style="font-size:15px;"> my iron zero skeleton
an aching cage, three days
to thaw back into life.
Perhaps the everyday—
tinsel, lights, wrapped gifts—
will not return this time.
Perhaps all will be overturned
tonight in a storm
sufficient to the need,
great annunciatory wings
of snow wrapping a body
finally laid to rest.
Come, Holy Spirit.
Grasping hands empty
of things, strong legs
with nowhere left to go,
the brain dims its energy
in favor of the heart,
and in darkness the child
grows, the idea
of the child grows near
thanks to an emptiness
almost perfect.
Come, Holy Spirit.
Beat your wings in time
to our blood-pulse, the lone
plow scraping at the silence,
and this one flickering streetlight.
I SAW THREE SHIPS: MANNY’S CHRISTMAS
From his apartment window the old man watched
Christmas take over the block. Wreaths on doors,
sometimes floodlit. Window candles. Abstract rhymes
of tiny white lights threading bare trees.
He knew his neighbors were no more happy
than he was. All for the kids he supposed.
Then he saw the creche down at Trinity
begin to glow: Jesus, Mary, Joseph
in white plastic clothes. What denomination
Trinity was he had no idea.
But he liked the lean-to and straw, the baby lord.
And “creche.” He liked the slippiness—
French, of course—playing like light around
his mouth. He folded up the killing fields
of The lntelligencer, absentmindedly
looked back over seventy-five years
of assumptions to the tiny stable set
she put up despite the old man’s roarings.
Room to room until he gave up.
“Read your church history, Liz. Charred flesh—
auto-da-fe’s, they’re called. Pig bones
for relics, swill for the poor, and gold
for number one. Just another Jew master
for the working man. Kneel on, if you must.”
Every button memorized. Unfair every way.
Nothing dumb about him, just rage on rage.
A cave of rotten wood and sheep shit
would have been fine by me, but she wouldn’t go.
I never met a wise man my whole life,
so we could do without that. Watch the stars,
laugh, and paint the gate any color
we damn well pleased, barn red to Irish green.
That holy family set always scared me.
Who knew what he would do, laugh or scream.
He worked hard enough, bare-knuckled
barrels and skids, iron arms sliding dock freight
into trucks. Seldom touched a drop, either.
God, I loved the ships, the oily sea smell,
the cries of the gulls, the creak of bull-rope.
Little did I know. All her life she never
could say why, though once she said
she still loved the ruin of the man she married.
It’s a story of hope, she’d whisper to me,
hope and love no matter what. Family.
Even she had to blush over that one.
She got her revenge when she was gone.
Or I did. He ran down like a cheap clock
and finally shut up. Hardeyed, grim,
his big shoulders and neck shrunk to fit
the Boston rocker on the porch.
Every night he stared at the same
street light beside Kunzler’s Meats, or the moon
up and down the street length as it rolled
over the housetops. He hardly ever spoke
the last two years, but who could ever guess
what he thought anyway? All I felt
was empty when he shrunk to coffin size,
lying there without a bitter laugh at the last.
I sort of prayed a moment. Then it passed.
Sailing the world slinging hash on one tub
after another kept me a few steps ahead
of love at least. I never boiled an egg
since I retired. Never will. Good luck
to
