Cypresses have one direction, up,
but sometimes desert zephyrs tousle one
so that a branch or two will stick straight out—
a hatchling fallen from the nest,
a broken leg a limp will not forget,
a lock of cowlicked hair that spurns the comb.
Aspiring like steeples inky green,
they spear the sun-bleached view with nodding tips.
How not to think of death? Its ghastly blank
lies underneath your dreams, that once gave rise
to horn-hard, conscienceless erections.
Just so, your waking brain no longer stiffens
with careless inspirations—urgent news
spilled in clenched spasms on the virgin sheets.
Here in this place of arid clarity,
two thousand miles from where my souvenirs
collect a cozy dust, the piled produce
of bald ambition pulling ignorance,
I see clear through to the ultimate page,
the silence I dared break for my small time.
No piece was easy, but each fell finished,
in its shroud of print, into a book-shaped hole.
Be with me, words, a little longer; you
have given me my quitclaim in the sun,
sealed shut my adolescent wounds, made light
of grownup troubles, turned to my advantage
what in most lives would be pure deficit,
and formed, of those I loved, more solid ghosts.
Our annual birthday do: dinner at
the Arizona Inn for only two.
White tablecloth, much cutlery, décor
in sombre dark-beamed territorial style.
No wine, thank you. Determined to prolong
our second marriages, we gave that up,
with cigarettes. We toast each other’s health
in water and a haze of candlelight.
My imitation of a proper man,
white-haired and wed to aging loveliness,
has fit me like a store-bought suit, not quite
my skin, but wearing well enough until,
at ceremony’s end, my wife points out
I don’t know how to use a finger bowl.
Spirit of ’76
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