by JS Gilbert
Only what will serve
her well. What otherwise
she may never see.
Cheese puffs implode
in your mouth. Clean-sheet
day is luxurious.
First principles, simple
machines, Newton’s
First Law.
Planets don’t twinkle. Some
fronds curl when stroked.
I love you.
Every morning we feed the birds.
I vowed to write this poem before
allowing myself a nap in the middle
seat squozen between my wife and
an inattentive father seated just
behind his daughter who may as well
have been left at Disneyworld where
princesses stand guard behind topiaries
and garbage cans and other princesses
to emerge in case of indifference
to curtsy and wave and wink
at this little girl peeking between
the seats to make damn sure she
is seen and known and loved which
is usually my job but
I had a poem to write, and a nap to take.
before your son leaves for college
take him for a walk along the beach.
Stay by his side without holding his
hand. As you avoid drift woods
and tides and fly-clouded corpses, drift
away and let his pace outpace yours.
Step in his footprints. Notice that his
feet have outgrown yours. Notice that
your stride can match his stride.
Notice that it’s not worth the effort.
i meant to write this yesterday
as space and time allowed
but my son came down in his baseball cap
and asked to watch a show
we’re trapped inside this iso home
together and alone
passing time adjacently
as he just gets more grown
so while my craft is withering
and needs attentive care
i’m not about to let this chance
pass by me
unaware
I don’t know
what
angelic aerodynamics were involved
in sending Christ from his Father’s
right hand to Mary’s womb
but when my son took
off toward his grandparents at
140 knots my heart leapt
to follow with stubby wings
which floundered
in his wake and I
wasn’t even sending him
to be crucified
only coddled by flight
attendants who knew
exactly who
he was.
In the water park they gather
beneath its tilting lip,
their bodies sway with waves
held high in the cauldron perched above
their heads, swinging further deeper drip by drip
until gravity overtakes anxiety
falls, crashes against hunched shoulders
or upturned faces and just misses the feet
of the boy afraid of.
But in the future he crafts a future
from the backseat after school
knowing someday our feetprints will shape
the face of Mars which takes
a lot of water and a lot of air
that someone will have to carry
in maybe a big bucket like at the park
carried by bigger rockets but the air
might escape so the bucket will need a lid.
I cannot draw
but I did
my best to gild
the functional canvas of
his
field-trip lunch sacks
with apple trees and
iron gates and
atoms and books.
(It was the only way
I could be
there and anyway
PB&J
is boring enough.)
The truth wasn’t,
though.
Needed neither apples nor atoms
to make it
any more
there
but we can’t help
ourselves with
such scintillating sin.
(We save our
sharpest
crayons for the
cleanest
lines of our
deepest
fears.)
Still
I wanted to draw
that Sunday,
as someone stood
in your stead,
the way you were:
hands raised in blessing
bouncing on your feet
so willing to
love
us and me and them and
him
as God so
loved
the world
with, surely, angels
at your side and behind
and around.
But I could only
see a darkness
billow from
organ pipes
to claim your shadow,
sneak from
under choir robes
wrap your wrists
(again)
in chains and
the laughter couldn’t’ve
been yours because you
were screaming
as its claws sunk beneath
your soul.
So instead
I wept
because I have such trouble
drawing hands.
I imagine archaeologists to be a rugged lot. Thick-soled boots like the treads of earth-movers, caked in ancient and illuminating grime. Wide brims and handkerchiefs and mirrored sunglasses to guard against a bully-sun cracking its knuckles. Scrapes and bruises; dehydration and sunburns; fingertips raw, knees creaking, eyes gritty and red.
And pockets. Lots of pockets.
I’m not ill-prepared in my bathrobe; just exploring a different terrain. A bathrobe, because stumbling in the dark for pants will wake her. Slipperless feet so that I can follow the contours of the carpet with my toes, in the dark. Or possibly because I’ve misplaced my slippers. A mug of coffee to keep my senses warm and alert.
My bathrobe has two pockets. I don’t know what they’re for.
The stairs lead downward, walls low and close. The evidence is sparse: faint outlines of shoe prints, scuff marks, crumbs clinging to the soles of my feet. They were here, quick and raucous.
There is an eyeball on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Disturbing in any light, and unexpected. I give it a scientific nudge with my toe, and it glows. Red, blue, green, red, blue, green. It fades, leaving a purple globe in my vision. Who were they, to have this? And to what purpose?
The pupil wobbles and settles. It does not follow.
Their civilization is spread across the floor, shattered. Or perhaps incomplete. Small, colorful bits of plastic are arranged in familiar shapes. I see buildings and vehicles with wheels and wings, and tiny figures scaled to use them. A village? A city? The design is haphazard, as though it hadn’t been planned, but discovered.
I see fluorescent domes, and devices that could be guns or drills or experimental probes. Or death rays. A military installation? This appears to be an airstrip, or landing pad. The headless bodies surrounded by wreckage certainly indicate a conflict.
I can’t explain the tentacles.
I do know there was laughter. Sudden bursts of joy punctuating the soft murmur of voices. There was discussion, and the rising inflection of questions. Shuffling and thumping, and an occasional scuffle. A companionable society that smelled strongly of feet.
But I can’t know the details; haven’t known for a while. I used to know everything. When he woke and slept, what he ate and when. What he wore, and what he learned. Who was there, what they said, what they did. What the tentacles were for.
He didn’t belong to me, but had been placed within my care. He needed.
Now there are swaths of hidden time. Where I am not, and so cannot see. A society to which I had belonged, but has grown beyond my grasp. Vast, and bright, and wonderful.
All I have are clues. Fading trails and bread crumbs, shards covered in dust. Remnants of history clouded by free will and perpetual motion. My knees crack and my joints ache. Sometimes I am burned.
I don’t have enough pockets.
(Originally posted on Total Depravity.)
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.
