9/11

"How did you get here?"
The first question from
my United customer service rep
at LAX
after a long look at my paperwork.
"Bus from Chicago," I said,
“express it was not,
watching the driver’s head, at 4 am,
needing to know he was still road worthy
between Ogallala and the Colorado line
and again between Gallup and Flagstaff
and Phoenix."
"Any luggage?" The next question.
"I checked it to Kona from Manchester,
after leaving my daughter
for her freshman year at Hanover,
but I doubt it got past that stop
at O’Hare.
I called her from the terminal,
told her not to worry,
I’d by-passed Logan Field,
too chaotic...”
The agent checked her screen:
"Tracking down the bag
could take some time,
but we have a flight to Kona
this afternoon if you’re ok with that...?”

Avenue C

Pok pok pok pok pok...
I’m coming along east 7th
en route to pick up
a takeout dinner for two
from Chicken Little
on Avenue C Loisaida,
when he passed me,
leather pants slung low,
fat gold chain suspenders,
transparent t-shirt,
a bantam rooster
headed north toward
the Stonewall Inn, perhaps,
or Nowhere, or most likely,
the Cock, with its red rooster sign
over the door,
and the crowd,
at high volume,
flirting out front, and
did I forget to mention
the high heel footwear
that was taking him there,
the faux engineer boots
with their pok pok pok pok pok...

Bummer

Gone, like summer wages,
the wife, to New York,
she left things behind:
a husband, a car
that turned out
to be the perfect metaphor
for the dearly departed:
well preserved
beauty of an
’88 BMW convertible,
but incredibly neurotic
to the point where its
antitheft alarm sounded
repeatedly
from the garage
for no apparent reason,
often waking me and all
the neighbors
and always requiring
an immediate response,
drop everything,
then a furious dash
often through rain
with flathead screwdriver
kept by the front door,
(the hood latch was broken),
I could only reach
the engine compartment
through a tiny port
hidden in the grill,
while decibels
in united millions
screamed in my ear.
Quarter turn clockwise,
pop the hood,
then detach the battery
and suddenly silence,
like thunder, reverberating.
Now, tell me all about it...
Another bad dream?

California Shimmer (for LS)

At three a.m. Hawaiian time,
an arm lifted up very slowly
over your mother’s pillow,
the sight of which
caused the hair on my head
to very quickly stand,
even as the arm dropped
and a body tilted upright,
leaned away from me
and stood next to the bed.
She was back,
though not in the form
she had occupied
since departing
this bedroom three years ago
for the east coast.
it was a simulation
of some kind,
I knew that because
I couldn’t smell her,
you know, that aroma Italiano
she wore, not really inviting,
more like bug spray,
for a time before bug
was, sadly, no longer
a term of endearment;
a rather ambivalent citrus, actually,
as contrasted with
what you wore that morning
at Oak Bluffs, when mom,
supposedly sleeping in,
caught wind of it upstairs
and was suddenly in the living room
exclaiming over and over
how intoxicating your scent,
remember that?
But if it wasn’t really your mother
at three a.m island time,
then who or what was it?
Some kind of apparition,
perhaps the same ephemera
they used to pump
the Didion garage sale
in the Times: that California shimmer...
and so as Thanksgiving approaches
I shall give thanks that I have the bed
to myself these days,
most of the time, anyway...

Cape Cod Evening, 1939 (Whippoorwill) Hopper

     Late summer at Truro, and this couple has returned from an outing
of some kind, perhaps a funeral. The distraught woman would like the attention
of the man, but he is busy distracting himself with the dog, who has heard
something in the trees, and is about to investigate the source of the sounds.
(Whippoorwill was the name first given this painting). In a few seconds
the unsettled woman will turn away and re-enter the house to start dinner. The dog
will disappear after the bird, leaving the man to consider his options.  Perhaps a beer.
Tomorrow the southerly migrations will continue from the woods and ponds surrounding
the house. Tomorrow the Germans will invade the Low Countries. Tonight,
however, at Truro, the whippoorwill call will resound, and the world will stop… 
and listen…

Chair Car (Hopper)

Something vaguely disquieting about this otherwise calm library-like
train scene is the absence of a handle on the exit door…if it is a door.
At least, in the office of a pediatric dentist, the door handle exists;
although it is placed so as to be beyond reach of a child considering flight, as I was, when taken at age six to a local theater to see the Wizard of Oz, utterly unprepared for a wicked witch, and when she arrived on the twenty foot screen in shocking close up visage…then cackled..I didn’t hesitate…
but leapt from my suddenly unsafe seat and ran from the enormous harridan into the relative haven of a drenching afternoon rainstorm.

It was a long time before I could return, and when I eventually did, months later, I imagined she was still  behind the huge screen waiting with the wizard…or his stentorian voice, at any rate…I hadn’t stayed long enough to learn what was behind the curtain.  Perhaps this chair car doubles as caboose; or perhaps something darker is coming for these unsuspecting children…why else pay such detailed artistic attention to a vanishing point?

Easter Brunch: Prelude

Only at Foodland Waimea:
two well-nourished cheeky titas
in levis, stetsons and lei hulu
ahead of me in the bakery section
carefully inspecting glazed doughnuts
one at a time till they had a dozen
to add to the case of cold Corona
already perspiring in their cart;
then off to what they hope
will be an ant-free checkout,
where an antsy tourist lady
dressed to the eights,
fresh from redemption,
now approaching celebration,
with two semi-quarts of Korbel,
a quart of orange juice,
a punnet of strawberries,
a smoked shoulder ham
and six festive calla lilies
is greeted with a bill for $108,
at which she blanches,
and seeks a second opinion.
The local checker, her forearms flashing
golden in Hawaiian name bracelets
can surely wax empathic:
“stuff expensive here, dear..."

Eighty Eight Bars

Robert Merrill, requested
by someone on a
sentimental journey
yesterday on NPR Sunday,
with that Cole Porter staple,
the one a head-shaking
Tony Martin described
as eighty eight bloody bars,
that one, it goes on forever,
our night of tropical splendor.
It began as I was leaving home,
and as I reached beach parking
at Hapuna twenty miles later,
marathoner Merrill, 
gasping his last,
had finally reached his heaven,
after stopping for an umbrella
rum drink or two between verses,
now just sucking at a straw,
and waiting for the orchestra 
down by the shore to quit playing…

En Route

...between fights
on a quiet Sunday morning
at the Phoenix airport
we stopped for brunch
at a cheery sports bar
that promised burgers, beer
(Coors, breakfast of champions)
and TV sports.
Go Suns!  Go Snakes!
Diplomatic as always,
my sweetie let it be known
that she was not happy
with the continuing delays,
first in seating, then ordering,
now food delivery,
and when the folks
who were seated after us
received their food
as our flight was called,
I picked up our gear,
the instructions clear,
and headed out,
leaving sweetie to
quietly but ferociously unload
on the not at all apologetic
lady in charge of seating.
While she seethed,
I found some See’s,
two bananas
and a Sunday Times
for the long ride home.

Flak Jacket

before going home
in the afternoon
after kindergarden
I would stop
in the gulch
behind our house
and pick white ginger
so that when
I finally tiptoed
in the door
I would not be
completely defenseless...

Generosity

My poor parents
were not generous people
except when my mother
shared my father’s belt
with my skinny shoulders,
rib-strewn back
and gluteus minimis.
I had to learn generosity
from the inside out,
after becoming
intimately acquainted
with rage,
first hers...
then mine.

Inductees

That morning at the induction center
in San Francisco, all of us freezing,
a reluctant throng of naked draft- age boys,
none of us wanting to be there,
but it was 1968,
John Wayne just out of the box
with the Green Berets,
his Ode to the Viet Nam War,
and the Army medic who
stopped to look at my forearm
with its fresh surgical incisions
heard me say Monteggia’s fracture,
asked about the radial head,
I said:”gone”,
he said:”as are you, sorry son,
we can’t take you with your arm
like that,"
and as I, incredulous, turned to go,
the cornered heifer
now suddenly cut loose,
I knew that every pair of wild eyes
in that dead-silent lineup
was watching me retrieve
my almost abandoned civvies
and wishing they were me.
Outside the fog was lifting
and the summer sun
over the Golden Gate
was its own most brilliant gold..

Injury Time Out

Saw my grandson
with his dad
in the carpark
at the pharmacy.
We exchanged
energetic fist bumps
and commiserated
regarding injuries;
first, his scrape,
closely examined,
minuscule
though it was,
on the side of his foot;
then mine, under
the rolled up sleeve,
on my left elbow,
where a quarter moon
of pale scar, long healed,
covered the hole
where a rebellious radial head
had dislocated,
and refused to return,
necessitating its resection
via bone saw.
The discussion shifted
to the subject of dressings:
Yes, from the two year old,
shaking his rebellious head
authoritatively,
boo-boos need bandaids.

Lit

Have you any clue how it feels
when I see you looking at me
that way, or when you quietly approach
and I feel the slip of your fingertips
on my now combusting shoulder,
how I try to coax some air
back into my flagging lungs,
perhaps begin breathing again
sometime soon, next Thursday
or Friday, after I first recall my name.
Something will need to be done,
I know, about the blaze 
consuming my back,
but for now I shall abandon
any further attempt to think,
feel or breath, and just burn…
you had me from the first
flagrant nuzzle in the back
of that cab on Halsey street.

Pau Ka Hana

Not long after
the ruinous bombs
had been, 
for the most part,
located, disarmed, 
if necessary, dug up
and removed,
we went with Paul
to pull weeds
and burn invasive seeds
by the thousands
in fifty-five gallon drums
become temporary incinerators,
in the shallow salt marsh,
now newly restored,
at Luakealialalo, 
after which
we would float
among the dolphins
in the quiet bay
at Hanakanaia
and watch in awe
the silent clouds
massing late
in the afternoon,
overflowing the gap
between Luamakika
and  ‘Ulupalakua,
coming to carry us
away with the light,
leaving the enveloping fog
and the deepening night
to their own
restoration work,
while we dreamed
of great koa forests
rising from parched soil
the color of blood,
the color of rust,
the color of flames.

Small Rituals

Remember how, each time you made
the endless climb to the upper floor
where your masseuse has her room,

when finally you reached the topmost stair
then paused, to catch your breath,
and look back to where you knew

I waited in our car, our eyes would meet,
then hold,
while you thanked me for seeing you,

for waiting,
not leaving too soon, abandoning the watch
till I saw you had safely arrived,

not sprawled, midway up,
concussed, breathless,

bloodied forehead gashed open,
as had happened at rush hour

in Grand Central;
only then could you turn,

eyes still dancing with mine,
till you were, like the setting sun, gone?

Waiting for Jesus (for SPM)

From the Dominican,
like most of the batters
Vin Scully would profile
while awaiting retrieval
of the next pitch
from the kneeling catcher,
our savior drove
an immaculate black limo
for the Lower East Side
Puerto Rican Car Service.
His Spanish imponente,
pero el English was complicated,
so anticipated pickup times
would need repeating
a few more times
and in a few more tongues
than ordinarily necesario.
Then we would wait
on the stoop fronting east 7th,
facing the Flowerbox, si,
la caja de flor, por favor,
and the Arshawsky home,
where Artie Shaw first played,
and hope that Jesus would come.

Warrior

I wasn’t always violence made flesh,
although, on my orders, six inch guns
launched shells from Inchon
ten miles inland over the coastal mountains
to the munition factories where havoc
was unleashed on the North Korean
war effort. Before the War I was a deck
officer on the battleship Colorado.
We had orders in the summer of ‘37
to do search and rescue
in the Line Islands south of Hawaii
where Earhart had gone missing
because her navigator, the idiot Fred
Noonan couldn’t find Howland Island
when his life depended on it.
I went up over Nikumaroro in one
of the recon planes but no luck,
sadly, and after a few days we gave up,
went back to liberty in Honolulu,
where Bing Crosby was all over the radio
with academy award winning Sweet Leilani,
which had somehow managed to beat
the Gershwin brothers with their gorgeous
and ironic “They Can’t Take That Away
From Me” . The memory of all that...
Four short years later my destroyer
was birthed next to Battleship Row
at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
That's when the violence began.

Western Motel (Hopper)

Contrary to Mark Strand’s claim that Hopper did not paint cars,
there is at least one Hopper painting in which an automobile appears.  
It is not Nighthawks, not Gas, not Four Lane Road, it is in Western Motel. 
A green Buick has stopped outside the room in which our well dressed occupant
waits for her traveling companion to return from checking out. Bags are packed
and ready to be stowed in the capacious Roadmaster trunk. Our impatient traveler 
has seen more than enough of the room and the view. She is ready to move on. 
Perhaps there is a plane to catch, or a train waiting. If they leave now, there is time 
to make the connection. Are you ready? Shall we go?

When I Heard...

Leaving?
must you
must we
can’t we
steal away
take a week
a life
a place
oh please
at Hanalei?