Retreat from Portland
1
Sometimes,
The children are naked
Standing on the stones steps
Outside the cathedral,
Wandering in the wind
That winds around them
Webs of feeling
Their laughter as shrill
As prayer bells,
Ringing off the tall towers
As if part of a sermon
The church keeper gives
I walk the old neighborhood
Like an old man among them
Remembering when I wandered here
Naked, too,
And my shrill voice
Rose up towards the invisible
Gods which
I then still believed in.
2
In a two-tiered park
Near lower Manhattan,
Pigeons press their bellies
To the ground,
Tuck their greasy heads to chests
Like shell-less turtles
They sleep and accept the noise
Civilization create
The swift feet over dusty concrete
Stirring each bird up
As if litter
The only safe places
Are havens between benches
Where they compete with the empty
Wine bottles the bums leave
And peck at the leavings of
Fast food that have become
The staple of their diet
Their world growing smaller
And smaller with each new
High rise and the perpetual
Stamp of human feet
3
Spring spreads green
Quiet qualms of melting walls
Bubbling with the burning boils of love
Crocus and daffodil
Bursting out of the soil
With unexpected explosions
Each satisfying some ache
I retained for the whole of winter
Each making me feel full again
As I ache for more.
4
Even with winter coming
The trees remain
Crowned in mists
Instead of leaves
Pudgy squirrels leaping
From limb to limb
Digging holes at the roots
For last year’s buried treasures
Tiny hands cupped to chest
When they find them,
Like children climbing then
Coming down
In a perpetual ritual of life
Their curled shapes like dark smoke
Against the bright branch-cracked sky
And abandoned bird’s nests
Each poor animal seeming lost
Among the nakedness,
needing the leaves just when
the leaves leave
in anticipation of coming snow
5
So this is where the other half lives
Not a shingle out of place
Glued into permanent perfection
A sinuous illusion of success
Windows washed once a day
Shades kept closed at night
Their lives locked up and alarmed
From the prying eyes of the street
An oil painting could not look so perfect
From the outside
No cobweb or dog hairs,
Dressed up by Brooks Brothers
Made up by Bloomingdales
Landscape cultivated by
Green thumbed hired guns
I hear the echo of my own footsteps
As I walk passed,
The beat, dead beat
Of my anxious heart
Desperate to avoid
Getting sucked up
By the vacuum
That is inside
6
She pretends everything is all right
Hair up, tinted red
Like Scarlet O’Hara’s,
Though her upper lip quivers
As she yaps
Cocaine frying each thought
She tries to think
Trying one night to sit out
The round table of friends
As if she was straight
Watching them bent over
Lines of white powder
Greedy as 1849 prospectors
Guarding their measure to make sure
Everybody gets his or her fair share
Each grain like Kryptonite
Except granting powers
Instead of taking them away
In the end, unable to resist,
She bends over, too,
Knowing in the morning
She will regret it all,
Especially the stranger
With whom she wakes up
7
Hard city night
Persistent drizzle dotting
My eye glasses
As men shove shit-colored leaves
Into drooping paper bags
Plastic outlawed by ordinance
All biodegradable
Deteriorating between fingers
As cold wind rips at them
With hints of winter
Old broom sweeping at concrete
As a man nearby dangles
From a billboard like a dare devil
Smoothing out a summer scene
Over an old cigarette ad
Wall Street bridge vibrating
With night city traffic
Caught in the web
Of a badly timed traffic light
And an earlier accident,
Frozen faces frigid behind glass
As lonesome and weary as hobos
To whom I wave as I walk by
8
Wave away the water’s wash
You step and dance and die
Lost, last losing in the loam
I feel the fear here, coasting
Like driftwood brought to your knees
Wave away the water’s wash
Lost, last losing in the loam
I see the sun settle sadly
On spires of each fading day
Wave away the water’s wash
Sun and wind are victims, too
Toughened on untender times
Wave away the water’s wash
9
The rain comes
Crazy hornet stinging
My face through the open
Car window
Mad bodies bashing
Against the windshield
For the wipers to whip
Each falling dead on pavement
To squish under my wheels
The miles witnessing
The slaughter
Streams swelling with their blood
Trees like bent old ladies
Morning their passing,
Shedding golden leaves as tears
Me, struggling to keep
From becoming one of the deceased
As I twist the steering wheel
And make my way for home
My next like the rest
Totally empty,
Leaving a space exactly
As empty inside of me
10
The water glistens along the road
Blue and deep and wide, rushing
Over stones and dams and flows
Under countless bridges, gushing
Though Dalles and through white
Lids of mountains I know I’ll miss
You the child so young and bright
Seated beside me as the hiss
Of air gushes up from the bus
Window’s edge as we ride east
To meet our fate and family gruff
While your soft mother lingers near
Bending to kiss you and call you dear
I’m scared of life, of love, of me,
The years it will take to make
You into someone living free
Someone who can in a breath take
And live your life without a father
Whose own life in a web was caught
Tangled in words that grew ever hotter,
Me, never learning those lessons taught,
And traveling east I know we must part
When the road finally gets rid of us
When the crying and moaning starts
When we in New York get off this bus
I’m tired of things that always move away
The breaking bonds of love that always fray.
Still in womb you over these same roads hiked
Counting the miles of endless dotted lines
Rushing to whatever place we thought we liked
As fool’s dreams like false gold made us blind
To the truth that we carried the whole long way
You our silent passenger in a flesh box then,
With cat on our backs and hair in the hay
Each of us longing for the long road’s bends
Hoping you might survive and our jogging on
Undisturbed somehow, a growing thing alive
In that warm place from which we all have come
What wonders you see with those unborn eyes
And now we again must set to sail
When we both know we still must fail
How many times can we make travel these roads,
Our eyes caught on visions from far without
The highway having only blurs to show
Our lives lacking definition to talk about.
A blur that bleeds into the rest of years
Promising nothing but perpetual rot
Leaving behind us our own trail of tears
So we get what we get it’s never enough
And hope that we hope vanishes like money
Good times always behind us dying
Like flames in a hearth to ashes slowly
The hope in our hearts turning to lying
Lips full of words; minds hard to read
Life always ready to tempt and deceive
I look at you and you look at your mother
Her face full of pain for which she’ll get even
She remembers my words said drunk or sober
All the webs I have spent a life time weaving
New York is not Portland, no place ever is,
Helpless to change it if you wanted me to
Her eyes watching details to what she might miss
Every corner a slight every stoop a new bruise
And wonders why it all has to come to this
Each time I do anything I hurt her anew
Even those times when I’m intended a kiss
Anger is the baggage we carry to New York
I guess we hoped we would get something more.