Crystal Lake, Iowa

Everything is boarded up now.
It was never a very big main street
And it’s all boarded up, now:
Maxine’s bank (the entire commercial building),
Ione’s restaurant, the grocery store—
All gone ...

Maxine bought back the family farm.
Her husband Keith was the farmer.
If a calf was breech,
He’d rope its feet to a horse
And pull it from its mother.
If the cow or the calf died, he’d weep.
If a pig or a dog died, he’d weep.
It was awful & wonderful,
To live so close to your animals.

Miles of flat land beyond the town
Still extend as far as the eye can see.
Crystal Lake, at the edge of town,
Surrounded by a park,
Still sparkles like a cut-glass chandelier.
The new cash crop is the wind:
The white blades of windmills
Rotate slowly above the land,
Slice the air.

Bright Fall Dream

It is a bright fall Saturday morning
In a roomy house I’ve never lived in.
I am changing the many beds,
Clearing up the wide white kitchen—
The homely countertops are cluttered,
The refrigerator is grubby,
From filmy windows above the sink
I see the garden has been neglected,
But not for too long.
Beyond the layers of garden and rows of brick houses
This may be Baltimore or Southeast DC,
Where newer cityscape interrupts settled,
Residential streets in odd jigsaw puzzle transitions
And sloping riverfront or harbor opens onto
Sky and cloud juggernauts.
And, the air conveys the closeness of big water.

In the kitchen that is mine for now
Dead and dying flowers and veggies must be cleared up
And returned to the garden.
If there’s no compost heap I’ll start one — but
Where is everyone, anyway, I wonder.
Should we start a shopping list? Are we hungry?
Will we be hungry soon? My son,
In the shadowy hall, explores the creaky landings —
His hair is wisps, his face is occupied, he wears his plaid corduroys
And the red turtleneck; he burrows in heaping pots
And pans in the cupboard in the pantry — or finds another way
To evaporate from view. He hasn’t been to Baghdad.
He hasn’t eloped. He hasn’t had the two
Psychotic breaks. And recovered.

My fingers find woody stalks and wilting leaves in the sink.
I stack plates, I search for detergent; maybe there are
Footsteps upstairs or across the hall.

I open a door onto a walkway to a gate
Between this house and a long, narrow alley
That gleams, after rain.
My father is in his tan raincoat and brown felt hat.
He is walking toward me, along the paving stones
From the gate to the door. He is grinning
The grin mixed with bad back pain.
He has not been diagnosed with colon cancer.
He has not had cataract surgery.
His dark eyes are bright as raccoon eyes.
He has not died.

My son is too small, on the steps below me.
Are his fists in his pockets or are they
Behind his back and if so, what is he holding,
How did he magic himself out of doors … ?
He looks bashfully down as his grandfather brushes past him.
I think I should say your grandfather doesn’t pick you up
Only because he has a bad back,
It’s a World War II thing.
Instead, I lift my son to his grandfather
And we stop, in the doorway.

The two faces lean to each other,
very near to my face.
They press nose to nose, mouth to mouth,
Chin to chin: the eyes close,
Are the two grins identical?

My arms are around them and I call over my shoulder for L.,
Who is not yet my partner, who is somewhere within
Earshot and would grab her camera, in a heartbeat, to capture this.
It is a picture we would frame and set on the mantel
Beside a row of speckled, near-perfect apples
And tiny, bright tomatoes from the garden —
If we were settled here, if this was our house,
In Baltimore.

The Coffin of Romance

(A message to myself … )

It may not seem fair but
What you want to do is be reasonable
And allow yourself lots of breathing room
And if you love a person, be sure to say so
But keep your hands to yourself at times,
Even if, at times, this feels like dying.

Keep your hands in your pockets
And do not reach for your wallet
As that can create debt & imbalances
In the power—which are death to romance
(Debt kills romance.)

Some romances are free of debt or guilt;
Some romances were never meant to be—such
As the romance that broke my arm,
When I tripped & fell over it.

Keep romance in its place: it is the messenger,
The not-so-faithful servant of love & will also
Be present when love is flimsy
Or you are in some way anemic or feeble
And do not tend the flame that is the key
To the door to love’s survival.

Love survives among those who see each other
Clearly as they in fact are, setting aside Fantastical illusions & disappointments, with no Detectable bitterness.

However painful it may be, even while kissing,
Letting go all fears, carefully study
Who you are with, who (exactly) you might be
And what (exactly) you seem to need,
Eyes open (& this can take decades,
if you have them,
And also takes patience because you cannot lie
To yourself or love if you would minimize
Chronic confusion &/or killing.

If you wish not to murder, if you wish yourself
And your love alive in love, then space & time should be applied
Like clean, white bandages around a war wound.

Fill the tub: all past agonies must be scrubbed
In the salt water of your tears & regrets,
if need be.
Never forget that too much moaning kills romance.
(Romance kills moaning, temporarily.)

And there can be no nastiness or chronic sniping
Or screaming between you & your love:
they are many times quiet,
The ones who prosper between the sweet wings
Of the love bird & keep its ghost alive, even
If it should sicken or die, or seem to die
Awhile, between reincarnations.

Ghosts & echoes,
A single broken gold bar from the
Abandoned cage of a lost love
Can be enough, can sustain you,
If romance was true,
And truly lived.

If love survives,
Beyond the neon dance
Of the green romance,
It will be because you
Faced down your fears and were not
A worm but were steely,
Even ruthless, yet ever so
Trustingly, nakedly,
Spoke to that love
And held on.

Lilac Scramble

There was a whisper bush that made a forest world At our back door in West Newton
Where I crouched, imagining the time of
Pilgrims, of Pocahontas, of pioneers,
Gingerly pulled the blooms apart to scramble and Simmer them in a thin aluminum skillet
No bigger than a fried egg, in diameter.
I played solitary picnic & cuisine games.

On similarly remote summer days,
In huge, hot Boulder foothills of the Colorado Rockies,
Another girl -- her bangs and eyebrows filling with dust -- Tamed then fed, brushed and rode an actual,
Too huge palamino that her father brought home
To fulfill family rodeo dreams.

She was unafraid of snakes.
She scoured the mountains alone
With her horse. She took her school books behind the barn And if it was sunny, even in snow drifts, she would read Or nap. Once she shared mystery stew
Served up by a hermit in his hidden, mountain-tunnel hideout.

She kept her folding knife very close,
In case of snakes and for skinning trapped rabbits--
A furry pair of rabbit feet
Dangled from her belt. In her pocket,
She packed a pistol.
It’s not like in Eastern cities:
Guns protect you, in the wilds of the West.

I filled tiny plates with fragrant mounds of
Lilac scramble served to neighbor kids for imaginary supper, Never imagined the silkiness of a lilac pulled from a wild bush
And tucked into the harshness of a horse blanket
Under a worn saddle, out in the trail dust,
Up in the Rocky Mountains.

Paper Shoes and Drones

I was hands-on, age seven or so.
I made flimsy stapled-paper slippers.
I favored juicy red and turquoise crayons, diligently
Rubbed them hard into white typing paper
From my father’s office.
Stapled the pages together, made my own
Paperback picture book about a trip
To the circus.
And, I got lost in dressing and undressing,
Unpacking and repacking,
My complicated family
Of wedding party paperdolls.

Today, Nancy is here for the march.
She is messaging on her laptop.
She is cutting six drones from cardboard.
She paints them the dead, military gray
And (in black) these words: The War Drones On.

Marchers will carry them,
Swing them from dowels on Saturday,
When the war is officially
Seven years old.

We stand in the carport,
Citizen witnesses to the drying of the
Drone paint and the turning pages of the war.
It is nearly spring, the stirring season.
Some leaves rustle, some are lifeless.
I am thankful for my playmates.
I am praying for my leaders.

Finch House Rock

Modest finch house swings
From blooming dogwood treetop,
Rocks with sweet birdsong.