numbness, has followed him on two different buses,
across district lines, into the good school
where his mother lied to get him away from it.
He had turned the corner,
but the world he left behind now sits
at the third desk back on the right,
its shadow eclipsing his eyes.
To A Poet of the Three Gorges
It is evening: cold wind, late November,
east side of Baltimore’s harbor. In the display
window of an upscale home furnishings
boutique, an old wooden ox cart wheel,
circa 19th century China, mounted
on an iron stand: prized salvage
from the flooded towns and valleys where
the Yangtze carved deep into millennia,
cascading through culture and time.
I think of Du Fu, turning his ear
to the gibbons’ howls reverberating
deep in the three gorges, his skiff
moored along the shore, verses coming
like lanterns at night, borne by the dark currents,
lifeblood of heritage, surging past his bow.
Downstream, a new power flows from the river,
its megawatt hum echoing off concrete ramparts.
The old voices, now whispers, drown in waters
rising to light cities of millions where, once,
men in simple wooden boats and carts
delivered the news one verse at a time.
Gulf War Veteran
When he returned
from the desert,
a former high school
classmate brought home
an extra pair of ears,
each taken from
confirmed kills.
He talked of stars’
brilliance through
night vision lenses,
of breathing acrid smoke
from the well fires
and coughing up
globs of blood and oil,
of scorpions seeking
drops of moisture
in soldiers’ mouths
and stinging their tongues
as they slept.
Part of me died
that evening
when I saw him.
He never returned
from that war.
Under the Leonids
Two a.m., twenty-five degrees. Shivering on a
roadside between open fields on top of a hill,
I gaze east and up at November’s mute fires,
magnesium streaks quick-etched across the night,
their glowing trails hanging like tiny hosannas of light
before dissolving back to heaven. Farther from earth,
satellites zip from horizon to horizon in silent orbit.
On the cold wind, a soft whiff of nitrates and damp soil
swirls with wood fire smoke from nearby farm houses.
The distant low roar of a passenger jet rises and falls.
Somewhere, a dog barks at deer shuffling through
the corn stubble. Minute under the vast and endless
river of stars, I watch with gratitude as sparks shoot
from the Lion’s mane, heavenly travelers hurtling
through the darkness of time to crash hot to earth,
brief glories scratching the hours like static, fading
swift as dreams the moment we wake. Their ions,
like knowledge, linger to tease, then are gone.
Toward Pittsburgh
Night falls between mountain ridges,
open car windows and headlights on,
lullaby of tiresong beside cow farms,
faded Mail Pouch Tobacco billboard
painted on the side of an old barn.
Fragrant alfalfa breath of summer
darkness settles like gossamer hands
enfolding a postage-stamp grass meadow,
edge of the woods by the interstate
south of Breezewood and the Turnpike;
U2’s “Promenade” pulses low on the car stereo,
and you, behind the wheel, steady as years.
Light by quiet light, Edward Hopper’s America
nestles into its small, white, box houses,
blue glow of computer and TV screens
spilling out through upstairs bedroom curtains.
Slide show, seaside town. Coca-cola, football radio,
radio, radio, radio, radio, radio …
Thin fog hugs the farm fields’ edges;
fireflies glitter the treetops:
hold
