Tanka
Thirst lifted her feet
across the man-made border
breaking the saddle
north toward Los Angeles
under the same starry sky
Thirst lifted her feet
across the man-made border
breaking the saddle
north toward Los Angeles
under the same starry sky
Rainwater is collected
in golden bowls,
each a mirror reflecting the bad
haircuts worn by monks.
They are chanters
never worrying about the next meal.
Tell us how to pray
for bread to feed our trusting children,
you who chant
with the assurance that the gong chimes
dinner at seven.
in cars,
on trains—a hundred times
each day. He gets off
at any number of stops
and people never know it
but they just missed him—
by a moment,
a moment when a streetlight malfunctions,
a moment when the breaks fail,
a moment when the wheels fall off,
if they only knew,
how a moment could change it all—
any moment, everyday. Death
is biding his time,
going about his business.
He presses
his oilskin jacket, morning,
night, when it wrinkles
a little—always looking
grand when he takes you.
Death has no mustache to twirl,
no vocal chords to cackle,
no eyes with which to stare.
His bones are not fleshy and
he is diminished
by what
he lacks—nerves,
missing, heart-
less, like a machine is less
than a man, than a mouse,
than any living thing.
Death drifts an inch
off the ground,
sometimes flying first
class, sometimes lifting off
with a shuttle, leaving the earth.
Death is just
death, without fanfare
without rockets,
without special effects.
Death travels like we do,
never needing a ticket to ride,
sure, stoic, often wanting more leg room.
The bus stops at the hospital.
Inside a hundred bowls of Jello
shake and quiver
as he picks over them. People in storage,
wait in each room—little
parking spaces, waiting
for him. Easy enough,
he separates
the bodies from the cocoons, fruit
from the pits—his scythe falls,
driving with precision—often with a rattle.
He lingers—sometimes silently passing
by,
by moments,
by mere moments.
We are approaching
the day of reckoning, the day
when the souls are sorted,
when they are divided,
when children learn their fathers are bound
for some other place
they cannot go—
and until then, billions of souls are waiting,
frozen in their dying-places, invisibly littering
the streets, loitering in the hospital beds,
sprinkled thinly on the wooded hillsides.
In public swimming pools
there are floating souls.
On every highway there are souls
of truckers, with their hands
frightfully-frozen to absent steering wheels,
with frightened knotted expressions,
worried about the children and families in cars—
cars bizarrely recycled into beer cans.
There are tribal souls, mountain-man souls,
hills carpeted with the souls of soldiers.
Krakatau souls are frozen like sprinters.
They are everywhere.
Somewhere, frozen,
your great grandmother reclines,
your great great aunt is covering her terrorized eyes,
your distant cousin is shielding a child with his body
and now, even in these recent moments,
people all over the world are dying,
becoming paralytic—they join
those multitudes of other souls who linger,
they wait for the day of reckoning,
they wait to be rewarded,
they wait to be free—to stir again
and someday, for those unfortunate bastards
who will be sorted into hell,
the frozen years will become
the years they long to return to.
“Her knees were tumors on sticks,
her elbows chicken bones”
Cynthia Ozick -The Shawl.
Under the bridges,
hollow sockets
give up
their reflective sheens
for the glossy eyed
red headed children
in the meadows.
Haircuts are exchanged
for breaking off bit by bit.
Time brings the springs
of a million foundries
pouring tears into molds
and jumping into children
and showering into the
thinning, the thinning air,
the becoming air
starvation brings. Knees
become tumors on
sticks while high
handed soldiers march
and march, in March
and march until they
mar everything
except the glossy eyes
of playful careless children
in the meadows of America.