— Boarding School, 1980

October flares in western PA.
In rumpled uniforms boys mock
each other around the oak
table, two chairs lean
daringly on back legs.
The schoolmaster shows up

late on black mornings, the beret tipped
wide on his high forehead and a tweed
jacket dangling from his hunched shoulder.
Twice he clears his throat, a voice more trusted
than their own fathers, before reading out
loud from Moby Dick. Thin smoke
rises from the hot ember at his fingertips.
Half-listening, they slouch
with their hair hurling
round their heads, look up at his moving lips,
pausing to hear how the sailors’ long
arms swim elbow deep
through the Pequod’s barrel
of spermacelli, oily fingers hunt
for their shipmates’ hands to hold on deck
in the light of day. By evening,

the housemaster, barefoot
in the common room, calls lights out.
Sleepless on slim beds, hungry hands
in the dark hit on eager skin
under crisp white sheets. Never again
would we drop into our bodies
with the same aching.

We had a good rain all night, their names crashing down
from the past. Thirty years later from up

here in this bedroom window, I see across the wide
lawn where everything in these gardens goes on
at such a fast pace… the lilacs,
peonies, roses. The new delight, purple phlox
blooming late in the cool mountain
air. For some time now I’ve not spoken

their names, young men who hungered
for the world they were losing, and what
in their leaving, they took. They died
without funerals. We gave away
their clothes to Goodwill, all of them we outlived.
At the time did not know how much we had yet
to lose in the AIDS epidemic.

On this ordinary summer day, you and I surround
ourselves with a cabin in the woods, a pug
called Ernie, all tokens of permanency. What

forced me to remember their names last night?
I suppose because it would take a blunt
act of excision to forget. These decomposing

flower beds remind me that nothing in this world
keeps, nothing but my memory intact.
Soon it will be evening, time to turn
over the compose pile, their names taking root
in the fertile matter of our years alongside each other.

By December with your death not yet a habit,
a box of books arrives that you asked
my sister to pack up for me. On the top

I pull out Raccontini Italiani, open to the dedication
page, notes scrawled in Italian
in your curly cursive, the blue ink
of a felt tip pen now faded. I placed

distance between us that last year, not prepared to let
what was happening to you reach me, just
allowing bits and pieces in, closed
my eyes to things I could not look at head-on, controlling
the itinerary of my visits to Pittsburgh. The catalog

of emotion from your last year disappeared when you died
in early August. Even now I shed the weight
of those memories to live in the present.

I confess I lived a life close off
to you, covered up in my silence, and now would
do anything to replay those years. If only
I had known how to trust
you, coming of age in those Reagan
years, free in the white space to be out far
away from that childhood in rural PA. I suppose

there is never a sense of coming back
to a father, no anchorages. Unpacking this box
on the desk, I hold your favorite books again

in my hands that are now the last of you. I read lines until
I hear your voice as it was in life, leaf through the margins of dog-eared
pages, underlined passages where you penciled
in my name, and I recover you one notation at a time.

Let everything remain
as it is, the unexpected quiet
like the August heat out
in the meadow, the sun rubbing
the old maples. Look at the black eyed
Susans studded by the dirt road drop
open as they lose their tight
grip. Do not hurry. Nothing
about this day asks
to be changed, things being just
as they are. Come,
let us breathe in unison
with the cattle in their long
stare across the creek
on this fine Sunday morning slipping away,
this day we cannot hold on to,
taking whatever comes like the drifting
hawk that rises up in the sky. Kneel down
in the tall grass in simple perfection
with the humming
of the almond-eyed grasshoppers
before the farmer’s last baling.
Blessings waft
through the summer air. Little by little,
leave the other voices behind. Stop
right here, right now
to listen to the wood thrush repeat
its four fluty notes, calling up
I’m here, I’m here.

(knitting pattern for a baby blanket)

Your voice unspools inside me knitting
on the porch while bats crisscross
the yard. The blow-up

that morning at Dad’s funeral is as burnished
as a scar on that old elm tree we used to play kick
the can under. I’m halfway through a blanket
for a friend’s baby, using lopi wool
skeins hunted down in Ireland

last winter. I thought we had reached
a truce in that old family quarrel. Yet
my fingers will not
allow me to rest, the wooden
needles ticking knit 10, purl 10
into a basket
weave design. Just

now I have lost count
of the rows and notice a dropped

stitch, a hole at the top. I won’t
deny that hurt
blossoms over the years, but you have developed
a kind of affection for your airtight
anger. Tonight I’ll spend

time unpicking, unraveling yarn
row by row to get back to where the pattern
went wrong, pulling apart our tangled
feelings. Let’s trade in our resentment, a chance
to do it all over, to be knitted back
together right this time.

— for Ralph

Half past seven. I wake from a dream that brought 
back everything, get up in silence to sun
on the calla lily in the vase, a single beam assaulting
the swirled cup. All last night I slept
in fits and starts, curled up
like a leaf into myself after learning
that you were gone, how the shared fact
of us in childhood was now buried. Yesterday

pent up in this apartment, snow skimmed past
the windows on horizontal waves veiling
the loss that lingered, drifts piled up
on the front steps under the high wind. Even
the February air scraped
under the peeling windowsill.
How did our knot

in adolescence wiggle loose,
as we separated
for college, writing letters at first,
then phone calls at Christmas, and in the last
few years just Facebook posts? Fixed
in place on that prep school campus, we left
our young lives undisturbed. There
we found in the great books what held
the key to be somebody else, to push forward
at all costs, counting the paces we put
between ourselves and the hometown
where we never fit in. On this timid
morning bleached light skids
across the length of the room
into each corner. Watching

the last light
leave the windows, I see more clearly, resist
nostalgia. Instead
imagine our mature years apart,
trying adulthood out in different cities. Alone
on this late afternoon, the narcissus bulbs
planted last month in clay pots
are splitting open, forced out into life.

Half past eight. I wake in silence to sun
on the calla lily, a single beam assaulting
he white swirled cup. Yesterday
snow skimmed past the windows on horizontal
waves, drifts piling up
on the front steps under the high wind.
I shoveled snow that fell for three days.
February air scrapes
under the peeling windowsill. Bleached
light skids across the length of the room
into each corner on this timid
morning before the sun rushes away. This afternoon
the narcissus bulbs I planted earlier in clay pots
are splitting open, forced out into life.

The trees know first. An ice storm is moving in.
I’m still holding back trouble I’ve carried
around in my mind for two days. Yet
some worries are always there. Must admit
it has felt like an empty year. At midnight
I come to bed in pitch black, but nothing
brings relief in the clinging cold.
All night I live with cracking branches, the wind
refusing to die down, and still awake
at four a.m. with my brain beating
under this blurred sky. The slim birches, stripped
of color, flex down and over in the freezing
darkness. Then the sky clears, the white
trunks straighten by dawn, as in any storm.

Genesis 19:1-29

In the night air the city square
was falling fire, our eyes stitched
in burning, the last chance
to break out. I had to put
an end to it, my daughters offered
to strangers at the gate
yesterday, the girls
just squinted at me twisting
their braided hair. Up
the mountain, my wife crossed
her hands, tight fisted
against her stomach, wrapping
her sadness in the folds
of her blue dress when she turned back
to head down to the bones
of our baby boy in the backyard.
Longing for the life she left behind
came clawing back to her,
stronger than any punishing
commandment. She stored up
the loss of our child
year after year, tending
to the fevered past.
After his death I tucked myself away
in the shadows of the market
selling fresh figs, nursed
a deaf spot that could not
hear what was unsaid
by her hot kitchen stove.
Over the mountains
my daughters lagged behind
from the beginning, rocks
rough on their feet,
so I clutched their arms
on the steep cliffs. Holding on
would cost another life,
I yanked them forward, vanishing
over the hilltop
away from the smoke
drowning Gomorrah,
relieved how much bigger
the stars became in the black sky.

arrives. The late light turning
on me draws the day closer, the east
meadow beyond a grove of birches, some animal
stirring at the edge of sight. Peering out,
my mind grows sharper. Let it happen — release, release
like the wind riffling through the trembling ferns
after two days of rain. In places only whispering birds fly to,
everything collapses into green shadows, my eyes
adjusting to the faceless dark.
I remember a time being afraid of it, even
when I was most hidden. Now it feels safe, the way
the perfected dark lets it all pass without comment,
marking each thing.
What I wanted earlier out of this day stalled
under the furious summer sun, my stubborn seeing only one thing
at a time. Everything in the growing
blackness declares itself unlocking the night.
Something looks back from the flickering trees,
knows me for who I am.