The Seventh of May

Don’t ask me why I always remember
that this is Jan’s birthday. We knew
each other for roughly six weeks, years ago,
when we and everything around us were
not of this world (still 20th century.)
I compared her eyes with muscatel
after we’d spent a Sunday afternoon
hitting Napa wineries in her Toyota,
picnic packed and all eyes but ours locked out.

She adored Earl Klugh and Michael Franks,
And her walls were plastered with platitudes
in blazing color. She called them her
“positive attitude posters.” I kissed her
and said it was sweet, but privately noted
that a weekend at her apartment was like
two days locked in a “Hello Kitty” store.
(She intuited that, and didn’t like it at all.)

Our first night together was Valentine’s Day.
By her 28th birthday that spring, I was gone,
sent packing. But the date stays with me.
I don’t need to wonder if she’s happy.
She had herself programmed for that
like a smart bomb with data punched in
to whack a chemical plant. No, whatever
else, I’m sure Jan found her target
with a smile, in no doubt and right on time.

The Island Around The Corner

From the island around the corner,
Where dawn is an act of willing,
The vicissitudes of midnight
Puncture the sailor’s dreams.
His unlikely dreams of landfall
Satellite-photo that coastline,
As time takes the face of icebergs,
And the snapshot-clocks are stupid,
And the vestals of morning stoke
Beach fires that burn without light
On the island around the corner.

On the island around the corner,
Where the coiled springs all lie broken
And the keys to the locks are misplaced
Beyond cobweb-ripping light,
No codebreaker holds bright vigil,
Or boasts of the blueprints to sorrow,
And the sailor who hears the waves breaking
Wakes up to find only calm sea.
No bells ring, nor are heard rising
The appoggiaturas of a dawn breeze
On the island around the corner.

On the island around the corner,
Where the cliff-walls all face westward,
And absorb the cries of sea-birds
With their backs to the threat of day,
The seed of the earthquake that threatens
In the tossings of the dreamer
Who calls up both island and sailor
Shakes no tree, nor this earth’s resolve.
The rules have been set down in sorrow,
And the treetops will brook no consoling
On the island around the corner.

Photo Album

for Lena

Living is more dangerous than anything. – Randall Jarrell

One old photograph looks pretty much like another.
What difference whether it was your mother, or hers,
I held in my hand that unbearable summer night?
Time erases, and faces get lost. What remain,
Unchanging even as faces change, (though every
Bit as doomed) are pictures like this one, frozen
For as long as late-summer cicadas hum in your head:

The light was burning in the kitchen. Cars went by.
The television was on, the sound turned down low.
In the next room lamplight fell on the piano keys.
You showed me that photograph: Russia, the fifties,
чёрно-белый. Yes, your mother was beautiful.
On another, happier night, it might have brought out
Your volume of Pushkin, or an old recording.

But that night, no—it was an ambush, unwelcome,
Bringing to mind another, far, suddenly so far away—
Brando in the old film Sayonara never knew such angst—
Like the shock of familiar writing on crumpled paper.
What happened next dismayed you, but then, both of us
Forgetting momentarily that grief is as ephemeral as joy,
You spoke softly to the silly drunk in your arms.

Kelley Dupuis
1/24/97