Glimpse

(I)

I traveled to St. John’s to savor fog,
to glimpse through mist the vivid hues

of staggered row homes off the shore,
to spy along the seaboard trail

the fragment of a western moose.
It was my wish to be in Bishop’s verse—

where the opaque provides a means
of apprehending what is pure. But I

arrived to days of sun, where all
shined lucid and coherent. I was told

this was a gift and tried to show
my gratitude. (Instead of a kaleidoscope

my father handed me a ball glove
tinted midnight blue.

My brothers muttered lucky bastard.)

(II)

On the lacquered tray, atop my check:
anticipated fortune cookie; though there

was nothing when I broke it open.
The server brought another. It was

empty, too—as was the third as was
the fourth. A faulty batch. I sighed relief

when a paper strip inside the fifth said
lucky numbers: 10 9 30 19 60 51.

Some pablum printed on reverse—
but those six numbers were quite real

each as solid as a stone that I could
hold to keep me calm, or in a pattern

knock upon (according to a certain cipher)
causing that stone’s walls to crumble.

(III)

In college, on occasion, I would speak
of books I had not read, construct

coherent comments out of digests,
hearsay, endnotes, blurbs…Yes—

of course, I was quite lonely.
What little I had learned convinced me

Art and Science were related, maybe
brothers, almost twins, attending

the same party in different clothes.
Brief image poems overwhelmed me—

their immediate and stripped intensities
exposing me like nibbled wire.

Once, quite drunk, a boy I wanted
saw I wanted him and cupped

my nape inside his palm. My hand
still searches for his other hand.

(IV)

When a car slid over ice into my brother
the impact sent him sailing upside-down through sky—

a body in a field of clouds and branches.
I heard the car door open and a man whose face

I can’t remember crying oh my god dear god
I didn’t mean but not before

my brother thudded softly in a hill of snow.
I leapt great mounds to fetch our mother.

Is he alive? she cried. I had no words.
Father died two years before. I needed her

to bear the brunt of what together we
would see: a young boy climbing out of the bank,

lithe and loping toward the road, the man
beside him, dusting white from his blue coat.

(V)

Aftermath’s a sexy word, beginning—as it must—
in ending. Thing occurs: car crashes

into storefront glass, frenzied people spread
apart like roaches when a light is switched.

While ending folds its weary arms, emergence
pries them open. Fast-breaking news:

a femur was found among coins in the rubble.
Matter almost always matters. Yesterday,

a riot of plums. Today, each branch
defiant in its nakedness. Given THAT

now THIS, we say. Poem paints quixotic wind.
Photo frames gazebo lightning charred

to sculpture. When we applaud
what’s ruined, do we celebrate the ruinous?

(VI)

My part: five words of dialogue—
“This tablecloth is very nice.”

Odd detail for a third-grade play
about the final meal of Christ.

I wish that could account for why
I missed my cue as Phillip

the Apostle—creating then
a spacious, awkward beat.

I’d rehearsed, rehearsed again…
What thing or thought diverted

my attention from the task at hand
once Andrew praised the silver

and Bartholomew identified
each flower in the centerpiece?

(VII)

Several years ago, a friend and I
encountered Whistler’s Mother

in a room of the Musée d’Orsay.
My friend was so excited by this

unanticipated pleasure, I snapped
him, awestruck, at her left.

I have studied the photograph
so many times, that I cannot

imagine Whistler’s Mother
existing independent of my friend

in that moment; though, often,
I consider my friend—

whatever brings him pain or pleasure—
and never think at all of her.

(VIII)

I blamed her: for the wet
relentless wind that chilled

our rooms throughout
each early spring: for

leaves that clogged
our pooling eaves: sheer

curtains letting in
gray light: the warp

of walls: the moldy grout:
the heart I do not feel

for those–-including you—
who slip a hand beneath

my shirt to reach
a glowing ember there.

(IX)

He says: double quarter-pounder with cheese
no pickle knowing regardless of the intercom’s assurances

three will need to be removed before he takes a bite.
And so begins a story of quotidian sorrow.

In two hours, his fingers shall still reek of mustard.
He will wash them with the last of the dish soap dry them

on a crusty towel think: at this time
on this day in another room of another house

someone suddenly is craving hot pickles
sliced and slathered in purees of red and yellow

no cheese no meat but served with scrambled eggs
for she is in the middle of her seventh month

not fretting over gender but concerned
that they be healthy. With her husband’s nose.

(X)

Vertical means portrait, landscapes are
in horizontal. A useful rule—we’re often told—

for study of a painting or a photograph
regardless of the theme or era. A tool

to structure expectation and response,
to frame and, yes, facilitate

an understanding which, in time,
through countless applications, serves

a kind of tyranny. The key to our perception
traps us, bars divergent entrances.

Remember chopsticks your first time?
Or longhand with your other hand?

I, today, in London—looking left instead of right—
was nearly rendered horizontal.

(XI)

I don’t want to die again. My father
speaks with so much care

that I suspect his words have been
rehearsed, as if he knew he’d need

his strength to say them with
precision: an incantation or a spell

some shrub or snake once taught him
in the forest of his elsewhere…

I don’t respond, don’t shoo the flies
surrounding him, as over time

I have refined a pose of inattention.
For there is no “again” again.

He has gone and gone and gone—
and always in the same red cap.

[from Tiger Bark Press, 2023]