As the Moon Climbs

A gray language stretches across the landscape,
straight lines and whorls maintained by metal
cages that crawl and race and rest
now and then to free their prisoners for a time.
New graphemes are added almost daily
between existing characters, a semiotic evolution
straining the bounds of understanding.
Some parts are lit at night, some dark
except for lamps on the scurrying cages.
Topography seems irrelevant, signs passing
over rivers, through forests and deserts,
in and out of the inhabitants’ hive clusters.
What is the message, that they expend so much
energy to create and sustain it? And for whom?

for Simon

He sat in his dead car and drank
one beer after another
like a chain-smoker going through a pack.
Headlights became taillights, the moon
averted its eye from the highway
to give him some privacy.

He needed to get home to his kids,
his wife, her blue eyes, her head
bare and smooth, round as her stomach
eight months along. The doctors
said she had the best kind of cancer,
her prognosis was good, but then
Russian roulette had good odds, too.

He couldn’t afford a tow.
School and part-time work were enough
unless something went wrong,
like having to pay for chemo
when you had no insurance. Like your damn car
sputtering to a stop five miles from town.

The beer was warm. He put
each empty can back into the case.
Maybe someone could read the dregs
like tea leaves, tell him whether
this time next year he’d have
a house or a spare bedroom with family,
a car or a bus pass, a wife
and a baby boy, or two graves
and a drinking problem.

It was easy to tell him to work harder.
Easy to call him lazy or stupid, to condemn
his wife and unborn baby to death
for the crime of being poor. It was hard
to sleep at night, wake up
and smile at his kids over breakfast.

It was hard to stop drinking,
get out of the car, lock the doors,
start the long walk home in the dark.
It was hard to see the white line
dividing asphalt from dirt.
It was hard. He did it anyway.
He was the bullet in the chamber
wondering when the spinning would stop.

In the sepia picture she wears a bathing suit,
sits on a metal railing, posed like a model. She smiles
with her mouth closed, her hair half-pinned
and half breeze-blown curls, legs long and lean.
She presses her face against my grandfather’s hair, and he
bares his teeth, arm around her shoulder.
They are thin and relaxed under the morning sun.

Below them, the Caribbean waits like a pistol
primed to start a race that he finishes first, leaving her
a refugee burned blood-brown on a raft
adrift in her own mind. Now she smiles
with her mouth open, but her teeth
have been false for years, and she says
they hurt her all the time.

white begonia petals fall
like snowflakes
onto green grass

Baby grabs object
Stares at it intently, then
Stuffs it in his mouth

* * * * *

I Do

red rose blooms
between
gray lapel and
white gown