My Dad's Ship But One of Three 


Three ships left English port that evening
Out of sight is out of mind
Who would spy them cruising, steaming, transporting precious cargos warm
across the dark cold waters, killing North Atlantic waters
Who could see through deepest night 
bodies of a breathing cargo, men and mostly young ones likewise 
bound for the shore of wartime heroes, horrors, lost hurrahs
bound for the continent, La Belle France, country of culture, wine, fashionable women, les belles  dames
some reduced to eating garbage left behind
by lords and masters, four long years in darkness bowed them,
liberation on its watery way 

Who could see the single foe that spied them
the sea-wolf banished from these waters, shark of steel, 
the last survivor of the killing school that once preyed upon 
both the merchant and the man-of-war,
threshed the ocean floor with seamen's bodies 
till finally self on gutted self, wrapped around a deadly fish 
that tumbled from the crowded lanes, a bullet in the belly from the Allied fleet,
la belle dame sans merci // offered none 
All, they told us, all were gone, 
Yet one shadow, evil shadow, 
somehow hid its deadly eye 
still patrolled the wintry waters, darkness, caverns of the sea 
struck them like a water snake, poison biting through the steel 
sucking down the black Atlantic into the souls of sleeping men, 
infantry if not still infants, youngsters merely starting out, capped and gowned a year, or precious merely months before, 

Unable still to place a vote, or have a drink in a dry home state, yet to know a woman maybe,
hoping in European harbor to find a sweet release, not a cold bed on the bottom of the sea,
Neptune's flop house, the octopus's garden, the kelp bed cafe,
nine fathoms deep in coral bed, food for bottom feeders, 
flesh for the flash of sharkish teeth, starkly laid on sea-maid's wreaths
stilled to bottom, chilled to broken, sleep no more on solid ground,
vetted in the scales of Pisces, never more sea-worthy found

One ship lost, and two survive 
We are happy, we who thrive 
There but for fortune, sleep you
and I





The Sixties Remember 'the 60s'


Their parents didn't get everything they want, certainly not all at once
They say, Why not?
Sex, denim, floppy flack-jackets with extra pockets, facial hair, miniskirts, loud guitars
Where is the clause in your constitution permitting all or any of these?
Something is missing from your diet, but don't you worry we have a pillbox of substitutes
Poor Eleanor: pass the hat and buy her some fun
We're all leaving home
Each new discovery, McLuhan taught, involves the recovery of something lost
A good home beneath the sheltering paternal oaks,
the lares and penates of car pool and Christmas party
Or do you prefer a walk in the woods, or the wild side, or a life amid faces you didn't see in 
elementary school, the state U, the typing pool, the conference room? 
Maybe facial hair and worn-smooth jeans
Ending up with goat-raising hippies on a mountain side, growing their own food as long as they don't eat much (or each other), impossible to sprout coffee beans in Oregon,
pouring unpasteurized milk on big bowls of groats laced with homegrown cannibis, 
burning green wood, praying to the "great spirit" of suppressed forbears, or the old demons 
of natural passion, lust, risk, awareness of others' sufferings, 
the dis-ease at the heart of things
old truths cast down like dime-store idols: don't the Russians love their children?
If so, unfreeze the cold. 

Let down your hair in this quarter of your still thick head, as in all the softer others, 
Loose the primal urges, shake your booty in private parties
Swear a little -- in front of a girl. 
Public affection? The TV cameras loved it. 





November


Each sundown
Each dying day
a little apocalypse

We are shut down in the darkness
We wait, huddling indoors
for the light to return to our lives
Or, perhaps, someone to call
Or send to
Or seek our attention
Or come home from work

Bringing the chill of the day
in the weather-report of her fingertips
the tip of her nose, her cheeks,
the hand that takes yours
the living body that leans against your own
smelling of out of doors, wood smoke, and life
not eternal, but now





The poem of Mom’s Last Days goes something like this


Near the end
Mom becomes an angel
Or perhaps merely a weightless, ethereal figure
Quiet, gentle, easy to please
Forgetting all the stress and character-acting of mortal existence
Give me wings to fly, her final phase appeared to say,
And I will leave you all behind

Between the Labor Day weekend
And the 10th anniversary of nine-eleven
Mom let go
Picking her spot, not bothering anyone,
Leaving quickly by a side door
Known only to one who covered the ground carefully
And did not take up too much room





Family Secrets


The street of the bars with private rooms
Speakeasy joints in Prohibition
Crime connections, shady roles in snap-brim hats and shady ties
My straight-shooter uncle ran a numbers game
A big shot’s courier on his ice-truck route
My grandmother’s resume: bar and grilles, bars with upstairs room, bars with girls.
My cousin’s grandma dies upstairs 
while no one calls a doctor.

All this from a friendly, family get-together 
To plan the summer reunion

A lot went on, it seems, “upstairs”
While my ignorant childhood idled below 
I was always happier in basements