Evening Dress

for my son

One day the sky will open,
promise, like there’s a zipper
invisible from our side. One

long zip from zenith,
where cirrus clouds curve
mare tail strands, down

to the horizon, green peaks
of distant spruce trees. What’s next?
What’s behind? No, it’s not

a giant pant fly, God’s prick
ready to douse our world, his infinite
love and patience at end. No.

Promise. The sleek zipper
belongs to the back of a long
dress. From sweet wisps at cool nape

down to dimple a tip of the tongue
above the buttocks. While everyone
goes about their day in cars,

on sidewalks, in dusty offices,
all beholden to a dull script,
you will see what to reach for

as the dress slips off into evening,
into darkness. Promise. Close your eyes,
draw her close, breathe stars.

My Neighbor’s Dog

Better for me had my neighbor died
before we began to drink out our nights
at a table stained with red wine:
his eyes, two tight circular syllogisms,
two eight balls rolled back black and white
into his head. The old philosopher
who named his dog Being. Capital B,
Being. His colleagues at every
university struggle with phantom
answers. Professor Tiederman dismisses
them as alchemists and names Being,
discovers Being becoming, Being,
which wasn’t and now is, Being
born in a litter of nine retrievers.

And the world, roundly, makes too much sense,
like looking in your rearview
after a long day at the end
of a long, straight street to see
slow traffic laid out behind you:
braided silver glinting wet
in the sunlight through clouds. You say
how wonderful to sit still beside
a black van pumping country rock
at an interminable stoplight
and then be here: woven in the bright braid,
and then be here. Being is like that,
halfway in my tipped garbage can
one minute; the next, shredding
in his bird-soft mouth my copy
of the daily Oregonian.

I’m home Sunday, ignoring my headache
from La Salles, ignoring the sticky smell
of Chianti in my sinuses, the smell
of Tiederman’s tedious chatter,
his illicit flurries while his wife,
sweet Janice, sits home warming her feet
under the belly of Being,

Being. Ignore it all because my son
shouldn’t see his old man drunk
or marred by wine. Better for him to play
street football unencumbered while I rake leaves
and the leavings of Being, lean
against the sweetgum and watch his team
huddle for a second down call.
Read the lips on my son, the light receiver,
he’s telling Tiederman’s boy Lewis,
that foul-mouthed shit, Throw it to me
on a fly pattern. Bent over at their hips,
the five study the line my son
draws on his dirty palm, a crisp line
up the gutter to the Hubner’s driveway.
The quarterback Lewis, always the arbiter
of cruel mediocrity, says
loudly enough for Being to hear
and howl out back, Fuck you. Everyone
goes short. Listen to him, son. Listen
hard. Listen to Being scratch at the fence gate.

Spinoza and the Morning

The surgeon knotted sutures one step
too slow to seal the net of vessels
oozing around his heart. Mother

rocked, framed by a window
shining on the penultimate hour.
Stunned, stuck like the late night

was clear pitch, I watched the dark
for sign of morning. Young, at school
I’d write for philosophy and push up

from the kitchen chair to step outside,
breathe, and see the strange stars
spun to us from the other hemisphere

and return with less time to Spinoza,
the lens grinder who taught relentless trust.
By morning when I packed my papers

in my bag and started toward campus,
I was drunk on exhaustion and his axiom
that we are God thinking. So let God learn regret.

A few years later at work, the other janitor
and I scrubbed floors, toilets, grime inside
light fixtures so close to sunrise, he insisted

we have the light find us facing west
and the great Sacramento Valley.
The streets were empty as we drove, reckless,

balancing large paper cups of dark beer
through the dim. We outlived our folly.
Spinoza wouldn’t survive the glass dust

that lacerated his lungs. Dad,
bloated by another four liters of saline,
another twenty pounds of pressure to give his heart

traction, ceased, and three of us, quiet
as dust in the room, struggled to remember
how day begins. Those years before

out of the car and up the rocky hill’s dirt path,
my friend and I turned to see
already it was bright morning across the river

in the towns of Fruto and Chrome. We stood
in the shadow of the Sierra
watching the wall of light careen our way,

emblazing pools of distant rice fields
and the deep green of almond orchards.
Faster than thought, light swept toward us,

claiming creek and stones, onto us
and over us, a wind from heaven to warm
our backs, lay our shadows in the grass.

Our Brother the Rain

More than ascribes to
more than holds to
more than maintains
the rain
the rain insists.
We go quiet
mortified
even ashamed for the rain
who pushes
pushes the point
that was never really in question
that was only ever a friendly call
for clarification
and we were all
more than completely clear
a cloudburst back
a silvery syllogism long ago
and at that moment
the rain had a point
well-made
well-put
a bon-mot
well-taken
and now a point long since
conceded
one the rain made first softly
deliberately but gently
then with increasing vigor
until we have no choice
but admit the mania
of our brother the rain
who will finish by weeping
our brother the rain
who blusters toward torrential
deaf to our deep hush.

Last Work

For my strain of cancer, after
surgery, radiation was perfunctory,
a mopping up of the most likely dead
and gone. Unless a car or some other great
stroke of dark luck took me,
I’d live through my youth to have
a few amber years to shuffle

on the sidewalk, an old man
in the luscious summer shade. But what
about the already elderly men around
the waiting room like around

a campfire, ringed by forest-green drapes,
the quiet eerie as the secret heart
of a temple? We would arrive
at the clinic in street clothes and emerge
from behind the cloth wall to join
the circle in a faded but sterile gown.

In conversation, they were
always onto a project, new circuitry
for the basement, laying a slab
of smooth concrete. Each man

had a bit better than 50/50
and in one sentence I’ll teach you
about both odds and faith:
Within a year half would rise
glorified, the rest would remain

on our planet with me but have
a clean garage, the mower slick-
oiled and blade-sharp, and be ready
for a lonely, languorous recovery.