To Jim Provenza on His 50th Birthday

The program: everyone gathers around
The pizza boxes stacked in the kitchen,
And eventually, those of us who have stepped
Out the door into the rain for a smoke
Hear ‘Happy Birthday’ come filtering through
In five different keys. Then come the presents:
Lots of wine, (a gag bottle of prune juice),
A high-tech corkscrew, the massage-and-bubble-
Bath kit, and a card piously quoting Che.
The artifacts encircling these festivities
Daisy-chain us back to where they always do:
The usual boring, passionate youth,
When your dormitory room, for all I know,
Had a poster of Nixon sitting on the toilet;
Of Castro in charge, his beard the wind
Itself; of Kennedy musing thoughtfully,
His look belying who was really on his mind.
And oh, yes, there was the one of you,
Shirtless, (senior year) one leg crossed
Over the other: emulating your beloved
Brother, who pumped iron and died young.
There you were, ripped, ready to go out
And wage war for all your most loudly
Cherished notions Of ‘social justice.’
This evening, as the cold rain continues
Pissing quietly down, and those of us
Who stepped outside to make a quick call
Are snapping our phones shut and re-joining
The general befuddlement, I glimpse
The birthday boy, glass of wine in hand,
(Photos of teenagers rimming the front room)
Paunchy, smirking, sharing a joke of
George W. Bush. I’m the only non-
Democrat here, eavesdropper on the chorus.
I tap your shoulder, and the guests marvel as
I play my trump card, a private laugh
From 40 years ago, that’s been killing us
Since we were boys. So, having established
That friendship is thicker than ideology,
I take my Jack Daniel’s into the loud light
Of the living room, adjust my glasses
To bring the bookshelf titles into focus,
And marvel grimly at the felon who hums
In circles on the computer room wall,
Secure in the knowledge that, for us anyway,
These 40 years have not been wasted,
And this ‘big five-O’ was worth the wait.

February, 2005

Glory Hurt

The Norelco gurgles in the empty kitchen,
And I remember the boy who lost his legs,
And then got them back. He lived to run.
The turning point was the return of pain:
Pain came back; from pain came walking.
The absence of pain was what really hurt.

On your last afternoon, you shopped for groceries.
I came home from work, and you recited for me
A precìs of everything you had bought.
The cupboard and refrigerator were full,
And the next morning you died. Fading presence:
As the weeks went by, the things you bought
Vanished, but for an empty orange juice bottle
That I saved, because it was my last request
Of you. As it works its way steadily inward,
The long, long needle of your sudden absence
Pierces, pierces what I have of essence,
And mornings, and nights that must be tunneled through.

Coffee’s ready. The photos on the refrigerator
Don’t help much. November sun speaks abundantly,
The ancient hands-around just weeks away,
But nothing is assured and nothing promised.
The only certainty is the walk to the corner,
Necessary, unavoidable and to be done.

November, 2004

Winter Sonata

I

Tonight’s forecast is not for snow,
And it was only weeks ago,
Or so it seems (though I know better)
When Moscow’s all-defining weather
Delivered what felt close to grace:
A sense of all-defining place.
And it was under Russian skies
I saw the “first light” of your eyes.

I cannot say that life has been
A pilgrimage, but then again,
Somehow, in reaching forty-four
I’ve found myself in Baltimore.
And it’s from there I write this down.
A pilgrim? More like Dylan’s clown,
The ragged one who ran behind
To learn the Tambourine Man’s mind.

I do still have the video
I captured six-plus years ago
Of going to meet you at the gate
(And you were 15 minutes late.)
You saw the camera, laughed and smiled,
And something in me was beguiled
And more than pleased to stay that way
Till opening mail the other day.

I know it shouldn’t have been a shock;
I’ve watched your eye upon the clock
For all these years, but thought that I
Could argue down the ticking sky.
And yes, I know it made no sense,
Was even an impertinence
To think I could presume to sway
A heart so set, time-zones away.

The mercury’s just dropped again;
The radio’s cagey as to when
The promised snow will first arrive
Or not. Off I-695
The light reverse-commuter line
Streams downtown past the Pepsi sign:
30 F. at 6:01—
The sky is clear, the day is run.

II

Once, in Michigan, I thought
The rhythms could be somehow fought
(Stealthily at least) that beat
To bring about lovers’ defeat.
Ocean, clock and sky they were:
The bigger-than-us that click and whirr
Silent and smug among their ken.
It seemed I could outsmart them then.

Wrong, of course: I’ve seen the proof.
I read my mail, stared past the roof
Of a far, domed church in winter dawn:
Day and pain were coming on
Hand-in-hand. No trace of snow,
That fixing symbol of long ago
When I first heard your soft heartbeat,
Appeared on any roof or street.

The Slough has landscapes of its own.
Beaches are good—I walked alone
Once along Ventura’s strand,
An afternoon in a changed land.
It had just happened (the first time):
Not only disinclined to rhyme,
But finding it much bigger than I,
I mutely faced the sea and sky.

More recently, November sand
Companioned sorrow as the hand
Of an icy wind blew all about
And emptied Coney Island out.
Hands in pockets, Charlie and I
Surveyed the bareness, hurried by,
And as he nodded to my speech,
We hiked down into Brighton Beach.

Language thickened as we went
Along the boardwalk, both intent
On finding ourselves someplace warm
To duck this late-November storm.
We passed two couples, then a third,
And as we walked, I caught a word,
And realized as the mist was clearing
That this was Russian I was hearing.

The circumstances weren’t the best;
To see those vendors was a test
(Though there was no way they could see)
Of my own equanimity.
You knew all this—then, we just shared,
Listened to each other, cared
And offered what the phone could manage,
Each assessing his own damage.

Item: I knew you’d gone through hell
With one who didn’t treat you well,
And so I sought (and this is true)
To drive a wedge between you two.
(I’d normally think someone a jerk
Who’d undertake such sleazy work,
But principles weren’t compromised;
You were you; him I despised.)

III

Last night, sometime while I was asleep,
Brightening light began to seep
Around the window shades. I woke
A good two hours before day broke,
And squinting at that violet glow,
Knew it could mean just one thing: snow.
And it was in a white-gray dawn
I went to put the coffee on.

But it’s an ent’racte, not much more:
Out beyond the western shore
Of where the continent ends, we hear
La Niña’s busy, year by year,
Making days like this a blink
You might forget if you didn’t think
To make a note—tonight’s full moon,
And all of this will vanish soon.

And so, for sixteen seasons, we
Remained as close as friends can be,
Keeping up a slight pretense,
Careful at first to avoid the fence
Between love’s smile and deeper frown,
Each attending his own round.
Then I came back to Europe, and
There you were, my cherished friend,

So close. One card was played upon
The next: in Prague, and then in Bonn,
We met, drew closer still, and then
Each had to return again
To the daily give-and-take.
But know this, love: I lay awake
For hours the night before your plane
Flew into Frankfurt in the rain.

Another was involved, I knew,
But clung to the proud hope that you
Might deal your cards to see the best
Course to take, and I’d pass that test.
Then you opened nature’s gate
To let that space decide your fate;
I heard an echo of Mozart’s laughter
When I read you’d gotten what you were after.

Six thousand miles from this pale light,
In Moscow, it’s already night.
The pillow that props up your face
Is how I conceive a holy place.
That morning in its brightest might
Should whisper hints of joy, I write
This Pros’chai in imagined snow,
To say what I suspect you know:

I couldn’t count the reasons why
I loved you, but be well. Goodbye.

January, 2000

Five O'Clock Vegas Blue

for Frank Sinatra

The barest edge, the latch of early morning,
A paleness beyond all circling faces,
Is the place to stand. The mountains
Stand farther than any horizon could place them,
And hum secrets that are drowned in afternoon.
One long trip to the end of night
After another: taking them all in sequence,
Then finding no roseate peace in the round,
How one must long to step through the window,
Where beyond reflected hotel light bulbs,
A neverending whisper of what amounts to
Always, is stroked by the wing of a passing
Shadow. That’s the key—yes!—to break the
Cycle, make literal what they say about this town,
That when you come here, you slip your watch off:
Was that the locked secret in the coined shade?
Dante was clear-eyed when he got to heaven:
That dawn must have been this kind of blue.


October, 2003