In the Desert

You didn’t get to see the scrub jay’s sky
blue pinstriped bib, the deep purple
flash of the black-chinned hummingbird.

You’ll never see a black-throated sparrow’s
nest woven into the yucca’s slender spines
like a ball of tumbleweed come to rest.

You won’t ever hear, then see, the ladder-
backed woodpecker perched at the very top
of a Joshua Tree drill last spring’s seed pods

with his beak. You didn’t live to write
your desert poem telling me why someone
named that cactus after a hero in the Bible.

For you, who peppered your poems with
the language of your faith, I’ll use yarmulke
to describe the woodpecker’s crimson cap.

 
—First published in Five Points

The New Card Catalogue

We have entered phase 2.1.0375. Like
a library cataloguing system, we invent
ever finer gradations as the learning curve,

imperceptible at first, negotiates a swerve,
accelerates, and heads off the chart. Only
in retrospect do we see its shape; tunnel

vision protects us. The first time I saw him
in a hospital bed, I was happy to simply sit
beside him. To my I love you, he answered

Thank you. The second time, in Intensive
Care, I saw him naked, his shrunken body
wrapped in plastic like a plucked chicken.

The third time I flew to him in the middle
of the night, wondering whether this was
it. And the fourth, when he cried; the fifth,

when he whispered I love you too. Between
hospitalizations, we play cards, although
he can no longer tell hearts from diamonds,

or spades from clubs, and sometimes takes
a trick with the Black Queen by mistake.
Reading a good novel I slow down as the end

approaches; some books sit on shelves
unfinished, with bookmarks where I couldn’t
go on. Before computers, catalogue cards

threaded on brass poles filled the drawers
that lined library walls like a mausoleum,
author, title, and subject all jostled together.

You never knew what you might find next.
Look under Death, Father, Congestive Heart
Failure, Blocked. This is where you’ll find us.

—First published in The MacGuffin

The Crock

Dig a hole in a sunny corner of the backyard.
Shred the homegrown heads with the guillotine
now hanging in a granddaughter’s kitchen,
rusty angled blades still sharp. Layer the pale

green ribbons of cabbage with fine salt, a pint
for each bushel, pressing down to pack. Tie
a clean dish towel tightly over the top, weigh
down, ask the men to lower it into the hole.

In two weeks, depending on weather, when
the towel is stiff and crusty with mold, hoist it
onto the back porch. Scoop out as needed, an
excellent source of Vitamin C through winter,

as Captain Cook discovered from the Germans
only after of several boatloads of his sailors
succumbed to scurvy. His crews hated this
sour-kraut but ate it until limes were found.

If something inanimate can be said to look
lonely, the crock does. It sits under a fig tree
across a continent from the house where it
last was used, a single rose with four petals

stenciled in cobalt blue against its ivory glaze,
the number 12 at the center. Twelve gallons
were enough to keep a family of four healthy
when fresh fruits and vegetables were dear.

Winter rains find their way under the lid;
spiders like the dark cool damp. I dump out
the water: don’t want to give mosquitoes
a place to breed with Zika on the way. No

one in the family will take it; I hate the idea
of throwing it away. Where will it go after me?
Perhaps someone shopping on Ebay dreams
of making sauerkraut the old-fashioned way.

—First published in Crab Orchard Review

Die goldene Zeit

                                              after an anonymous print

You don’t need to know German to get
the picture. A quartet of ladies, mantles
draped over diaphanous gowns, laurel
leaves braided into their hair, lounge

in a boat rowed with a single lute-shaped
oar. One plays a lyre, a second the harp.
The rest listen to a singer, score in hand.
A child, leaning over the prow, dangles

garlands of roses in the water. The women
wear white, green, or blue. The men, in gray,
black, and brown echo the hull, the bay,
and temple-strewn shore. One imagines

deep conversation, even though this troupe
conveys a funereal air, as though art—for what
else is the golden age?—looks like a grown-up

version of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, their
skiff set out from god knows where; without
sail or stars, the group adrift, their port unclear.

—First published in The Gettysburg Review

Elysian Fields

Dad only told happy stories about the war.
Not just to his children. Period.
Christmas dinner a week early
in the middle of the night
somewhere in southern England
before getting on a troop transport
for France.

The time he drove a blacked-out Red Ball Express
6 x 6 truck on unmarked dirt roads
at 2 a.m. to pick up a single bottle
of scotch for the officers’
New Year’s Eve.

The time he ran into my mother’s brother Reverne,
an infantry private returning from the front,
crossing a pontoon bridge over the Rhein
as Dad was headed into Germany?

How he happened be in Paris on the Champs-Élysées
on V-E Day, May 8, 1945. Of this, I have proof:
a hand-written receipt (pencil on cheap newsprint)
for women’s lingerie from a shop on Rue de Rivoli,
the penmanship clearly French. This he kept
with the other mementos. According to that story
he asked the shopgirl what size (bra) she wore,
thinking hers would fit my mother. It didn’t.
Too small. Mother never forgave him
for getting it wrong.

I also believe his stories
about being kissed by French girls
on that street that day. He was a GI
in uniform in the euphoria of victory.
His Elysian Fields. That smile didn’t lie.

—First published in Marsh Hawk Review

Salade niçoise, In Memoriam

                                                                Whitmanesque

I celebrate the dark tuna, packed in olive oil.
The pommes de terre, apples of the earth, sliced,

barely cooked, then gently tossed with stock,
vinegar, more olive oil, scallions, chopped

parsley to finish. I sing of July’s tomatoes,
bursting with flavor, vivid red; crunchy green

peppers just arrived at the farmers market,
ringed; blanched string beans, chilled. I thank

our neighbor’s chickens, whose blue eggs,
hard-boiled, peel easily and quarter neatly.

Liberally strew the tiny local black olives,
capers (my invention). Arrange artfully

on a bed of Little Gems; lay on anchovies
like the spokes of a wheel. All morning

the day after the Bastille Day attack, I make
this from scratch for you, city never visited,

sun-drenched Nice, in grief, with love,
because I do not know what else to do.

—First published in Birmingham Poetry Review