---
Students in the Modern Era
The teacher’s time was up and we wanted a party:
pizza, streamers, desks once arranged for notes
converted into game tables, tag, pong, anything
to not have school. Because you’re leaving,
we said. We wanted him to believe us
that we loved him. Isn’t love the modern way
to explain away negligence? If you love me,
he said, pay attention to the sound of my voice.
Does it sound like hot air and firecrackers?
We said we wanted him to stay longer,
as if the year hadn’t already stretched out
our passion, our heart, his hours after dark
attaching numbers to names. He wrestled with us
in his free time, with what effect he was
having.
We waited for an answer. The words, he wanted
to tell us, honestly, he had spoken enough
and where were our ears? In our morning hour,
he wanted to beg, but knew the wages of beggars,
so instead dropped nickels of knowledge for us
to stumble on and be surprised. Again, we said,
we’ll learn this time. You’ll love us, we said,
please. If you want, he replied, you can make me
stay forever. If this is love and respect, hate
me
enough that your celebration comes later, older,
in memory of kindness so sharp, it moved you.
---
Success
A snowed peak, not a home,
you must descend
before thin-air giddiness sets in,
another dawn, another mountain
riven with cliffs
of too much mercy or justice:
one step from death or giving
up. While it’s divine
to see the world beneath you,
your feet don’t leave the ground.
Before you forget how
gravity is only one cause of falling,
come down, don’t slip, live
long enough to lead
the world higher without harm.
---
Home of Departures
the world higher without harm.
---
Home of Departures
What I would love to relate to you
is an airport still and quiet
in a dark blizzard in Atlanta,
the warm southern capital of my traveling
sole-worn shoes. And undeviating
terminals tunneling me to a future flight,
a delayed plane, the next one home.
This is the place I remember my parents
struggling with their age - wheelchaired
and pushed or riding passenger
on an old shuttle between gates.
And this is the station meant to be
transient, unstable, a home for migrants,
pilgrims, nomads, and wanderers.
We all have our reasons for moving,
but I’m glad for the days I’m given
a reason to stand still and see
the hand of God in a snowstorm,
where there’s no need to run
to catch a flight that isn’t coming,
no need to leave anyone behind.
I want you to know how time stops
when everyone sets aside
their load. How far the aisles reach
when they are empty.
How certain memories always stay:
a wall of glass, a window,
my parents and I watching snowfall
on a white open runway,
sleeping across two chairs, all night
no planes landing or leaving.
---
The Hero
As with most people, nothing important happened
after the musical ended. We shuffled out of our
seats,
Adrian and I, with no one to greet or
congratulate,
and found our car alone in the dark lot across
the street.
We’d parked to avoid traffic and similarly left.
I wasn’t anything like I thought I’d be by now
and Adrian knew it. He forgave me, I know,
because he told me a story he wrote once of a
man
who wanted to be a hero. Wanted throughout
school,
but never stood out. Wanted in the workplace,
but was only one cog in the big machine. Wanted
as a husband, as a father, as a man who saw the
world
with a broken heart, but had no superhuman tools
but hands and a willing mind.
At least, this is the story Adrian tried to
write,
but the words came out like a puzzle from a
thrift store:
pieces missing and pictures torn. When he
couldn’t write
the words, he felt like a child, which was okay,
because
he was, after all, a sensitive, everyday child.
Nothing important happened on the drive home,
at least, not visible. In the dark, there are
always leaps
of faith: the way I listened to a memory,
Adrian telling me it was okay not to be a hero,
as long as I acted the part, with or without
spotlight
my hand holding to the wheel while we crossed
night
roads like rivers, paths where the lines
disappeared
for a moment. This happens often, but still I’m
thankful
we don’t lose our way.
---
Why I Work Outside My Home
At 11pm, the cafés and tabled bookstores close
their doors like eyelids; it’s hard to keep
awake,
after that, the part of me that wants to work.
There, they play soft music like leather chairs
and the lighting is bright enough to be awake,
brighter than home where I save on energy prices
even down to my body, which shuts off the lights
when it knows there’s safety. There, I am
surrounded
by hosts of dutiful-looking strangers; they must
be
working; I should be working to fit in, a puzzle
piece
in a puzzling nocturnal mix. Here is the
alone-place,
the dark, cozy, warm-as-a-pillow living space
and I decide what it means to fill this room,
and too often,
I remain deciding until my eyelids close and
nothing
has been accomplished, and everything, forgotten.
---
Atlas Landscape
-inspired by “Atlas Landscape” by Maxfield
Parrish
Even the clouds weigh
more than he imagined,
they, orange with sunset,
skintone, wrinkled with age
and the strain of holding things.
He also is ready for a sign
of summer ending, of rainfall,
he who stands invisible,
the heavens on his shoulders,
the world at his feet.
The trees are weak pillars;
It is his to decide the storm
on the right, or peace on the left.
He tenses at the prospect of letting
lightning fall from his hands,
then forebears, a man
who knows of freedom lost
to wrath and impulse
and would not pass on
his heavy sky.
The dark takes the foreground
but beyond it, undisturbed,
a placid bay, a steadfast range
and we are thankful someone holds back
the clouds, the storm, himself.
---
A Love of Repetition
I must tell you
as one sincere reader to another:
please read and re-read.
If a book is a friend,
let her speak more than once;
let your conversation be deep
as often mine was, driven home
by a woman twice my age.
If a book is a herald
then hear her message afresh;
listen as she reveals mysteries,
like my mother’s memoirs,
of secrets once unseen.
If a book is a companion,
counsel with her in hard times
so that, each time you touch
and read, you are familiar
with the wisdom of her smooth words.
If a book is an escort,
let her lead you time and again
through the passages of time
until the way is etched
on the life-line of your palm.
If a book is to be more
than a fling in a bookstore,
keep coming back to her;
you will find her changed
and yourself, suddenly new.
Re-read these words, my friend,
there are many secrets
I must tell you
---
Fixing Water Damage
When the clothes-washer started leaking, marked
by the brown floor
it warped into an ugly frown,
we did nothing but fix it. My mother must have
noticed more; my father
let it spin in his
mind for months.
I didn’t care. What does a boy know of rot? How it
must be rooted
out, and the ground, lifted up.
You see, we lived in a house built on stilts,
ready to walk on water,
because an island will flood
often in its lifetime. When the road drains
clogged, the water crept in
inches thick above the wood floor.
You could find me in the rain with a rake,
scraping at the drain
in someone’s bright yellow raincoat.
Water was what happened. I thought I knew what
it could do,
but little of damage and repair.
My father came up with his own solution, a way
to undo things
on his own, without a mason
or a carpenter, or a handyman or anyone who cost
a dime, only
he called on me to help him.
I didn’t love work, but bag after bag of
concrete, I hauled
beneath our house, into that cave
where I had never been, not that I could
remember. But then,
why remember dust
and emptiness? There were thick old pillars and
support beams
low enough to bump my head.
My back began to ache. I breathed sand and
sweat. I couldn’t stand
straight, not once down there.
While I moved in and out, my father, further in,
mixed the concrete
with water and grit, and love
was a word I would use later about him in that
dim space, where he
must have been dying
to get the job done. But he was a rock: patient.
A pillar, stalwart,
showing me where to stand
and how: bowed with a bag in my hands. I
complained at first,
but he was too busy to respond
and I learned silence was the way of service,
how dark the heart
beneath a home would be
without my father, the hardening concrete and
the water and the light
he carried down with us.
---
If you made it all the way down here, reading through every poem, thank you! I love and appreciate you! Please let me know your thoughts and any of the poems!
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