Poems for Peter Meister
by Michael Finley
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When we are gone and the plates of the earth
have shrugged,
and the cupboards rattle and the rafters sift,
and the groaning household teeters on the brink
and the song of consciousness decays,
what calendar will cordone off its days?
When we are gone and the rub of reaching fills the world,
and root and branch and tongue and paw
all strain as one for what is just beyond,
sugar, sunshine, water, meat,
and the hummingbird suspended in the air,
what mind, what glance encapsulates it there?
When we are gone and the dust of our doing has flown
and there are no longer angels and no men,
And our home and our skin and our story of love
give way to hozannas of flies,
what spectators swarm the empty choir,
sockets twitching with surmise?
When we are gone and meaning loses meaning
though your molecules and my molecules
are plucked apart and strewn
across this raw unwitnessable scene
they are better for that blink of time,
forgotten in the giddy sprawl of green.
I sleep on my hands every night.
As I pull the covers around me
and prepare to let go,
first on my right side,
then on my left,
I bunch both hands under the pillows,
holding my head up through the night.
My head must need to be held up so,
but I cannot do otherwise, they go there on their own.
And in the morning when I awake
the stems of my wrists are sore and hollow
and my fingers numb and cold
and I feel I have been flat on a cot
donating blood all night.
Possibly my hands were intertwined so
in the drift and brine of my mother's womb,
the twist of zero gravity
for wet weeks on end.
Perhaps I am atoning for numerous crimes,
and my hands after every day of greedy indignities
need this anchor of head to clasp them in prayer.
Maybe my head is made so heavy
by the ordeal of ordinary living
that only my hands can prevent its sinking
forever in mattress like a black hole of gristle,
bone against wrist against skull against mind
clawing to learn who it is that I am
as if I am taken down from the cross nightly,
and set on my side in the darkness to rest
and dream of the wounds in my palms and my heart
bearing the sins of the world in my bones,
diving sideways into time.
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.
Biking down Laurel Avenue at ten o'clock,
I see a big man sitting in the dark under a porch roof
propped up by three two-by-fours.
At the dance studio on Snelling, with the big glass windows,
it is late, and the woman instructor stands
under a light bulb, weight on one leg.
At the store I open a door and a young girl
explodes into me, laughing.
The air is still, if you listen you can hear
the murmurs of people out walking.
Someone's been cutting the grass in the yard
of the old man across the street, who has died.
Backyard radio baseball game
My son on my lap looking up
Through springtime treetops
As we sway in our canvass swing.
Our father who art in hammock
Hollow be thy chest.
One man on, Puckett steps up
And lines a shot to right,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy heartbeat drum
Now and at the hour of death amen.
I thought I would have more poems
Welling up in me about my little son,
Telling images of flesh and skin
A single drop of an ancestor's blood
Roaring down the tunnel of time
Through this bleating baby heart.
The side is retired, two men on, game over.
I want to tell you not to worry,
It's still only April, there are months to play.
But it is as if you don't even care,
You are somewhere else, you are not yet here.
The things you see you do not know,
You only know me as a warm spot in time.
Your brain stirs invisibly like the worm
In its bag, that one day will step out
And have limbs and wings and everything,
Will talk and have opinions.
Too late for me, though, a spectator
Who misplaced his program, open-mouthed
And blinking, as good as dead,
And never knew what hit me.
Look at you, Jonathan, little nag,
Three weeks old and still not found
Anything you like in this world
Except lying on your back on my lap
On the swing under tree that spreads
Above you like a firework of green
And the light breaking through
In diamond peeks. Your eyes jerk
From rim to rim like a drunk on a train,
Your legs heavy and useless
Like bread soaked with dew.
Children because they are so alive
Spell death to every thing.
Mysterious man, mess-making machine,
Render of night and enemy of art,
Nothing comes. You cry, we rock,
The wet of your diaper like tears.
The weeks I spend attending to you are like
An old woman pouring liquid from the jar
Of her life into your plastic cup.
How I wish you would smile at me,
Though it be only a muscular accident,
I would write you a check from a secret account
That would wipe me out. I would pay to be
Your baby mind, set high in the tree by that evil
Mother in the lullabye song,
We would follow the motion
Of branch against twig against spinning sky
Where all is revealed in the rockabye
White blind beam
Of love.
Copies of my poems went on sale at Odegard Books,
The precise word is remaindered,
Marked down from three ninety five to just the ninety five,
And it hit me that this gambit by the bookstore
Was just what people had been waiting for.
Sure, you expect people to hold back,
Especially at today's prices. Three ninety five is
A piece of change, no doubt about it,
And there must be people who thumb the book
And pat it with one hand as if weighing the
Poems against the expense, the expense against
The poems, take one step toward the cashier
And then fail in their purpose, put the book back
In the rack, and pick up a copy of American Poetry Review,
Beautiful things wonderfully said,
For under three dollars, a wonderful buy, instead.
But who could balk at ninety five cents,
Why, that's less than a dollar with a nickel left over,
You could buy the poems and have enough to
Handle the sales tax, nineteen for the poet and
One for the State of Minnesota and its beautiful
Forests and waterfowl.
[Actually, all nineteen don't go to the poet. I was
Promised a ten percent royalty, which meant forty cents
On the full price, and the fine print here says
When a book goes remainder there isn't really
Any royalty at all, but I don't care, I didn't
Write them for the forty cents, you see,
I wrote them for this feeling I'm having right now
Of breaking through, of getting out,
Of seeing the birds I'd stored in the box
Fly out of it, white wings fair
clapping the morning air.]
Ninety five cents for thirty five poems,
That's less than three pennies apiece. Here's one
About some weeds growing in sidewalk cracks,
So what, it's only six lines long but at three cents
Who's going to complain? Here's another,
A beautiful lyric, a love poem connecting
To the Italian futurist movement of the nineteen-teens,
It was published in a number of respected magazines,
For less than three cents you won't need a vacation tour
This year, just read the words and feel their awful power.
Or the final poem, I call it "The Light," which was all
My life in sonnet length, how there were things
I thought I always wanted, but when I got them they were
Different, or I was unable to recognize them -- such pathos
As would melt the stony heart, and I lay it all down
For you, vulnerable, small, the shattered clown,
The paper trembles with the grief of truth,
Because here it is, softcover renascence,
And all it costs is three lousy cents.
My ear to the ground I can detect the build
Of momentum, people swearing off bad habits forever,
People afraid to look one another in the eye
Now looking and seeing the pain and love that had been there
All along, now reaching out, fingertips touching,
The sting of tears collecting in the corners
Of millions and thousands, the soft collapse
Of a hundred brittle barriers of reason and attitude
Finally available, the incandescent word
At prices the masses can afford.
Let us go now, you and I, to Odegards.
For life has many sales but few true bargains.
Let us take the silver coins and hand them to the person
And remember to ask for the receipt, if you're a poet
Your whole life is deductible.
Oh daughters of Homer gather round his knees
And hear him sing his saltstrong songs.
There are myriad of you there,
A speckled galaxy of brave little lights,
Fresh washed garments tucked under your knees,
Eager for instruction and keen for meaning,
He cannot see you but he hears you breathing.
KRAKEN PRESS
1841 Dayton Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55104-5733
651/644-4540
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