GARDEN OF EDEN

What a profound longing
I feel, just this very instant,
For the Garden of Eden
On Montague Street
Where I seldom shopped,
Usually only after therapy,
Elbow sore at the crook
From a handbasket filled
To capacity. The glossy pastries!
Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!
Once, a bag of black beluga
Lentils spilt a trail behind me
While I labored to find
A tea they refused to carry.
It was Brooklyn. My thirties.
Everyone I knew was living
The same desolate luxury,
Each ashamed of the same things:
Innocence and privacy. I'd lug
Home the paper bags, doing
Bank-balance math and counting days.
I'd squint into it, or close my eyes
And let it slam me in the face —
The known sun setting
On the dawning century.


THE ANGELS

Two slung themselves across chairs
Once in my motel room. Grizzled,
In leather biker gear. Emissaries
For something I needed to see.

I was worn down by an awful panic.
A wrenching in the gut, contortions.
They sat there at the table while I slept.
I could sense them, with a deck

Of playing cards between them.
To think of how they smelled, what
Comes to mind is rum and gasoline.
And when they spoke, though I couldn't,

I dared not look, I glimpsed how one's teeth
Were ground down almost to nubs.
Which makes me hope some might be
Straight up thugs, young, slim, raw,

Who bounce and roll with fearsome grace,
Whose very voices cause faint souls to quake.
— Quake, then, fools, and fall away!
— What God do you imagine we obey?

Think of the toil we must cost them,
One scaled perfectly to eternity.
And still, they come, telling us
Through the ages not to fear.

Just those two that once and never
Again for me since, though
There are — are there? —
Sightings, flashes, hints:

A proud tree in vivid sun, branches
Swaying in strong wind. Rain
Hurling itself at the roof. Boulders,
Mounds of earth mistaken for dead

Does, lions in crouch. A rust-stained pipe
Where a house once stood, which I
Take each time I pass it for an owl.
Bright whorl so dangerous and near.

My mother sat whispering with it
At the end of her life
While all the rooms of our house
Filled up with night.


HILL COUNTRY

He comes down from the hills, from
The craggy rock, the shrubs, the scrawny
Live oaks and dried-up junipers. Down
From the cloud-bellies and the bellies
Of hawks, from the caracaras stalking
Carcasses, from the clear, sun-smacked
Soundlessness that shrouds him. From the
Weathered bed of planks outside the cabin
Where he goes to be alone with his questions.
God comes down along the road with his
Windows unrolled so the twigs and hanging
Vines can slap and scrape against him in his jeep.
Down past the buck caught in the hog trap
That kicks and heaves, bloodied, blinded
By the whiff of its own death, which God —
Thank God — staves off. He downshifts,
Crosses the shallow trickle of river that only
Just last May scoured the side of the canyon
To rock. Gets out. Walks along the limestone
Bank. Castor beans. Cactus. Scat of last
Night's coyotes. Down below the hilltops,
He squints out at shadow: tree backing tree.
Dark depth the eye glides across, not bothering
To decipher what it hides. A pair of dragonflies
Mate in flight. Tiny flowers throw frantic color
At his feet. If he tries — if he holds his mind
In place and wills it — he can almost believe
In something larger than himself rearranging
The air. He squints at the jeep glaring
In bright sun. Stares awhile at patterns
The tall branches cast onto the undersides
Of leaves. Then God climbs back into the cab,
Returning to everywhere.


DEADLY

The holy thinks Tiger,
Then watches the thing
Wriggle, divide, stagger up
Out of the sea to rise on legs
And tear into the side
Of a loping gazelle,
Thinks Man and witnesses
The armies of trees and
Every nation of beast and
The wide furious ocean
And the epochs of rock
Tremble.


A MAN'S WORLD

He will surely take it out when you're alone
And let it dangle between you like a locket on a chain.
Like any world, it will flicker with lights that mean dwellings,
Traffic, a constellation of need. Tiny clouds will drag shadows
Across the plane. He'll grin watching you squint, deciphering
Rivers, borders, bridges arcing up from rock. He'll recite
Its history. How one empire swallowed another. How one
Civilization lasted 3,000 years with no word for eternity.
He'll guide your hand through the layers of atmosphere,
Teach you to tamper with the weather. Swinging it
Gently back and forth, he'll swear he's never shown it
To anyone else before.


THE WORLD IS YOUR BEAUTIFUL YOUNGER SISTER

Seeing her as seldom as you do, it doesn't change,
The ire, the shame, the fists you must remember

To smooth flat just thinking what they did,
What they promised, then took — those men

Who offered to pay, to keep, the clan of them
Lording it over the others like high school boys

And their kid brothers. Men with interests to protect,
And mute marble wives. Men who let her

Beam into their faces, watching her shoulders rise,
Her astonishing new breasts, making her believe

It was she who gave permission.
They plundered her youth, then moved on.

Those awful, awful men. The ones
Whose wealth is a kind of filth.

REALM OF SHADES

There was still a here, but that's not where we were, continually turning our backs to something unseen, speaking with just our eyes, getting on with work. What was our work? Our doors wouldn't lock. We rigged them, hung windows with sheets that broadcast our secrets after dark. People with weapons crept like thieves through their own houses. How did we feel? Like a canary cramped in a cage? Or the cat dying to know what the bird tastes like, swatting the rungs day after day, though the little hinged door never gives? No one hid. No one ran like a dog through the street. The moon traced its slow arc through the sky, drifting in and out of clouds that harbored nothing.

DRIVING TO OTTAWA

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