Poetry Magazine, Robin Sommo, September 2000

Robin Sommo

USA

Wharf Rats

In Marion they call them Wharf Rats,
Men who were boys who grew up,
or anyway, older.
They write receipts in grave and courteous hands,
carefully listing expenses for roof repair,
or patching and painting the skiff.
Childless men, they live alone,
or from time to time
share rent with a kind cashier
from the grocery over in Wareham.
Whiskey with ice is a mixed drink for them.
But mostly it's beer,
two six packs at a time from the package store,
until their heads achieve
that philosophical angle
and they laugh with narrowed eyes.

In Marion they call them Wharf Rats.
They gathered at my father's grave,
Jacket sleeves frayed high above bare wrists,
like boys with bowed heads and mute grief,
and I wept with my face in my hands.

Girl, Descending

Sure-footed little girl,
running down stairs --
fingers graze the banister,
ankles know the cadence.
she has
(thin brown legs,
thin blonde hair,
animated wireframe,
she's a wind-up girl)
brown staccato shoes.

A missed beat in the drumroll
could launch catastrophe,
but she's sure-footed, motorized,
her ankles know the cadence.

Some other elder harridan
can prophesy of doomsday heels,
of rhythm tricked and balance betrayed,
and the awful illusion of grace.
I will listen to the clatter,
I will celebrate the sound
of this sure-footed girl.

Becoming The Monster

I thought I was protecting something fine.
Do I remember, or do I pretend
that I was loved and loving lit my eyes,
and laid a special grace upon my skin?

But grace can be corrupted by despair
and glow is dulled with tarnish, over time.
I built a shell, a cast of many layers
and kept this fragile curio inside.

My sanctuary turned into a tomb
as layer after layer petrified
protecting withered flesh and rotten bones
inside a shell of linen, fossilized.

This is the joke that causes skulls to smile --
that chrysalides become sarcophagi.

Waiting Room

His good left hand
knows hammer, shovel, wrench,
knows whittling knife and ax--
not the pen
lost among great fingers,
not the pen
copying numbers from a pristine card.
Those fingers
barely fit to pull his wallet
from a worn back pocket,
yet they slide that plastic card
with all official numbers
from its narrow slot.

The clipboard on his bony knees
grips paper.
His good left hand,
curled over the narrow pen,
finds no room between the metal grip
and those first few lines.
In silence
he removes the form,
flips the board. His right hand
will serve to still the paper.
Clipboards are not for him.
Another day he would grin,
once again at odds
with offices and forms.
Another day, another office,
he would grin.

The card is returned to his wallet,
to that spot reserved
for papers too important to bear.
Insurance card, voter's card,
and that picture he likes --
his wife, before the children.

Before he takes
the completed form
to the smiling windowed woman,
he replaces it carefully
in the clipboard's grip.
Returning to the chair
(the one closest to the door)
that was made for a smaller man,
he sits and waits, his
eyes as big
as saucers.