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2002 PAGE 5 Len Roberts Climbing the Three Hills in Search of the Best Christmas Tree Just seven nights from the darkest night of the year, my son and I climb the three hills behind the white house, his flashlight leaping from hemlock to fir, to white pine and blue spruce and back again. Up, up higher he runs, shadow among larger shadows in the below-zero, constellated half-mooned sky, his voice so distant at times I think it is the wind, a rustle of tall grass, the squeak of my boots on new snow, his silence making me shout, Where are you?, his floating back, Why are you so slow?, a good question I ask myself to the beat of my forty-eight-year-old heart, so many answers rushing up that I have to stop and command them back, snow devils whirling before me, behind me, on all sides, names that gleam and black out like ancient specks of moon- light, that old track I step onto like an escalator rising to the ridge where the best trees grow and I know I will find my son.
Our Son Leaves His Miniature Japanese Sand Garden Behind Because There Will Be No Room In The Dorm His bamboo rake is two inches long, with four prongs that, when I lift them from the sand, have left what look like his tooth marks on my arm when he was what?, one?, one and a half?, his teeth cutting through the gums making him howl and chomp down hard, and I let him, felt the budding teeth sink in, settle, till he fell asleep here in this room where the statue of Laughing Buddha sits cross-legged beside the small, black enameled box of sand that has two S curves at top and bottom, three black sharks’ teeth dropped randomly, but not— a triangle, an arched eyebrow, a winged roof, or three people standing about the same distance apart, one’s hand up and waving as he turns, the other two wildly waving back. Turning Off the Christmas Window Candles Last night I walked from room to room to turn the Christmas window candles off, sudden darkness then where our son slept for twenty-one years, and more of the same where our daughter lived with three mirrors and books until she married and moved on, even the living room filled with father-in-law who used to lift two hundred-pound chunks of wood at seventy-eight onto the high lip of the pickup truck, and older brother no longer weighing his end of the flowered couch down, the window candles casting that gold glow that seemed to melt the glass where it was reflected back, each one a twist of the wrist, a snuff with no breath, that quick warmth on fingertips I'd wet and taste a bit of burning flesh, the cells searing off even as I shuffled in slippers and pajamas from dark to light and again to dark, once looking into the shimmering pane to see my face the way I'd see it when I was a kid and held a flashlight inside my mouth in that old game to show the blood flushed in nose, cheeks, chin, luminescent skin-glowing skull I stared at for a second and then flicked off.
The Silent Singer The girls sang better than the boys,
their voices reaching All the way to God,
Sister Ann Zita insisted during those
practice sessions
when I was told to mouth do, re, mi,
but to go no higher,
when I was told to stand in back
and form a perfect O
with my lips
although no word was ever to come out,
the silent singer in that third grade
class
during the Christmas Pageant and Easter
Week, the birth and death
of Christ lip-synched
but unsung
while my relatives, friends and parents
praised my baritone,
how low my voice was,
Balancing those higher, more childlike tones,
my father said,
Adding depth, my mother said,
Thank God they had my huskiness to bring all
that tinniness to earth,
my great-aunt whispered,
so I believed for many years in miracles
myself,
the words I'd never sung reaching their ears
in the perfect pitch, the perfect tone,
while the others stuttered in their all-too-human
voices to praise the Lord.
© All Copyright, Len Roberts.
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