The Return
Of the Thing
That Had Its Way
With Duluth

Poems by Michael Finley

October 12, 1997c

For a nicer text, download the e-book version.

Printed in a limited edition of 25 copies
for a one-time event in Duluth, Minnesota.

Copyright © 1997
by Michael Finley; all rights reserved.

In the Night

My little girl awoke in the night
quaking with fright,
and I held her and explained
that the monsters were gone,
they were never there at all,
and the look she gave me was, I recall,
almost one of pity, as if
I were the doomed one, mine the swift
tumble coming soon.
I rocked her to sleep in her room
and thought of every plane
I wanted to see go down,
every siren shearing the dark
were heading toward my part
of town, my god, and all I
have is a child to protect me.

Old Saw

Out walking with Red, we came upon
an ancient cottonwood tree, standing like
a giant fork in the forest.
Into that fork another tree had fallen,
so that the original cottonwood stood straight
while the dead fallen tree leaned into its crux,
and every breeze made the live tree groan
as the dead trunk rubbed against it,
it was the sound of a balloon roughly handled,
or metal failing underwater,
like a natural cello's lowest string
rubbed raw of its rosin.

Eventually the dead tree had worked a groove
in the crotch of the live one,
and with the passage of time was wearing its way
downward, splitting it down the middle.
One main arm of the live tree had died,
and owls and birds and other things
have made their apartments in the soft dry flesh.

Rachel and I stare up at this natural saw
and we take one another's hands instinctively
as if to assure ourselves
that the rubbing of one life against another life
means warming, not tearing.
Love comes into our life but life comes to an end.
What is left when love remains
sawing gently on our limbs?

Haircut

When my stepdad was dying of a brain tumor,
we hired a barber named Dave to come round
every week. Dick didn't have a hair on his head,
after chemo, not one, but he liked talking to Dave,
who also sold insurance and awnings.
Dave would pretend to cut hair
for half an hour or more, chatting about
the kids today, or an open lot
where a supermarket might go.
And Dick would nod, or grunt --
he had no words left in him -- with half open eyes.
I think he was pleased to be served,
to be the man, that ghost hair was still coming
out of him, unstoppable, wild.
When Dave was done he carefully brushed the excess off, shook the cloth off on the porch,
let nothing ride away on air.

THE CLARINET IS
A DIFFICULT INSTRUMENT

I was eating minestrone
when I heard something fall
outside my apartment window.
Too dark to see much
but a pair of hairy arms slam shut
a window on the third floor
of the building opposite mine.

In the morning all I found
was a bent clarinet on cement,
dented horn and pawn shop sticker
saying nine dollars.

It reminded me of the French explorer
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.
He too had dreams, set sail
up the St. Lawrence, looking for China,
and wound up settling in Detroit instead.

The Dance of the Dog

The knees bend like spurs
Spun round from the
Rattling steps, shake off
The wood-stove fever
Stored from the
Floorboards through the
Night, race past the pump
To the edge of the
Cleanshorn field where
Only the day before an
Army of corn held sway.
Now on tiptoe, now
Trotting gingerly row to
Row, the pink tongue
Flagging, the keen eye
Swerves to the suggestion
Of movement, surveys the
Swath of harvest slack-
Jawed. The creatures of
The plain are dazed in a
Changed world, but he who
Sleeps on a burlap sack
Where the cinders spit is
Proud to the tooth: I am
I, he thinks, dog, and
This is my country, and
This the might of my
Accomplices.

Hamsters

Several times I have opened an eye at night
certain someone was moving in the house,
but it was only the chrome wheel turning

Or we would be making love and hear the sound
of metal on metal from the children's room --
the ball in the drip bottle pushed and released.

The crunch of seed between pointed pearls,
the scurry and blink of prisoners.
In the cane, in the damp, in the moldy dark, they spin.

A Minnesotan
in New York

When I landed at LaGuardia
it was seventy degrees,
all I needed was a thin jacket.
For three days I walked the streets
leery of beggars who seemed
to know something, and shadowy
figures lurking in doorways.
But when the temperature began
to fall and the canyon gusts blew
plastic sacks like ghostly luggage,
I came into my own.
I am more used to winter than them,
it is my natural element, walking into
the city wind, swinging
my computer case at my side.
All along Sixth Avenue the muggers
and murderers part, melted
from their purpose by sled dog eyes,
urgent and cheerful on a cold,
cold night.

Witnesses

Three women at Perkins sit in front of me,
a mother and her daughters. The youngest,
in glasses, wears fuchsia lipstick and matching
fuchsia suit, with four silver buttons
on each sleeve. The sister has a sleepy, dragged out beauty
and unbrushed hairdo. You can make out
the lines of her brown arms through the sleeves.
The mother sits with her black pocketbook in her lap,
the strap looped around one wrist.
They appear to have rules about conversation,
taking respectful turns. Though their eyes light up,
and slight smiles glide on their faces,
not one word is audible twelve feet away, and no one
laughs or touches. I wonder if they are discussing the people
they met at the doors they knocked,
who seemed interested in the message they carried,
and who did not extend them the courtesy of respect.
Then the food arrives, hamburgers, cokes and fries,
and the women in their Sunday clothes bow their heads and pray.

The Life of Glass

The bits of clear and amber glass
and metal collar in the street
say something jarring happened here.

If you live in the city long enough
you see the life of broken glass,
beginning as a puddle
on an abandoned parking space
where a pipe caved in a driver's window.
And each car driving over the puddle
spreads it apart like crackling dough
until only a few bright nuggets
catch the glint of streetlamp light.

In an empty parking lot on Sunday morning
you can see where the latest window
was smashed, and here, and there,
the fading remains of those broken earlier,
like crystal snow on unmarked graves.

And when you pull up to an intersection after
the players in an accident have headed
for the wings, you see the glass and think
of the jolt that lingers in the air,
the black tires grumble forward,
holding their breath.

BROWSERS

He flipped through the magazines
in the periodical room.

The Cadillac, he thought to
himself, is definitely the
Rolls-Royce of automobiles.

She sauntered through the stacks,
fingers dusting the tops of rows.
The things I don't know,
she pondered, could fill a book.

They stood in line at the
check-out desk,
shifting their weight
like two ships passing in broad
daylight.

Priests

Even on the most sweltering days
when cement workers and waittresses
were tottering in the pews,
the priests suited up in all the layers --
alb, cincture, chasuble, stole.
The acolytes looked on with open mouths
as the priests dressed, muttering.
They appeared powdered, as if with corn starch,
their pale parts blanching in the gymnasium light.
Their hands fluttered through the blonde cabinetry
alighting on oils and incense, linen and gold,
muscatel, ribbons, and bread.
the looks on their unlined faces all duty,
half lonely men, half swans.

Columbus Circle

It is two in the morning, and the sound
of air hammers and chainsaws
from a night construction crew
brings me out of bed.
The view from my hotel window
doesn't quite include Lincoln Center,
kitty corner, though the hotel
celebrates its tradition of putting up
musicians and singers and actors overnight.
What I do see is a triangular patch of grass,
and a statute of Dante, his laurels blending
with the dead leaves of November.
He gazes out on 63rd Street and Broadway,
humorlessly, like a man who knows
his way around infernoes.
Besides the immortal poet is a bus stand
advertising Eternity by Calvin Klein.
It is late, and the traffic has begun
to die down. Down the sidewalk
comes a man who is drunk.
Each step is an essay and not all
are successes. He is like a mime climbing
an imaginary rope, a phantom walking through
new falling snow, that melts on
the shoulders of statues of poets,
and I, too excited to sleep in my hotel bed,
know exactly how
he feels.

Home Opener

Beer bare skin hot sun
And this, perched on a
Tub rim, prying skin,
Laying open the white
Underneath.
This is what snakes do
Every year, spiraling
Outward into time; or
Trees, whittling
Bracelets backwards.
Compulsion hunger
Strange delight in
Lifting away these
Sunburnt sheets, funny
Feeling called getting
Closer.

The Dog of God

The dog of God has no free will.
He lives by the master's convenience.
Left alone for long periods to fend for himself,
Nothing to drink, not a scrap in the bowl.
Parasites, ear mites, worms in the flesh.
The rapier teeth of a hundred invaders
Have left their marks, and the old whiskered maw
Is white with the years. A cataract clouds
The left brown eye, the malformed other perpetually weeps. His loping gait is long since gone, he limps
And hobbles from gate to gate.
But when the Master returns from his business
The hound of heaven staggers down the path to meet him,
Manged tail clapping with joy.

Bear's Den 1977

In the Bear's Den Bar on Franklin Avenue
a stuffed black bear looks down from the countertop
like a spirit through a cloud of smoke,
the room of pickled faces, Ojibwe and Swede, nearly
as preserved as the animal. I live just a block away,
in a building with the porch falling off.
Summer nights friends and I will tiptoe
onto the sagging boards, drink wine and watch
the passing trade. Next to Bear's Den
is a laundromat that burned to the ground,
with a painting on the side of a big white woman
in red pumps and dress, and she is so happy,
the sign said Meet Me At Giant Wash.
But she never gets to finish folding that bedspread
on the side of the building, they haul her rubble
away in trucks, still smoldering, because
a tenant upstairs lit up and dozed off.
One by one the neighborhood gets carted away,
and the big black bear, paralyzed, each hair
erect with nicotine dew, lips pulled back
to make him look more ferocious than he is,
teeth bared against the wrecking ball, is next.

Poems I Meant to Write

I meant for the longest time to write
about the little tasks, about tying the shoes,
and fitting the hands into gloves,
I saw my big hands negotiating the laces and trying
sleeve after sleeve over finger and thumb.
I could have had fun with the sand I dumped out
of each sneaker, enough for a beach, enough
for a castle and moat.

I could have written about the look on their faces
sometimes, that they saw us not as the oafs
who yelled and sighed and lived stupidly above eye level,
but shining gods, shining, omnipotent and perfect.
How when they cried in your arms
they were praying to you
to make it better, to lift the pain from their lives,
and you could.

I could have written about the tiredness of the house,
the exhaustion of the tabletops, crusted with crud,
sponged pointlessly after meals, the flakes and globs
spattered on the floor that fill the cracks in the hardwood.
Or the handles on the stroller that were not long enough,
so you walked in a crouch, and the white plastic wheels
that turned sideways on a whim
or a pebble and skidded to a halt.

I could have remembered their bodies between us in bed
when they were just babies, the smell of them there,
the cramped caution of the dark, the wet exhalation
from their noses. The kick of them against blanket,
that wakes you and
momentarily annoys you, then draws you even closer.

Why did they finally leave our bed, our big pink comforter
and the warmth of the family, for beds of their own?
There was space for us all, and another night
would have cost them nothing, but they went.

I could have described the last night they woke up frightened and sauntered in barefoot
and climbed in between us.
They slept again immediately, and we tried, too.
But I know you were thinking, off on your side,
that this is the moment, and this was our life,
and the white skin of our children dove and fell
again beside us, in the bright sun setting, out to sea.

Kraken Press

1841 Dayton Avenue

Saint Paul, MN 55104

612-644-4540

mfinley@mfinley.com

http://mfinley.com

Did you tip your writer?