, bells
In old photographs, bells in novels, bells
In poems. Diving bells, not bells exactly.
School bells, more likely to be a buzzer
Now. The bell you ring in hotel lobbies
That brings the smiling concierge over.
The silver bell to call the butler back.
Who even has a butler anymore?
Who even has silver, much less silver
In the shape of a bell? Who really rings
Bells these days? Does this poem even ring one?
The Dollar Tree
After the run on the banks, a poor family stored
Their last dollars in a hollow tree. That spring, the tree
Put on bills instead of leaves. Ones and fives and tens.
The family picked them off the lowest branches,
But couldn't wait until autumn for the highest to fall,
Nor were they certain that, if the bills changed
From green to red, they'd still be considered legal tender.
So they asked their daughter to climb the dollar tree.
The higher she climbed, the higher the bills became.
She started to find twenties, fifties, even hundreds,
Letting them flutter down to her parents and brother,
Their hands outstretched to catch them. She began
To think of herself as being the fall. And then she fell.
The Corn Crib
Always the thought then of the corn asleep.
The grin of yellow kernels through the husks
Like the teeth of children spent from playing
Glowing through parted lips. But if sleeping,
Who sang it to sleep? Whose foot rocked the crib?
Who kissed its forehead? Who looked in on it
In the dead of night? And when the corn is
In the dark ground, who will it fall to to
Figure out what should be done with the crib?
The Tracery
The ice traces the trees
Like a boy on his knees
Tracing a picture in a book.
When he asks his father to look
He sighs and puts on his glasses.
How soon his enthusiasm passes.
Father and son bend their necks
To a book of pictures, a book of checks.
Winters and winters hence
A man leaves the house he rents
And walks across the yard.
Life has grown too hard.
But his death shakes the ice from the tree,
Revealing the real beneath the tracery.
Want
The garden spider wants
To catch the fly, and, if you
Take a broad enough view,
You could say,
In some kind of way,
The fly wants to be caught too.
These seedy weeds want
To cling to my sweater as I
Brush by, and my sweater
Seems to want to do more
Than just warm me,
Wants to bear their future.
Seen a certain way, it is not
Such a tragedy when,
In the hour after
The hay has been mown,
The hawk that has flown
Over all morning
Suddenly descends
And takes the shelterless
Field mouse in the act
Of praying. Maybe
The mouse was praying
To be winged.