Monday, November 30, 2009

I know nobody can sing the blues like Willie McTell

But I still tried.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

In poor taste

How we argued then
while we cleaned the house and cooked
and got ready for the aunts and uncles
argued over whether we were doing this right
and all the years ingrained in us by mothers
fathers spurred us along like Montague and Capulets

and we discoursed on cranberry sauce
and how I liked the cheapest kind
that comes canned and bland, jellied
tasting of horse hooves and tin
and upon sweet potatoes a la marshmallow
and you recommended something more interesting
requiring fresh ingredients and careful processing
and I relented and it flopped
because it wasn't what people remembered
and it amazed us both to see the certainty
which attended these expressions de la palette

and so I wondered if those with impeccable fine taste
are simply those who have forgotten
but you pointed out it could have gone back for generations.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The difficulty of belief on a sunny Sunday morning.

He looked up at her over his newspaper and took a sip of coffee, rich and dark against the white glaze of the cup. She had gotten another poem published, and now he could see that people were starting to pay attention. And what of that; no one deserved it more, he thought.

And yet he couldn't suppress a certain irritation--after all, he had always felt himself the keener mind, had almost always prevailed in their various discussion (with a carefully tender tactfulness, of course). But as he looked at her now, with a fresh realization of her depth of understanding despite all her flakiness, he began to be almost overcome with the feeling that her innocent air and her sudden keen interest in the uncovered beauty of what to him were mundane moments was something that he could never have, and so he felt the need to goad her a bit.

"How is it," he asked, "that someone as intelligent and, seriously now, artistically brilliant as you can still go along with all that nonsense?"

"What nonsense?"

"You know what I mean--religious nonsense: signing crosses and eating wafers and sprinkling water and proclaiming the three-in-one this and the virgin-born that. And here all this time, as you know, the church has gone about beheading people and burning them and stealing and enslaving them--robbing them at the very least, with no remorse, each week."

"Alright, come on, we've been through all this before. Wait a minute; where does, how did you put it, artistic brilliance, come into it? That sounds new," she said with a teasing smile, but also a slight blush.

"Well, simply because it seems like intelligent people, artistic people, people who know things, are the ones who always break free of it, break away, drink the hemlock, declare the sun the center of the solar system, stand up for knowledge, expose the bigotry and hypocrisy that the rest of the people are blindly, maybe even willingly, taken in with--they even adore it, and think it's the height of godliness. Maybe they can't be blamed, I mean, I certainly don't look down on anyone simply because--but people who simply shut their eyes, that's the worst of all!"

He could see that he had pricked her at least a little bit, and felt both satisfied and ashamed at the same time. But she turned from the window, morning sun streaming across her shoulders, and looked at him with a kindness and confidence that was touching, and gave her face almost a radiance.

"It may be that intelligent people, as you call them, will see the ugliness that creeps around behind a lot of things, and maybe it's even good that they do. But as far as I can see, art, poetry, or even just a simple, satisfying life, is simply a matter of paying attention to things. I mean, not just bad things, but to really look honestly at it, it's hard to go about berating everyone and everything. If you really want to know, I think that at the bottom, an honest life is where you accept the things you are given. And I think what you are given is each moment as if it were a message from God. You know, growing up, how they teach us that the whole world is a general revelation of God? Well, lately I've been thinking there's more than a logical proof of existence in it. What kind of a God would be that neurotic? I think it's personal, and artistic brilliance, as you call it, is simply the act of paying attention."

Of course he loved her in his own way, and at that moment, how could he help it? And he actually wanted to believe her. Still, he tried to keep up with the news, with politics, the academic world, and so forth, he tried to pay attention, to read the consumer reports before purchasing, and he just couldn't see how any of it had to do with God or beauty or personal messages he should sit around waiting for. It isn't that he thought the world mechanistic, or that he was somehow a strictly rational being--I'm not a nihilist, he thought--it's just: I love her now, but I'm not about to think she's suddenly going to ascend into heaven, just because she happens to be standing in the window in the morning of a sunny day.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Thanksgiving

Is a feast to the cornucopia of blessings
each one I see, all buttered and browned,
brothers and sisters in rustic crown, take up this horn
and blow shrill notes to say,
"I am thankful for you and you and you"
potato, fowl, and bitter fruit
grum, garrum, feel the drum
of my stomach, rollicking in this
bacchic fun!

Monday, November 23, 2009

To my infant daughter

On the day you were released
from the hospital for home
I went to the parking ramp in a daze
that anything in the world could be
like the thick dirty cement on the second level
the scent of your newborn skin an amnesiac
to the reality that whirred in the street traffic
with you strapped and snuggled in the backseat
driving like your bildungsroman was the scant mile to our garage

Yet I couldn't help but be conscious of your gift
more love than I can safely hold.