USA

DanBellm@aol.com

Photo by Sam Fisk

Before words

A baby is singing in the morning 
before anyone is up in the house 

Before he has decided 
which of all the languages he will speak 
he is trying the sounds of his voice
in the first light 

He hears a man 
come up the street collecting bottles
just ahead of the garbage truck
straining uphill 
to come throw them away 
 

He hears the shriek of glass 
It is like the vessels of Creation 
breaking in God's hands 

He hears the wind around the house
and in the wind 
every word he will ever say 
and what will stay unsaid

and stops to listen to silence
and sings to it
the way the body addresses the soul
lending it shape
lending it comfort and sorrow 

The body wants to be useful
and the soul is open so wide 

This is the way we awaken 
He remembers he is alone
and cries for us.

Hands

Here, scarred over nicely, is where the tip was sawed away -- Working
yourself down to bone there were bound to be accidents
in the tender places -- Here, the thumb of your right hand
got reattached, but at a slant:  I like to imagine I feel
a lost tenderness coming to you again
as the tension drains from your fingers -- I mean, the life -- the two of us holding

hands like little brothers, and though you don't hold
mine back you can't pull yours away.  Whole days I sit and do the work
of talking for the both of us, easier now, knowing you won't wake again,
but I think you hear me, thanking, forgiving -- no accident
it's me, Dad, your mortal enemy and friend -- I think you can feel
my hands in yours, bone to bone, your hands

going cold on me that were so strong your handshakes
hurt but I could kill you now, I could hold
you down and make you stay, make you feel
proud of me that for once I'd done some real work
with my hands -- Oh wait -- I only notice by accident
you were gone a minute -- you've started breathing again,

that relinquishing groan, your last lung rising up against
the bedsheet, your mouth the gaping O of a saint handing
over his life in a trance, Isaac blessing the second son by accident,
fooled by blindness -- Did I scare you? -- Don't go -- I haven't held
your hands since I was a child, they're so cool and soft, but that's death, working
harder even than you -- It's strange -- I didn't know I'd feel

happy in the end and does it mean our struggle is done that I feel
happy, with your blessing or not, not really wanting you back again
but wanting the farewell to last?  I see you leaving for work,
the unresponding God eternally going away, your hands
in fists.  I see you one afternoon in '68 holding
two fists in the air and crying in shame -- there's been an accident --

the radiator cap as you turned it flew up by accident
and boiling fluid sprayed over your hands -- as much as the pain you feel
ashamed to be crying, and mad that I saw, and turn your back.  I see you holding
one hand down to hammer and hack and burn it again
and again, see you lifting more weight into your hands
than your back can hold.  O discoloring skin, unmarrowing bone, o working

armor: any baby, first thing, will grasp at a touch and hold on but I feel
your hands now working themselves away, unfathering me -- What an accident
of death that they begin to look like infant hands, as if you will live again.

Consolation

After I kiss his forehead lightly once
goodbye, 

after the closing of the box,

where does his suffering go --
of course it's the Catholic heaven 
he expects, the resurrection of the body
and the life of the world to come

but where does his suffering go --

I mean whatever of it 
that is not part of me --

The fearsomeness of his face has been
drained now and recomposed,
injected with a semblance of spirit, 
the lips held shut, so like himself,
but with a semblance of rest

because in heaven
the pain of the body and soul is supposed
to be forgotten and past but is it lost,

or does it suffer without him on earth
and where does it remain
to wait
for more life --

Most of the universe is missing 
but it isn't lost, 
I expect it's here somewhere, world without end,
hiding in plain sight, 

all the suffering banished from God's heaven,
all the imploded substance 
and the trapped light.

Brightness

Driving home from the hospice, from his death,
four a.m. now, his last possessions in a paper bag
beside me on the seat, the heavy glasses,
the teeth in a margarine tub,
his cheap watch on my arm as though I'd stolen
time back, the smell of his skin
on my hands; over the city 
where I was born there's a sliver 
of glass, the new moon
with the old moon in its arms;
so dark, and no one on the streets
as if this were my dream city 
that I won't have to share with anyone,
enclosed apart in its own time
but a little changed, a little decayed
from the way I remember it, separate
from me after all, going its own way; it is not 
my memory; time has not stopped; my father is dead.
O ferocious soul with your famous mistrust of love, 
I think your darkness 
must be my inheritance; 
I reach the edge of the city, drive west on Highway 36
and there is no one under the shelter of darkness
but me and two or three truckers on the road,
early risers like you, starting the working day
before anyone has stirred; so the far past
returns and you come into my room softly 
to tap me out of sleep 
in the dark, we go for a ride in the truck
somewhere, you and me, shivering awake, our breath visible, 
alone in our bodies, 
alone in the world.

All from One Hand On The Wheel, © Copyright, Dan Bellm.

A messenger spirit
for James Schuyler

Once you start looking there's no end to it -- spring day on
     Chimney Rock high above the ocean
facing the wind, a meadow of wildflowers breathing.  There are
     violet patches of sea where clouds 
pass over the turquoise and green.  Pacific ocean, so inviting 
     and frightening, like a soul-eye, 
like a place of rest.  Now I have nothing but his voice in his
     books, endless or not.  In the morning 
I picked up the paper to read that he died, my father-poet
     and teacher, my old friend I never met, 
my old seer.  This must be why we learned to fly, the desire 
     to walk and run to reach the end
of the land, arrive and then keep going like the loons and
     cormorants gliding over the rocky tops of
tiny islands out there, lines of light on the ocean flashing.
     "Then there is a fifth season, called -- but
that's my secret.  Yes, my secret, and I'm going to keep it
     that way.  Yes, my secret."  Dusty ratty pink
checker-bloom; all day I mistook it for some kind of geranium
     until Peterson's field guide scolded
as if any fool in California'd know it's the "very common"
     mallow sidalcea malvaeflora.  Cat's ear -- 
a mariposa tulip with cottony hair inside, pale lavender --
     blue-eyed grass, miner's lettuce in 
the shrubs' shade, a carpet of blooming ice plant, California
     buttercups, Martin's paintbrush, Douglas's
iris ("top of ovary nipplelike"), red maids -- purple, really,
     so delicate and easy to miss with their
brilliant red hearts and why do we want to know their names
     so much?  What a dominion of words in our
minds.  What a long fall down this brittle scrubbly cliff to 
     the waves on the black slate.  One night
I remember a red fox appeared at the edge of camp out here
     in the beam of my flashlight: calm,
didn't freeze or startle, just nosed the grass and the knobby
     roots of oaks, padded slowly off through
ferns and down into a canyon.  Now I have nothing of you 
     but your poems in my hands and your voice in
my ear carrying for hours even in this rough wind.  Last night
     you were in my dream like a messenger 
spirit: you'd sent me an envelope full of photographs 
     so tiny I couldn't see you in them 
and once they started blowing out to sea there was no 
     end to it, you were here and gone.

From Buried Treasure, © Copyright, Dan Bellm.

All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.