bothering me again at school for the rest of our years.
Invocation
She wanted to be a window wherever she walked.
Light of beauty might shine through,
but also she felt the small animal cry—“trapped.”
Someone else directing what to do.
Maybe trucks roaring past in the rain
held a clue in the spin of their wheels.
We could never see what they carried,
wasn’t that strange? All those trucks
on the highways of the world, packed with secrets.
Maybe the smallest thistle volunteering
near the fence, growing unnoticed,
or the person we’d never meet,
who never heard of us either,
walking in twilight on the beach at Sharjah,
dipping burgundy cloth into a soaking vat at
Mumbai,
crying for what was gone from Aleppo,
maybe they knew the best ways to survive.
To be alive was a wall, as often as a door.
But to live like a movable hinge . . .
Bamboo Mind
Popping profuselysmall shoots of glimmering
interest
can you feelthe inner nudge?
Something wants to grow
needs sunpressing up between blades of grass
you thought
were your real thoughts
Cross the Sea
A girl in Gaza
speaks into a table microphone:
Do you believe in infinity?
If so, what does it look like to you?
Not like a wall
Not like a soldier with a gun
Not like a ruined house
bombed out of being
Not like concrete wreckage
of a school’s good hope
a clinic’s best dream
In fact not like anything
imposed upon you and your family
thus far
in your precious thirteen years.
My infinity would be
the never-ending light
you deserve
every road opening up in front of you.
Soberly she nods her head.
In our timevoices cross the sea
easily
but sense is still difficult to come by.
Next girl’s question:
Were you ever shy?
To Babies
May polar bears welcome you
to northern Manitoba, their lumbering grace
marking the ice. May there still be ice.
May giant trees lean over your path
in warm places, brush your brow.
So many details now disappeared . . .
tiny toads in deserts, fireflies.
Where are the open window screens,
whispers of breeze against a sleeping cheek?
If we stop poking holes in soil,
watching onions grow,
what will we know? If we no longer learn cursive,
will our hand muscles disintegrate?
You blink, beginning to focus.
Where will the lost loops of handwritten “g’s”
and “y’s” go?
We dream you will have so much to admire.
Songbook
Tiny keyboard bearing the reverie of the past—
press one button, we’re carried away
on a country road,
marching with saints,
leaving the Red River Valley—
here is every holiday you hated, every hard time,
every steamy summer wish. You closed your eyes,
leaned your head against a wall,
knowing a bigger world
loomed. It’s still out there, and it’s tucked
in this keyboard too.
Now we are an organ, now an oboe,
now we are young or ancient,
smelling the haunted wallpaper in the house
our grandfather sold with every cabinet,
table and doily included,
but we are still adrift, floating,
thrum-full of longing layers of sound.
Unsung—on Finding
From where this box of pink & purple yarns?
Skeins not even tangled
Recipes for baby jacketsbooties
Saluting your good intentionsoh someone
honoring your high hopes
neatly packed in a box
future promiseon a shelfin our shed
(How did this get into our shed?)
But give it awaybecause we know we will never
on any dayof any future year
do this
Bundle
Why didn’t you take a photograph
out the window of every place you ever stayed?
Clotheslines, balconies, food vendors,
could have focused on any one thing.
But I was lingering at the dock fascinated
by a seagull with a hopping gait.
Catching the breeze.
Scrap of pink ribbon,
yellow shovel half-buried in sand—
Or a picture of every classroom you inhabited,
even for an hour, the boy who said,
“I’m afraid I’m in love with the word lyrical,”
on a hundred-degree day,
pencil swooping across page.
He looked like the toughest customer in town
till he said that.
To wake with a wordBundle
tucked between lips, and wonder all day
what it means . . . bundle of joys, troubles . . .
each day the single mystery-word could change.
Veil. Forget. Abandon.
And consider the people at any crossing walk,
how you will never cross with them again,
isn’t that enough to make a charm?
Or the careful ways we arrange a desk
wherever we stay,
temporary landscape—pencils, sharpener,
drifting moon of a cup over everything, silent and humble, bearing its own hope.
Little Lady, Little Nugget Brooms
Hey Baltimore, I’ll take one—
do they exist anywhere
but on this fading wall?
Not all we love is gone, oh
Hunter & Elsie’s Café!
Find a ghost sign
for proof. Every disappeared menu
seeding your bones. Karam’s Mexican
Restaurant, more like an oasis it was,
west side San Antonio,
giant palms in back garden,
massive Aztec heads,
Ralph Karam’s cozy dream
wrecked for a Walgreen’s,
but can you still taste
the crackly corn chalupa
distinctiveness? Did not taste
like anywhere else.
Kalamazoo,
meandering around in you
at dawn, on a street
with real buildings older than
my grandpa,
were he still alive,
the Michigan Newsstand was well-lit
and ready to serve,
thousands of pages of new reading matter,
books, magazines,
step right up, believe in me,
and the whispery sign on the side of a building
Rooms for Rent 1 dollar hot supper
put my modern flying heart back in my body.
Welcome What Comes
1
Bearing secrets
underlying meanings
parallel possibility
hint of distance
company for the journey
doorstep treasure
gift wrapped loosely in bandanna
trail of ribbons
no address attached
traveling a long time over rocky terrain
trusting you were
waiting
2
Some people grew up receiving no messages at all
but from people right in front of them.
Clean your roomWash your hands
Homework!
Black phone in hallway nook rang so rarely,
it shocked us when it sang—
Grandma on birthdays, lonely insurance salesman.
No disembodied messages chirping up continuously
see this, read that, don’t miss . . . how did we
live?
We knew what was going on.
Always felt connected.
Tonight I wanted to return
to the days of someone telling me what to do.
At least then I thought I knew.
3
My old friend writes a real letter in the mail
I have not yet learned how to live, have you?
Wind still whips around our chimneys
Sunrises feel more precious
A blind dog wanders all night through fields
returning home next morning wet and exhausted
to wrap his paws around his person’s neck
What Happens Next
Ferguson, no one ever heard of you.
Unless they lived in Florissant, or Cool Valley,
we said “St. Louis” when we went away because
you were obscure, tucked in leafy green,
lost to humidity.
Sure, we could count on things—
farmer Al in baggy overalls, boxing tomatoes,
patient books lined at the library,
Hermit Lady sunken into tilting house.
Catholic pal said I could not step into his church
to see the painted statues, God would not approve,
I was not baptized, a drifter among
Ferguson’s ditches and trees.
We might have guessed your coming troubles,
white teacher reading Langston with a
throaty catch in her voice. The invisible line,
Kinloch on the other side. See that word? Kin in it.
Made no sense to kids. Only grown-ups saw the line.
We loved your fragrances and musky soil—
everyone so poor a dime or quarter could change a day,
but filled with longing—how to spend our bounty?
My Arab daddy always wanted to know more.
Evenings we watered the grass, the trees.
Driving slowly around “the other side,”
he waved at everyone, people called him reckless,
only Arab in town got away with curiosity.
Something had to be better than
the separations humans make—
at four, I am climbing steep stairs
of the house next door.
If I sit quietly, the teenager who lives inside
will emerge and brush my hair.
She presses hard, down to the scalp.
I belong to her too.
Everything Changes the World
Boys kicking a ball on a beach,
women with cook pots,
men bombing tender patches of mint.
There is no righteous position.
Only places where brown feet
touch the earth.
Maybe you call it yours.
Maybe someone else runs it.
What do you prefer?
We who are far
stagger under the mind blade.
Every crushed home,
every story worth telling.
Think how much you’d need to say
if that were your friend.
If one of your people
equals hundreds of ours,
what does that say about people?
Standing Back
If this is the best you can do, citizens of the world,
I resolve to become summer shadow,
turtle adrift in a pool.
Today a frog waited in a patch of jasmine
for drizzles of wet before dawn.
The proud way he rose when water
touched his skin—
his simple joy at another morning—
compare this to bombing,
shooting, wrecking,
in more countries than we can count
and ask yourself—human or frog?
Three Hundred Goats
In icy fields.
Is water flowing in the tank?
(Is it the year of the sheep or the goat?
Chinese zodiac inconclusive . . . )
Will they huddle together, warm bodies pressing?
O lead them to a secluded corner,
little ones toward bulkier mothers.
Lead them to the brush, which cuts the wind.
Another frigid night swooping down—
Aren’t you worried about them, I ask my friend,
who lives by herself on the ranch of goats,
far from here near the town of Ozona.
She shrugs, “Not really,
they know what to do. They’re goats.”
Lost People
“The blue bird carries the sky on his back.”
—Henry David Thoreau, unpublished works
For years I looked for my lost friend. We did so much mischief together,
made our own tiny language, wore overalls, walked twenty miles—
when someone else’s mother said we would
“get over” Henry David Thoreau,
we knew it was not true.
Finally—“Your previous letter arrived,
but I kept it many months without answering
so it seemed to get longer. Sorry—it grew too long to answer
so I never . . . did.”
Once we were dandelion fluff
raggedy blue jeans
quoting Henry under yellow bell esperanza trees.
Everything already happening
rushsizzlemiracle of becoming on
earth & we would not miss one note.
Steeped in quietudebuzzing joy
that could never fall onto a
to-do list
dish soappaper clips
Write her a short note now—
only skybetween the words
Broken
What was precious—flexing.
Fingers wrapping bottle, jar,
fluent weave of tendon, bone, and nerve.
To grip a handle, lift a bag of books,
button simply, fold a card—
I did not feel magnificent.
Unthinking movement, come again.
These days of slow reknitting,
stoked with pain . . .
“Revise the scene of injury in your mind,”
suggested Kathleen, so then I did not
snap against the root, but just became it.
Thank your ankles, thank your wrists.
How many gifts have we not named?
Twilight
Victor the taxi driver says
I love this time of day
This is when I say
Never want to die
want to be here forever
Oh maybe it will be possible,
in the shaggy heads of trees
that barely felt us
walking beneath them
The corners we turned so often
broken pavements
cracks & signatures
Daniel Lozano 1962
All the days we entered thoughtlessly
forgetting to turn our heads or bow
to the vine finally making it over the fence
dangling blossom
orange cup of joy
ephemeral as we were
here
imagining our deep roots
VOICES IN THE AIR
People do not pass away.
They die
and then they stay.
For Aziz
I had not noticed
the delicate yellow flower
strikingly thin petals
like a man with many hopes
or a woman with many dreams
the center almost a tiny hive
ants could crawl in and out of
if they wished
Had not noticed the profusion
of flowers on the path
Had not stooped
to absorb the silent glory
of many-petaled yellow
or remembered the freshness
of my father’s collar
for some years now
the rush of anticipation
circling his morning self
despite so much hard history
and searing news
Who can help us?
Yellow beam
spiral sunshine
legacy
Sheep by the Sea
a painting by Rosa Bonheur (1865)
The calm of your wool, rounded resting postures,
hooves tucked under.
Behind you, roiling waves pound, whitecaps against
stones.
Your eyes have been closed for a hundred and
forty-eight years.
But you seem not to fear what is coming. You curl in
repose,
Pink velvet of your ears echoing the pink tips of the
grasses.
People have always been shepherds for sheep,
but I’d like
to let you lead. Quiet depth, a measured gentleness.
Here in a museum in Washington, D. C.
Emily
What would you do if you knew
that even during wartime
scholars in Baghdad
were translating your poems
into Arabic
still believing
in the thing with feathers?
You wouldn’t feel lonely
That’s for sure.
Words finding friends
even if written on envelope flaps
or left in a drawer.
Warbler Woods
For Peter Matthiessen
Never too proud to tip his head back.
To gaze, look beyond.
Something nesting in leaves, unseen,
presence on a boulder beside water,
single strong leg.
Fine if it took a long time to walk there.
Better if it took time . . .
He knew the names of every warbler,
stitched inside his skin,
the seven eagles, graceful cranes, he followed them