Summer Retreat

We were never

what we wanted to be,

at least there, in time

obscured by smoke,

by hallways leading

to mottled, painted, concrete

floors.   In the years,

the bump and jar like

lightning I never forgot

when I cut my hand at the saw.

I can say I’ve seen

the Northern blue grackle,

and the hot little starlings

that frequent the green

eastern lawns--of the desert

where I knew you, no one

remains.  There's just

one old goat of a man,

my brother the ghost

who writes to me about

the times we shared,

old roads, warm

beer.  Are you better

off?  I saw myself

As free as your world was free,

a world I loathed

like the animal you

thought I was.  Nothing

scrapes clean anymore.

Whereas the water was bright

now it’s like the past, a murky

pool filled with god knows what.

You say you see fish, but to me

they’re tadpoles, turning

into frogs--this endlessness

ending as we grow old.

Not nostalgic days, now

no days at all considering

what I've been up against—

you know the stories from

other poems, other times.

Of my life with children who sleep

soundly under rain clouds

I can never amend.  They are

as big as chiefs and amazons,

each alive for what I did

or didn't do one winter when

the palms were dripping

with figs and berries—

it was time to breed

like the animal I was.  Born

to secure my bloodline, mestizo,

Chicano, Sephardim,

I could not live for you.

Did you know Felix is dead?

That he drank himself into depression,

cancer, because he couldn't

stand the world ?  He wanted you like an animal too,

while his beautiful wife spread bagels

for us every Sunday morning.

So there is no rerun. No bargain

to speak of.  Your fury against

me not withstanding would be

one thing.  I have no urge

to touch or mingle under blankets—

it was as old as high school then

and we tried on so many masks.

Having revealed myself

I understood you thought

you had no mask, even as you

shifted in mild schizophrenia

that only some of us saw

late in the dark desert

evenings when the stars

shot out like hot points

for us to name.  But

that’s not the same

as staying up all night

while mi wifa, wary, in labor,

moaned and cried until

the doctor arrived.  There, I watched

the birth of my son.

Much later, I stood in the earth

in the sacred circle

barefoot with mi otra, mi bruja,

watching the back

of the Milky Way slide by.

What would Robert Lowell

say?  I've walked among

the cheerful masses

on Boylston and Newbury.

I returned time after time

for years to spend

with you, blue- eyed

woman I left behind,

who I no longer loved.

I have walked through

Lord & Taylor after

having smoked weed

with your brother in law

on a causeway leading

to Copley Square

where we'd take the T

for all sorts

of New England adventures.

I watched as his little dogs shit

in Back Bay bushes while your sisters

shared Marlboro Reds, afraid

they’d smell like smoke when they got home.

You know, broken windows and whiskey bottles

have won awards for their ability

to forecast the future—fracture,

broken history, no need or want

for mirrors here, right now.  I’ve just

got to let you know how the one dog

died of cancer and loneliness

after we gave his companion

away to an old woman who was

heiress to the local newspaper—

she told me that he’d cry and cry

at night and I can never forgive

myself for that.  He’s buried

somewhere in upstate NY

on a farm where the winds

blow through the sycamore,

friendly gusts announcing

the future.  Of his kind

there are many more.  Now I have

a Weim who acts like old Parker

but is invisible at night.  He sleeps

curled under blankets while

his mate the Boxer sleeps on the floor.

What I am most interested in

concerns the location of your

heart in relation to all of that.

No so much the sad and lonely

animals, including me, the

dark animal inside of me,

then I suppose what is left,

the remains, broken

glass at best—shards really,

not meant for the eye or any

part of the human condition—

outside of me, not my mirror any more.

So I beseech you in the common

language of elegy—

the tragedy is that you won’t

respond except to note

I’ve made this poem

for you—first there is the fire of love

then there is the ash.  I’ve not

come all this way from

the high desert to the wooded

hills of southern Ohio

to know what you know.  Only to seek

some kind of remittance, from you

O holy stranger who I once knew.

Still the world is changing

and I, lit by ghost fire

at midnight when the moon

is just vapor, I need

to tell you somehow

the magnolias and crabapple

tree are done for spring.

Somewhere in the deep

Northwest another friend

is gone the way of old

pine, all of you and all of me

gone now too, gone

like a sweater l left on a boat

ride long ago, the sea thick,

green.  Will you ever welcome me?

There's a street light next

to my house that blocks

out the darkness.  In the

indigo evening the newly

green trees are like dancers

unfurling robes.  There is

the incessant pink crabapple

and the dwindling Ohio

red-bud.  And the sounds

coming from neighbors--

baseball games on cable, long shouts into

the night.  When the right

time comes I'll find myself

alone with the hum of crazy

air conditioners running

all summer, for the heat,

from the heat.  A small

wind is whirling through

the oaks and maples now—

I can’t be bothered.  The rain begins

without knowing I was here.