Chicken Pox


I had chicken pox
My children will never have it
This deprives me of the chance to do
What you did for me
You rubbed my legs,
Mad with itching, 
Through a quilt 
While I lay on the sofa
New to discomfort

I do not care what came after
I do not care whether we ever speak again
You filled your quota
In one afternoon
You soothed me
You did not tousle my hair and 
Tell me to be tough
You accommodated my weakness
And taught me to be tough
Once my sores had healed

You created new sores, true,
But they have healed as well





Have You Seen Me?


I don’t know how I came across it
A small rectangular section of paper
Beneath an ad for a sale on vinyl siding
But there it was
But there I was
As I was
Some months before my abduction

A school picture
A smile 
A wince bespeaking puberty’s pain
And next to it a picture
Of how I might look now
Unnatural eyes and complexion
No pockmarks scars or signs of life
The homely head of a cheap mannequin
Same haircut and everything
Skin like molded plastic 
Slightly darker
Mouth brimming with white pebbles
Braces erased by a cursor

And I thought they might label this one Hopeful
And include a third image labeled Probable
That might resemble more closely
The way that I look now
So that should someone unearth me
After all these years of hiding
They will know
Even though they have not uncovered
This weirdly stiff smiling creature
This attempt by technology to forecast
The effects of uneventful years 
Upon an undeveloped human visage
They will know
They will recognize
That they have found me
As I am
Not as I was
Not as I might have been
But as time and circumstance have made me

As I always was
In a future I could not envision or forestall
As I was to be when I had flowered fully
As I was always meant to be
On the day I was unveiled
And beheld again by the eyes of those
Who could not stop wondering where I was





Corner of Dutch and Hyatt


The sun is blond and new and crests
a distant mound of clustered residences
to bring light to the corner of Dutch and Hyatt.

Smooth breezes gather here, pause
to play with ivy that spills from a rich tumbling lawn
to climb sidewalk-ward, clinging amorously
to the warm red brick of the retaining wall.

The birds are glossy, narrow and skittish,
obeying impulses born of unremembered
brushes with traffic.
A pair of shoes hangs pendulous overhead
from the smile of a slack power line.

Two blocks north the foundry falls to pieces;
in the other direction there are loose cats
padding toward the dusk, caught up
in the heaving concrete loops of the overpasses.

In the pocket of light where Dutch and Hyatt
lie one over the other,
the breezes confer
and the birds cheat death
and the sun approaches stately as a monarch,
a brash boy king striding through his tranquil home
between crusades.

 



Option Three


When I was a boy,
still believing 
that the rivers changed course
with the wind,

I stood in a flat field 
with my grandfather,
who struck me
playfully with a bouquet
of cattails

and gave me two options.

I had not realized
until that day
that there was a choice
to be made.

With his one eye
and the sun hovering
over me, I thought of a third
option, the only choice
I made at that age

by which I still stand.

Holding the hand
of my grandfather,
whom I loved, I invented option
three: 

a swift furtive dash for 
that same field on that same day,
pockets full of fists, strolling unseen
between options one and two

at the precise moment 
that the serpent sheds 
its skin and the angels stand 
distracted, 

picking madly at their 
molting wings.