Surprise

(a response to "Surprise" by Billy Collins)

This--
I am told by the announcer
of some public broadcasting show--
is the birthday of William Wordsworth.

He would be 238 years old today,
quite bent over, I would imagine,
weighed down by age and dust, and dreaming
of an abbey wreathed in fog.

Surely he would admonish our propensity
for billboards and high-rises,
shaking his bald head, his bony finger,
the world being "too much with us"
and all that.

But he would soon overlook his misgivings,
tottering up the steps toward the London Eye,
mouth slightly open, arms spread,

as if to express some wordless feeling
caught in the walls of his throat.

Entangled

Despite jaggedness,
blackberry brambles
have an elegance

to their bowed
curves; leaping
explosions of soft lines,

morsels draped
in ragged leaves, guarded
by rows of thorns.

I whisper this
into the helix
of your ear, stranger,

after finding
that we both enjoy
picking thorns from our selves,

placing them
on the windowsill
until the morning,

and waking
at the sound
of a sliding lock, or

muttered curses–
rummaging for an aspirin,
the car keys.

But this morning,
I am cooking eggs,
brewing coffee, and you

are still asleep,
your thorns lined safely
along the windowsill,

your hair splayed
across the pillow,
an explosion.

The Sea With Teeth

From upside-down,
head sinking into the sand,
the sails on the sea
look like teeth, icicles,
ivory stalactites
between which seagulls
fly, stopping occasionally
to dangle like bats
from the sails.

Departed

I did not regard you as old,
nor elderly, as you softly forgot
the names of your children.

Memory's sharp edges dulled against
the press of years in your skull, moments jostling
for clarity, your eyes clouding over from time

to time.

Before forgetting, I have no offer
but one memory in the press of years
I am gathering; standing at the sink,

there is a speck between your teeth
when you smile, your eyes looking
like the round pit of an avocado trapped

in the drain after dinner, dishwater and debris
clouding the sheen of organic promise
with a wash of tarnished silver linings.

In these moments, when you look through us,
I am sure there are times that you are revisiting.
I am sure there are fossils beneath your skin.

Like the Clay

I-III
IV
V
VI
VII.

"...but the woman took off the great lid of the jar with her hands, and scattered all these sorrows and mischief..."
-Hesiod's Works and Days

I.

They say before she opened
the box (really a jar,
there was a mistranslation)

she–made from the earth,
who we know
is naturally curious–

felt that familiar need
only to discover
the spaces within spaces;

she was wed to discover love's quiet
hollows, and the openness behind her belly-
buttonless belly, but soon

cried out as she opened
her gift, conceiving
the ills of the world.

Before avarice and murder
flew from the mouth
of the jar, she smiled

and like the clay, fractured.

II.

Its shape
was nowhere near
perfect,

chipped

at the rim, imprecise
images of gods
and goddesses (my father

presumably somewhere
in the mix of things).

We, this jar
and I,

were created,

forged. There is
a subtle resonance,
like a lingering note

from inside;

I am amazed
at the craftsmanship.

III.

Catastrophes are rarely taken
fully into account;

the effects
of an action–my apple,
your vessel–

do not reveal themselves
immediately, entirely.

Some things are spontaneous:

guilt, regret, shame,
(the satisfaction/consequence of curiosity).

In the time it takes for a sin
to reach the ears of someone
who minds weeds in the garden,

the waxy skin of the fruit
is sweetest,

the hollow echo within the vessel,
potentially filled
with anything.

Escape Routes

The ashtray overflows
onto hotel stationery
and we sleep where the sun
cannot collect from us.

Our lush apathy is a stale room-
service meal left on the table
half eaten, and because
our hearts weight us slightly
to the left, we let them sink
into the mattress,
spooning catharsis
from each-others' spines.

Tomorrow, or the next day,
we will run, but this
morning the thunder clouds drift
glacially, and nobody cares
about our tiny sequestered heaven.

Today the sun will hit the fields and not know where to go, hopping fences between nowheres and everywheres matched side by side in far-reaching patterns of green and gold and brown as far as the eye can see.

I am in Wisconsin, where the storms grumble thunder in the mornings and my grandfather has just passed away beneath the clear blue sky of the afternoon.

There is too much death in the broken backs of newly hewn corn, in the hazy sunsets over churning factories, in the cicada husks clutching the bark of oak trees that have seen these occasions come and go long before my time and long before my grandfather's, and I have seen these occasions come, but not pass, seen them arrive but not fade, so beneath this oak tree I imagine an acorn splitting shell and stone, growing upward from your spine, embracing bones with tender roots like open palms, blanketing you with leaves the color of sun on the fields.

Storm Chuckles Thunder

The word skyscraper is
some historian's pale attempt

at comparing a man-made structure
of steel and concrete

to thunderheads
like this one.

Strolling across the city skyline `
on electric legs, the storm chuckles thunder

at the sun, who is still
wearing the west hills like a blanket

over his tired head,
sleeping--or hiding--I'm not sure.

Storm on this sunday morning, I am listening:
muttering raindrops on tile rooftops

race eachother down windowpanes,
telling stories of puddles, rivers, oceans,

and the clouds now--the sky-
scrapers--are off in the distance,

electric legs skipping
over trees that rise to meet them.

Burdens/an awful tendency

Writers have an awful tendency­--
a number, I'm sure, but this one
in particular--of offing themselves.

Or, to be less callous, the responsibility
--the weight of knowing the literary recipe
for evoking love, fear, mourning--is enough

to persuade the staunchest souls
that no person should hold such power
over readers, nor such desire to use it.