by JS Gilbert
I cradled him, fresh from a morning
surveying his kingdom, into my face;
smelled winter beneath his fur,
flowerbeds behind his collar.
Wondered at those who collect these
haughty envoys, risking the ire
of municipal codes and threadbare
trope of crippling loneliness
to surround themselves with smells of
life, now, beyond their grasp.
and my son said his was people who say ‘baggies’
but i thought peeves would be more prevalent
and i replied ‘you must know more drug dealers than i do’
and i imagined wesley snipes new jacking with ‘baggies’
and ice-t laughing in his face
but my son had lost interest
Cardboard as tinder, strips tightly
wound and set amongst the ashes, like
a pan of cinnamon rolls.
My fingers, uncharacteristically sure
of themselves, place kindling within the whorls;
sticks and twigs he gathered and
left as an uncertain offering at my feet.
It catches, the fire.
Licks and bites and snaps,
crawls and claws its way from
base to wisping logs in a
desperate clutch.
It’s a thing I know:
heat, fuel, air is a fire.
So few equations seem as reliable, now;
unexpected results, ineffectual and
laughable, in-my-faceable.
But this
one thing
I can do.
His equation has grown exponentially,
from heat, fuel, and air to givens
I no longer recognize,
variables I don’t understand.
And so my fingers shake as I lay his kindling in
precarious motion,
fearful
of stifling and
squandering and
leaching
until all that remains is my
desperate clutch.
I screamed
when I first saw him,
a bounding black cloud
thundering toward my horizon:
a boy looking for a friend.
He stayed with us
until that day
I had to stack the shelves and sweep the floors,
direct customers to the canned
whole chickens in aisle five
while They did whatever it is They do
to friends who once escaped the yard
to find
me at school during recess and
the principal let me walk him home but
who can’t walk anywhere anymore.
So, I get it.
But when my son’s eyes are red-rimmed and
welling with rage at yet one more
failure / betrayal / Talk
with a father trying too hard
because
he knows what’s coming demands more than
paper-or-plastic or expired milk or stray carts and
his son bears the brunt of that fear until
their ties twist taut and love becomes
a strained and brittle mask,
please forgive my snicker at your dog-parent sticker.
‘I don’t know,’ I say to those who ask.
And I don’t. Know.
Why the spires, rifts, domes.
Why the channels, depressions, slopes.
Why spheres.
‘Maybe you should’, says my son, ‘build an actual…castle?’
But I know
what those are, and what they’re for.
So they stop to explore these abstralien sandscapes,
wondering
at the meaning of my creation, and my purpose.
No plan guides my tremorous fingers that
mold and shape and smooth the forms
that form without me.
Arches fall and towers crumble, collapse under
misplaced knees and thoughtless feet.
These places weren’t meant to be, let alone
last even through a day or night or hour.
They are self-serving, imposing haphazard order
on an idle chaos minding its own business.
God took six days, so they say, plus time to rest,
yet I spare only the morning
because I have other plans.
They, too, are as hasty in their admiration which
so fickley turns to mischievous destruction by
toddlered toes, unleashed paws, and cruelty.
Even seagulls are dismissive of my walls, perching with
prejudice until the structures crack to expose
my lack, and my depravity.
Six days seems equally rash, short-sighted and shrifted
given the scope of eternity, of all the hairs on all our heads.
So we blear and smear and have trod among
God’s almighty spires in ignorance and arrogance,
wondering
at His meaning, and His purpose.
Yet He had no other plans and
His fingers do not tremble, and
His walls were built counting on our cruelty to
crack them
and expose yet more layers of perfection.
The soul dawdles, lingers in the past;
trailing fingers along the surface
of what should have been delved
long before.
Ripples expand to reflect the outline
of regret, the shapes we missed, then,
yet now perceive with sorrowful joy
until the soul startles and wakes,
cries for our attention:
Wait!
sweating, struggling, we’re lugging
the bin over grass and gravel,
sticks and stones
to the mound of broken trees,
the earth hot and dry like
Hemingway or Steinbeck;
man and boy toiling through
the fading sunlight.
you wait at the edge, eager,
forward and back again as
i shovel mulch and grunt.
your fingers twitch.
dust rises and you cough,
shielding your face
from the grit and sun;
still, you watch
and finally ask, ‘can I?’
of course, though you can’t,
possibly, lift even the blade.
i pass the handle, and you grin.
i wait at the edge, eager,
forward and back again as
you place your hands and grunt,
frowning but not asking for help.
your hands slide forward, seeking
the physics you don’t understand,
and you do, lift. and more, you
shove and lift again,
over your waist, shoulder, head,
blade full by anyone’s measure,
and tip the chips into (mostly)
the bin.
the blade drops with your hands,
clanging on the hard-packed dirt.
you breathe heavy and sigh.
‘I think I’m too little.’
My grandmother would make them,
large-knit in green, red, and white:
thick cables of yarn as cylindrical
camouflage for rolls of toilet paper, or
insulation against pots of chicken and dumplings.
Her shawl reminded me of these,
though white and splotched with dollops of
yellow surrounded by petaled pink and blue.
She wore it each week,
rain or shine, Epiphany or Lent.
(Truth be told, the church can be cold.)
She arrived, shuffling; sat, shuddering,
and her son helped her, lowered her, down.
She stayed, bent, forward over her hands
as we stood shaking hands and sharing peace.
The asterisk asked her to
* Stand if you are able.
Not a command of passive-aggressive guilt, but
suggestion and instruction. A lesson
in humility for those who don’t know or have forgotten:
in worship, in respect, in joy, we stand.
And each week she stood,
rain or shine, Advent or Easter.
Fingers curled and gripping the pew;
not pushed but pulled, drawn, and called
to her feet with patience,
without hesitation.
Her son’s hands holding the hymnal.
Sicilian Wit
I blame Sophia.
If Dorothy was quick
her mother was prescient,
only waiting long enough to bind
her barb in space and time,
and so affirm causality.
After a lifetime
mainlining marathon reruns
her spirit rides my soul,
goading me with a beaded purse while
sotto-voccing snide rejoinders
into the minutest caesura of life.
She will not be silenced.
Yet
this pillar of faith, loitering
in the House of God turns in his pew
to dismiss these lawless thugs
this servant of community, rotating
my tires warns of their
parasitism and lack of insurance
this bumper of a judge-not worshiper, proclaiming
‘BAN THEM’ throughout the church parking lot
but never, no never, our guns
I am silenced.