EVERYBODY

I stood at a bus corner
one afternoon, waiting
for the #2. An old
guy stood waiting too.
I stared at him. He
caught my stare, grinned,
gap-toothed. Will you
sign my coat? he said.
Held out a pen. He wore
a dirty canvas coat that
had signatures all over
it, hundreds, maybe
thousands.
I’m trying
to get everybody, he
said.
I signed. On a
little space on a pocket.
Sometimes I remember:
I am one of everybody.

Published California Quarterly.
Republished Ted Kooser’s newspaper column



GONE TO BONE

Driving through a storm
in the old Buick
tires slipping and gripping
in the snow
on Thanksgiving night
winter in Minnesota
wrapped in
what they used to call a tent coat
the only thing that fit any more
seven months pregnant
I said to my husband
I hope this isn’t a false alarm.
I hope to God it is, he said.

The docs came in
three of them lined up in their
white coats. Are you telling me
that my son is dead? I screamed. My
husband says this never happened.

Little boy who had
only ten hours of life
I buried a silver bracelet
with you. I want him to
have something from
his mother, I said, and
we were far from home, it was
the only precious thing I had.
Now, I see in my mind’s eye sometimes
at odd moments, unexpected,
a tiny wrist
gone to bone, and with
a Siamese silver link bracelet
twined around it, and gripped in
baby fingers that never
had time to hold anything else.

published , Grey Sparrow



PRAYER FOR MY FATHER

The highest form
of prayer
my friend said
is praise. So
I praise God
for my father’s life
which seeps into mine
poisoning,
nourishing.
A sad man
who nevertheless
embodied
enthusiasm to me:
from the Greek
entheos:
full of God:
he was.
How can that be,
an atheist
self-
proclaimed?
Why, he believed
that all of
life
is holy
Do you believe
in God, sir?
a clergyman
asked him once
I believe
he said
in The Invisible
Connection.
The great wheel’s
spokes
met in him.
Indeed,
nothing human was
alien to him.
And because he
taught me
that, I praise him
as a flawed and failed
receptacle
of the God
in Whom
he did not believe.

Published Poetry East