Spirographs

when we went to the park a few September days
before my birthday (I am trying to remember, but
it exists in that file of memories that are Technicolor
and incomplete) what did I do to provoke you?

did I play along when you created a game where
you kicked the soccer ball at the spokes of my tires
while I drove my pink bike in loping circles ?

I thought I was so much older but the candle on the
cake in the picture says that I am only six-- the scabs
on my cheek and eye still fresh from crashing to the
asphalt, and the training wheels recently removed

meant that there were only two wheels to leave
spirographs on the church parking lot. Loops that
seem so chaotic in the making, but turn out impossibly
beautiful and intricate.

Duty

When Roguey Tom got sick,

came down to his last days,

his body no longer able to shoulder

the brunt of his alcoholism--

his girls took him in and nursed him

let him back like they did every time

he would reappear on a greyhound 

sock-less and pifficated.

When Papa's stroke robbed him 

so violently of the ability to walk and talk

and eat, my mother would wake early

and stay late each of those four years

filling feeding tubes and

changing diapers, wiping the crust

from the roof of his mouth 

with a warm wash rag

and I am your daughter

even though we barely speak

and when you are dying

I will be the first there. 

Abel

My mother recounts her 

Childhood to me, saying:

“Every night Daddy would 

light a cigar and watch the 

CBS news or Lawrence Welk

in his rocking chair,

laughing a little.

And every morning he would 

wake next to Mama, read

the paper in his undershirt and 

suspenders and drive his dump 

truck down the street and

throw bread crumbs off the 

porch, saying "The birds gotta 

eat too, Mama."

Sometimes on Sundays 

Roguey Tom would turn up

smelling like booze

and passing out 20 dollar bills

to all the kids

Drifting through the state

like a man with no ties 

his own children no doubt 

home and worried, his 

nieces reveling in the novelty

of his visit.

Mama would make him

dinner and a cup of coffee

before Daddy collected back

his brother’s money from the kids and

drove him to the bus stop, saying

"go on back to your family, Tom."--

and I wonder, now, if he ever wanted

to buy a case of beer and get on that bus too?

imagined night in the house of my grandmother

a gradeschool friend once told me that when
you are running in a dream, wherever you
run to is your real home, your place of safety.

now, not fleeing some fantastic terror: a witch,
a kidnapper, a runaway truck, but the tangible
and mundane terror of failure; a bleak and open
future, I go to spend the night where I felt safest.
In my grandmother's house.

I open the door, disarm the alarm and enter
into your living room as she left it
floral couch and lace curtains
a bowl of peppermints on the table.
The fridge is well stocked with the things
I love best:
carrot cake and vegetable soup
and after one cup of tea my lids begin
to grow heavy, a wash of sleep calmer
than any I've known lately. I climb
the stairs to the bedroom where
Papa and Granny lay side by side
for some fifty years.

All night the golden anniversary clock
chimes to mock my awakeness, singing
at the hour and the half
you should have known
you should have known
you'd be awake here
and alone.

King of the Jungle

At six years old I am not aware of the exact

implications of the word stroke.

And when you sit me on the bottom of the

oak staircase with the wrought iron banister

I can see that you have been sobbing and your

fear at 32 is more intense than any of mine.

I do not know exactly what was said during that

phone call, only that it was spoken by my grandmother

from an emergency room somewhere and heard in front

of a glowing kitchen window on a phone old

enough to have a curly cord and that it is

the hottest part of the summer and we’ve just

been to the zoo to ride the carousel and see the

lions. And that when it is finally relayed to

me I do not understand the change of life it

will imply or how unfair it is to keep a

lion in a Midwestern zoo confined to a glass

enclosure, pacing the same worn spots, gawked

at, its majesty doctored and forgotten.

Janis Joplin on the Festival Express

You ever get drunk on a train

through four cities in less than twice

as many days? Well, when you got

eleven cars and just as many bands

riding along and it's the heat of the 

summer and it's that beautiful part

of Canada between Winnipeg and

Calgary and you just saw what

Toronto had going on-- I tell you

what you're gonna do: you're gonna

drink on that train. And you're 

gonna go down to the car where

everybody's got their guitars out

and you're gonna forget-- when you

see the Grateful Dead and The Band

jamming with Buddy Guy-- that it 

ain't been more than 5 or 6 years

since we got the good sense to start

eating in the same diners and

pissing in the same toilets.

And you'd get drunk too if you

heard that some thousand kids

decided to storm the gates at the

next stop and goddamn you 

if you didn't know you had to

let those kids hear you for free

and if only I knew that I'd 

be dead by October-- but it's

Summertime, child, and your

living is easy.

For Townes Van Zandt

when discovered Townes,we too were going out on the highway to

listen to them big trucks whine, hoping that our ramblings through

Canada in a borrowed sedan would show us what we meant to

each other. To the world.

when he married his first wife, she was 21 and not expecting

her new husband to spend their honeymoon locked in her shoe closet

writing what would become waiting around to die

when you called me, I was 21 and not expecting we’d ever speak again after

you took someone else on that same long drive to Toronto. But here

we are listening to him Live at the Old Quarter, Houston,

weaving through the hills of West Virginia

Pancho and Lefty singing our own Fraternity Blues

Somehow addicted to you the way he was addicted to

the airplane glue that sealed all his teeth together before

they cracked them apart with a ball-pin hammer

If I needed you

would you come to me

would you come to me and ease my pain?