Four Poems

Station Stop

From this train you can see the faded city,
same movie house, shuttered department store,
the bank with its tarnished columns and dome.
It’s now so quiet and airless a town
and all roads lead to the cemetery.
That’s where they are still sleeping, side by side,
in soundless slumber beyond plans and days,
engraved, weathered stones for a headboard,
and mounds of grass or of snow for a quilt.
I had not been there again for so long,
but found this photo of their resting place,
with green moss and lichen dimming both names
and the lines of the poem he’d chosen
to be their last.

From the car, we’d see them in the doorway,
and they’d been waiting, their small apartment
transfigured for all our family visits,
like a jewelry box with hidden drawers,
cots conjured and ready for granddaughters,
and their own bed given to our parents.
At night, they’d open the pullout sofa
and climb in; he, in his union suit, and she,
in her blue nightgown and softest sweater.
They’d lie next to each other, reliving
all that happened that day, planning ahead
to the next, whom we’d see, where we would go,
and joyful, taking nothing for granted,
except their breath.



What You Meant To Say

The sailor on deck, tossed and flung by the motion of the waves,
turning nearly as green as the sea pummeling the sides of the boat, and cringing from the dark rain hitting his face and soaking his cap,
is ordered to go below, away from the storm and the sway.
There he can rest and recover himself in the quiet cabin and sleep.
What he dreams we do not know, but it may be of sailing above cumulus
clouds,
sunlight on a covered porch, and a tureen of clear soup with a copper ladle.

So it is when you search for the way to say how you feel today,
off balance, a little dizzy, and your appetite disturbed,
and want just to close your eyes and sleep
until, when your eyes open, some storm has passed.
But, in a half-dream, you hear the gulls and the Captain’s roar,
and you dress and climb the ladder
back into the light and the air,
announcing that what you meant to say
was that you were “under the weather,”
but that now you are over it.





Oh, Giselle

On the customer chat screen, I post a simple inquiry
about the Giselle Blue Stripe Shower Curtain, Extra Long,
asking whether a fabric sample might be available.
A message flashes to say that currently
no chat representative is free,
but my question is important to them.

Hours later, a reply appears.

“Oh, Giselle,” it begins.
“Good day to you!
I’m so sorry we missed our chat.
Oh! We cannot provide samples at this time, or soon,
but please, Giselle, have a great day!”

I forget the sample and the inquiry,
but all day something follows me
as if there is always a thought at my heels.
I am wondering how it feels
to be Giselle,
how differently does she move through her morning,
squeezing kale, blueberries and oranges into the blender,
and leafing through a fashion magazine,
then meditating in the garden near the koi pond,
or is she up at dawn with a stethoscope, gavel, street broom,
behind the counter at the dry cleaner’s covering men’s suits in plastic,
or breaking in new toe shoes in the studio mirror,
or does she drive off, late as always, to teach her sought-after course —
on the Brontes, Eliot and Austen
(known as BEA for those lucky enough to get in) —
her red car loaded with folders and files
she’ll need to absorb to finish the book by February 20,
or tenure will be denied.

Giselle, who has no time any afternoon to ask for samples for anything,
or replace a shower curtain until it is torn or mildewed,
because she is too busy caring for 2 dogs, 1 cat, and 4 children,
including one who may be a piano prodigy,
or making egg salad sandwiches for the free community lunch at her church,
or sitting in the shade with the elderly parent
whose memory is fading and drifting, but always knows her name.
Oh, Giselle, her father says.

And what of Giselle in the evening,
already asleep by nine in her Yankees tee shirt and dreaming of a great day,
or watching a Spanish soap opera on an old TV with her husband of fifty
years,
or, late in the night, alone, going through photographs
and writing captions with a new calligraphy pen and gold ink,
and looking for a long time at one photo
of a large group of people singing in their choir black,
most of whom she recognizes
and whose names are written on the back.
Still, she keeps searching for her own face
and is not sure if the one marked Giselle
is really her at all, or some stranger whose name she doesn’t know.




That Dreamer

Some dreams are a long evening of one-act plays.
“Intense,” “Immersive,” “Intimate,”
your review might say, if you could remember anything.
Somehow you do feel it was brilliant and original in the moment,
the virtuoso creation of a single author,
with seamless transitions and no intermission.
So completely lost though are characters, plots, and moods,
that there’s nothing to retell.

Was it maybe erotic? Heroic? In color?
Were there more laughs than tears?
Was it all in English?
The program must have been whisked away by some usher
since, almost awake, you are left alone, groping for any detail,
paused in the aisle of the morning light,
“Go live your life,” someone shouts.
“New show tonight!”

But sitting on the edge of the bed, you keep blinking
as if the quick lowering of your eyelids will simulate sleep
and help with recall.
There is none, just a colorless screen where the dreams have been.
So you give up and brush your teeth.

Behind the heavy curtain of day, though,
sets are already being loaded in
as actors enter at staggered times
through different doors,
to wait in the wings, coffee mugs in hand,
for their costumes and their lines.

They are already muttering about how, as usual,
their parts are so confusing,
and the locations keep changing in impossible ways.
And what’s the point of it all,
with that dreamer who has no waking memories,
except of forgetting.