They possess nothing but two noises—
one a skeleton clacking upstairs,
the other the shriek of wounded stars.
What heartless god curses this summer bird
with such a hue and cry?

They descend like black angels expelled
from heaven, and land like an affront,
croaking the rudeness of the blinding sun.
Who clothed them in this inky cloak
then cast them unsponsored through the air?

Two clash over some discarded scraps,
lock beaks tight on each other’s throats,
then tumble through the dust like cowboys.
Their thirst must wait for distant storms.
Why no bath, no house to succor them?

Every hiding place should be green, cool green.
But they must hide themselves in shadow.
Targets of cruel slingshots, ignorant stones.
Heat and indifference would have them all dead.
Why should bright colors shun them like a shame?

Only at night are they safe from pain.
A silent symphony draped through the trees.
A misericord from an absent ruler.
By midnight they are invisible priests,
praying for a dawn to end their hunger.

The factories encircled us,
like gleaming battleships
with many wars to feed.

I watched my father wear down
from work, a sweat-stain heart
bleeding through his t-shirt.

By day the workers
dreamed of sleep, the bed
a balm for weary bones.

By night the workers
dreamed of work, their astral
bodies fitting parts to machines.

Sometimes, late at night,
they walked among the shadows of leaves,
seeking the solace of wounded stars.

I know now the world will not end,
because it turns on the endless labor
of those too tired to die.

Yet I did not know this
in my heart, my bones, before
I signed my first bottom line.

What did I know, in my summer
dreams, reading Thomas Wolfe
on my father’s front porch swing,
of all these mortal angels
looking homeward for a sign?

She is eleven, maybe twelve,
but numbers no longer matter,
for she has heard Bach and Mozart
for the first time,
has mastered the mathematics of the wind,
the heart’s algebra,
where A is not A and need not be,
and now her fingers conduct the weather
until it shivers with illuminations.

She walks, then skips, then
spins to a private pantomime
that need not reveal itself,
for she is the conductor.
Silent notes come swirling around her
in wizard colors of the new,
and the ecstatic leaves whirl
in xylophones of dance.
She feels her joy float from breath to breath.

Bezeled light dazzles round a point,
a perfect jewel, emerald, topaz, diamond,
as her will decides, for she is the conductor,
and everything is all right, for a moment all right.
Then, as the sky imagines a storm,
and the school bus pulls up,
she folds a crescendo inside a breeze
and sets it free.

How many years
had it threaded the hunger,
eluding death’s stars
embedded in the depths of blindness?

I had hoped the pull
on my slender line
was some shy sea maiden
tempting me back to innocence.

But my father’s rule was clear:
You catch it, you clean it,
or go hungry.

Now his knives, bone handled,
lie glittering in the sun,
and my fish lies on the cutting board,
motionless as leaves in moonlight.

My father’s huge hand guides mine
down the silver seam
and I feel the universe
split open
and spill its secret in my hands,
oozing organs in rich profusion.

They resemble slimy jewels,
the heart the size of a ring,
just a dead thing, not love,
and with the stench
my own guts rise
in sympathy and horror.
I hear my father’s breathing
behind me and above.

Later, I sit alone
under a maple bleeding autumn.
I look away from my fish
at the water a crocodile green.
A distant curtain of light
slips down the horizon like a thief.

I look back at my fish
and through tears watch my fingers
pluck the white feathers of its flesh.
I devour it, all of it,
with shame, rage and joy.
Like Adam
one day out from paradise.

Walt Whitman,
containing multitudes,
spreads his plump rump on the bleachers,
his blooming beard caressed by diamond breezes.

The umpire raises one hand in benediction.
The batter swings and swings again at nothing,
then cocks a grin as wide as a blind assumption.
The ball soars, high, higher,
seeking the looming towers of Manhattan,
angles or demons,
catchers and pitchers of the winds.

In Walt’s eye, the ball, a polished moon,
folds into a dove recalling home.
Cheers wound the sky in its envy.
The grass burns the blades of its desire.

Walt Whitman absorbs it all
in the visionary marrow of his bones,
scents the fisted rosin, the silky dust,
touches the joy of the pulsing sun,
weaves the crowd with his eyes
into a pattern of his own design.

Later, he dances home, arm-in-
arm with two drunken firemen,
following a trail of apples
that have abandoned their fall.

Above, a million blind windows devour the sun,
and in wonder’s perfect silence, Walt Whitman drinks
and drinks the city night, sprinkled with blood and wine
immaculate, breathless in the ministry of stars.

I still have not spoken to them.
I try, but they’re gone before my wave.
A magician’s act of flowers and mirrors. 

The wife appears out one upstairs window,
laughing, disappears, an invisible bird singing,
then flows out another, dreaming her hair down.