Snow Angles
In the woods behind our house, a trunk
of fallen tree cuts across the woods
in a dissenting direction. Without
snow, it's camouflaged in the browns,
burnt siennas, humble lichens,
and majority rule grays. Saturday
was World Stand For Peace Day,
the day before the fourth biggest
nor'easter, the weather folk as gassed
about that as about the rallies. We
marched, indistinguishable in LL Bean,
Patagonia, thrift store chic, the most
shocking thing in the crowd, really,
the preponderance of kids. Marching
without a permit, rising from the streets
we chanted were our own, our bodies
a forest on 1st Ave., the police mostly polite,
with dripping noses, dancing in the cold
to a little Richie Havens. The east coast
storm kept us all home until Wednesday,
cutting across our industrious lives, driving
sideways across the day and into the night
and into the day again, no more violence
than was our due, the death toll only 21
dancers in a Chicago night club afraid
the terrorists had finally arrived. We
marched a mile through unbroken snow,
part of it on our hands and knees to keep
from falling through, to get dog food,
the only thing we'd run out of, leaving
behind us a trail no animal would leave,
no hunter would follow, our laughter
splitting us open like ice angling off a
sloped roof graceful and impermanent.
Cochlear Implant
Similar to the word nuclear and unique
In the English language, perhaps we should
Forgive Bush his nu-cu-lur and his war
Industry friends who also can't say what
They really mean. Maybe we should
Insist on nuclear in our ear, a button
We would all have the responsibility
Not to push or maybe it's the power
To implant American Dreams in soil
Too arid for almost anything to grow
That drives the urge to speak, the inability
To hear. So much has grown in other
Places: art, anger, not the least of them.
In deaf culture, the tension between
Acceptance and change. The inability
To hear the screams of a thousand
And one women, their beautiful
Fragility, the men learning to hate
The women inside themselves, another
Thing our countries have in common.
There's a hand over both my ears.
Enough To Bear
The Quigley house burned today
with Mr. Quigley and his grown
daughter whose name I don't recall.
The space heater - always the damned
space heater. Behind that house, a tree
I played on when a girl, a big Sycamore,
the kind of tree that's really a tree, the kind
I'm still thinking about 30 years later
when two people I barely recall have died,
that tree, leaves thick and curled, small boats
to the underworld, one soul per leaf, a sudden
wind gust enough to bear them all. My town,
is gated, ubiquitous Bradford Pears blossom;
everything is fine, the water is hot, the air cool.
If I watch the small white petals, confetti
in the air, I can almost believe in eternity.