hollow out its core like a nation
sucking the blood of its poor. Thin marrow
sipped from their bones, they become dry shadows
circling to the bottom of a hand cupped
around a black and blood-stained hole—erupting
to a supernova—flambeau of gas
blue, white, red—wild excess!—its shredding flower
the settling shoulder of Orion’s power.
Heed, ye heathen!—the heavy torch is passed.
they murmured in their tents
They murmured in their tents, some centuries
before they were Jews—just Joe and Susie
Blow in the desert: something anybody
would have done—Arabs, campers, Comanches,
men, women. A tent is made for murmuring—
for a muffled, airy cinnamon breeze
under colored shade, warm afternoon peace—
made for murmuring and for being heard—
murmuring like water, murmuring like
a distant caravan, murmuring like
people lying looking up at the stars;
and who in the world do we think we are
to sleep under these stitches of glittering light?
he is good
The Lord is good, and everything is one.
I can’t believe Nels Mickleson is dead,
so set my memory of him—face red,
alive. What do I care for sunken bones,
stones, or all the comfort under the sun?
Lord, let me see him on his porch again—
the one on Ninth Street—but as he was then
and not in memory. Memory’s done.
The heart’s done. It’s just a matter of time
and it will all be done—everything one:
one old stone in the cold—or in the mind
of Mr. Mickelson, the universe
drawing in like sand down the rounding course
of his life, in that chair, in the sublime.
Psalm 107
O give thanks unto the Lord
I’ve always pictured me as Grampa, sitting,
remembering, beneath the big old oak
out back—except that I would be more fit,
enough to walk downtown and cast a vote
for Lincoln come back joking from the dead.
I’d hear pretty good and still have my sight;
no hardening or hammer in my head.
“Half dead,” he’d say; “but otherwise all right.”
I’d take it with that quiet sense of humor
and know my Norsk without a dictionary;
and what he would assume, I would assume
peacefully, without that thousand-yard stare.
Whatever we were missing would be home.
Whatever he would wonder I would know.
My heart won’t let me live that long or see
that much. My two dry retinas are loose
already, tacked back down like parchment sewn
with scabby threads. I hear a dimming fizz
day and night. I have my first heart attack
under my belt and under my skin. Nights
aren’t so good. I’m afraid of being sick.
If twenty years from now I’m still alive,
my teeth will be Chinese, I’ll have steel knees,
and if I still can get around at all
I’ll scuff from room to room reciting Keats
and urinating in my pants. My walker
will say “Kent.” If beauty walks with Jesus,
someday soon the truth will walk with me.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death.
The light. “Move toward the light,” they said. And then,
the name of Jesus on his lips, he breathed
his last. The lights and lines on the machines
unlit, and the last pressure left his hand.
The circle stood around his bed in light
they couldn’t see, but they had heard the name
whispering through the crowd when Jesus came
healing, casting demons back into night,
telling the dead what they wanted to hear:
“Rise; come forth! I am the resurrection
and the Life.” And then his mouth fell open;
they shuddered—one of them caressed his hair;
they wept. He looked at them, adjusted sight,
rose following the rumor toward the light.
he satisfieth the longing soul
The dead man rose—his spirit, that is, rose—
and regularly is in touch with us
through mediums,
