Bathing Grandpa

My father, stripped down to his shorts
and barefoot, careful not to slip,
lifts his father naked over the rim,
rests him in the water.
What is my father thinking?
How naked the old man and weak,
reflecting to my father
not past, but future: soap-scum
and tepid water.

The old man hides in my father’s young
arms and back: jaw mirrors jaw;
eyes, cheekbones, hairline:
father lifts himself into the tub,
sighs and lets the warmth,
womb-like, rock him,
cradle him toward death.

Walking by the ice-riddled river
I remember how I thought
it was a comic thing, the old man
a child to his son.
That was before I knew the heft
and weight, the arm-size infant,
her flesh still mine;
that was before. I watch my father
wearing my grandfather’s bones,
lift my daughter over the careful rim;
I watch his shadow rippling toward mine
in this old winter river.

Contra Bellum

The slow skin of apples under trees
gives form to rotted flesh, deceives
the eager eye. But whispering bees,
intoxicate,
grow drunk on ripeness gone to rot
where sweet flesh falls,
and feeds.

At funerals,
sipping death we circle saying empty phrases
that lightly brush the hothouse flowers, rise
and drift about the artificial air, avoid the faces,
speak in gentle tones our simple lies.
The sliding skin is sewn to seem a smile,
must wait to slip,
still hold the skull a painted while,
deceive the restless watchers out of fear,
till, neatly boxed, the dead can disappear.

On farther fields, like fruit, the bodies lie --
rich and rotten harvest left to die
and slip to skull again below the bending trees.
No mourners circle them; but murmurous bees,
intoxicate,
grow drunk on children gone to rot.

Myself at Windows

I suppose flowers get used
to the gradual loss,
the diminishment of crimson,
the slow petal-by-petal failure.
I suppose the sun is hardly aware
of its southerly drift,
and the birds simply follow
as birds have always done.

I sometimes threw myself at windows
so frosted with ice I could not see
if there were flowers, or it was
snowing; I sometimes screamed
completely,
silently,
washing the dishes and letting my random tears
lose all their color.
But mostly I was silent;
I forgot the sound of language,
the way the bloom forgets the crimson,
fades, and does not notice
anything at all.

Some Adaptations of North American Birds

In the morning over coffee, you forget
the yellow skin of feet that in your dream
clawed the swaying branch. You peer in mirrors, let
the rooms arrange themselves in order once again;
you comb your thinning hair and wipe away the steam
that fogs your faded face. Along the street, the gleam
of lights against your eyes, the passing cars,
the neon shouts of restaurants -- all crawl across your skin,
and you forget the living light from long-dead stars
that played across your eyelids as you slept. Again,
you mutter tuneless songs, and in the office mirror,
stop to rearrange a feather here and there.

You go to work, you whisper tuneless words to songs
you have forgot. Inside the shining leather of your shoes
your toes clasp downward. And all your body longs
to feel some music. Inside your shoes, shapr claws
seek the singing branch. The feathered wind is gone
that whispered in your sleep, that swayed you in the dawn.