Excerpts

To Thomas Hardy

You were born dead, no heartbeat, no breath.

A midwife folded you in a cloth and laid you

under the bed as one places bread in the oven

then joined the others tending to the still-bleeding

woman, who, after wrecking labor, was no one's mother.

How long until a young attendant thought to try again

to wake you, lifted your limp form to the height

of the living and slapped your backside hard?

You puffed, then wailed, suddenly

pulled from a dark, silent room. So it is said,

many minutes after your birth you came to life. No trauma

of snaking through the tight sheathe to needling light.

You began to live as most of us wish to die--in your sleep,

and like the dying, wished only for time enough

to say everything to the living.

How Can I Be Scared of the Escalator?

My mother taught me to fear everything. Smoke,

fire, electrical sockets, bee stings,

fillings, gallon buckets, loose

buttons, the asphalt, pachysandra,

dutch elm, poison oak, gas grills, gas

cans, can openers, open windows, window

cleaner, the cleaning lady, ladies’ rooms, rooms for

rent, rented shoes, mary janes, Mary’s mother,

Mother may I? No you may not—

They don’t mow their lawn, they don’t

leash their dog, they don’t pay their taxes, they live

by the tracks. My mother filled sacks with male

companions then cleaned the garage

to make room for their cars.

She feared the loneliness under

the bed so she drew me near

and both of us hid.

Her Young Death, Loose in You

Easy, she fell out undone,

a good idea not written down.

Two months later, when the due date came,

you couldn't believe the grief.

A simple idea, a bloat with a date, a weight

breathing in bas relief

riding you like a new part.

To lose her you have to trace back to the start

of a thought you thought you had

sliding between your legs, a sense of wet then red then white

table scratchy paper and a doctor's shaking head.

Now your family begs come back

like a false start kicking the chalky

line on some round track

but you think rip and wreck,

no box, no ground, just water—

not clean, not cool,

just the sound.