Several of the poems that follow are collected in my chapbook,
Unwanted memories, it is hard to detect
Sometimes we know they've found a new passage:
Long after the sun comes out,
MAKING CHANGE, from Argonne House Press.
under the shingles of wakefulness,
across the beams and joists of the buried past.
Seeking their own level, these images
puddle in hidden corners, then filter
through the wallboards and bead
on the underside of door sills and chandeliers.
their sources. The roofers are puzzled.
We put out pots and wide-mouthed jars
--all the while feeling guilty, exposed--
and await the punishing sound
of the next drip, the piece of the past
that collects with the others but takes no shape.
a darkening patch of ceiling calls us
to stand below, fixes us, our hands cupped
to catch in a parody of prayer.
and the drips subside,
shadows remain, streaks of cloud
on the stuccoed surfaces, resistant
both to paint and forced good cheer.
Tenacious as mildew or mold,
these ghostly arrivals mock us with traces
of what we can almost remember, almost deny.
from Making Change (c) 2001, originally published in Crab Creek Review.
We are rooted here in the profound momentum
--from Making Change (c) 2001. Originally published in Tampa Review
Just three months after he died,
Somewhere up there,
Though he knew I was fifty-two
We both knew that the dull long haul
Now he was dead and gone and back,
He told me he’d always been proud
He was looking to take chances,
Yes, oh yes, I said, --but he was gone.
from Making Change (c) 2001, originally published in Poetry Motel
It's as if squares of sky
from Making Change (c) 2001, originally published in WordWrights
Making change is nature's way
When you hand over
For some, change is coin,
When you change the tire,
And when you change your mind, well,
Hoard them,
from Making Change (c) 2001
And in Toledo,
In scores of churches and cathedrals
from Making Change (c) 2001
The squeak and crunch of dry snowfall,
Cross-country stalkers on narrow rails,
The strange near-silences
The cowering branches in sleeves of snow,
The coffee and burning wood,
The ache of heavily-booted legs,
The white crests probing the gray-white clouds,
f
CROSSING THE CHESAPEAKE IN WINTER
To see it like this,
Your tires follow the vanishing arch
As you reach mid-bay
my father came back all snappy and tart
in a trim fedora and houndstooth jacket.
He was driving a white De Soto ragtop
and flashing money he'd won at the track.
a waiting room clerk
had sent him in for restyling
and smuggled him back to 1948.
and not the six-year old Long Island kid
he’d sometimes take fishing,
we talked about whether or not
he should stay with Mom,
add my brother to the household,
settle for weight upon weight
of respectable forty-hour weeks,
bland business suits, commutes,
dumb bosses, budgets, and canasta.
had played out flat and mean,
that he'd flee to joyless dreams
that would silence our cries: "he’s sacked
out on the couch again," we’d say.
He snoozed through decades, half-waking
when we’d taken care of this or that without him.
assertive and clear-eyed,
pursuing his hungers into the world,
suggesting that only a buffing up
had been needed all the time --
or perhaps a different life.
about how I’d turned out,
didn't know why he'd never said so,
and that even though he had regrets
about his seasons of oblivion,
he wasn’t going to wallow in the future
now that he was back in action.
to try out everything he could,
because if there was one thing he had learned
it was that you could just blink or doze
for a moment and the whole damn thing was over.
And then he was off to check out
some beachfront property. Did I want in?
had drifted down to kiss
each home along the hillsides,
as if each of these modest dwellings
had broad courtyard pools,
of the same pale blue
or enormous sky-blue tables
awaiting picnics.
From mountain overlooks
or low-flying planes
these azure rectangles invite
delight
until one learns
that all this riot of blue
is temporary plastic
sheeting where roofs had been
before the hurricane.
when you're not looking,
when you're counting on
(not up) that old tie
that old joke that old recipe
to see you through
and it won't.
of keeping you sharp,
unspoiled, unrelaxed.
what's higher than the price,
making change is what
the seller must do
to make you even.
bright medallions of the realm,
maybe of some intrinsic worth
unlike the promissory paper
that you bring into the store
to get change for the parking meter
(change is measured time).
you actually replace it with another --
same with the lightbulb,
same with the tv channel.
you're trading in the currency of thought.
You feed some vapid
long-green legal tender
into the hungry slot
and what goes ka-chinging
at the bottom of the tray
are shiny little spendable ideas.
they may be the exact change needed at life's tollbooths
or redeemed at casino windows
for the self-worth you arrived with,
more or less, when you came in.
no one is praying,
no melodies of Sephardim
echo in the arches.
Dodging purse-snatchers in Seville,
we lost our way three times
before finding the unmarked building
named on the dog-eared guidebook.
The doors were closed to our questions.
we had to wonder at the name:
Synagogue of Santa Maria la Blanca.
We learned of its various uses
as arsenal and warehouse
but doubted the truth of the claim
that it had been refurbished
to "its former glory."
No matter how well restored
the Moorish plaster cast
of capitals, the gilded shells
upon four pendentives
that hold the central chapel dome;
no matter that in the Synagogue
of the Transito, Samuel Levi,
"treasurer and friend of Pedro the Cruel,"
once voiced the Hebrew still held
today in friezes and turned his head
away, perhaps, from the women's galleries --
these places are at best museums.
the hum of worship greets the visitor
and sounds the spirit of a culture,
but in these synagogues
the voices of the guides rehearse
some dusty facts; the racks
of postcards spin; the Jews
of Spain who didn't burn
remain long silent.
the roof-racks loaded high,
the approach to a bare place in a barren season.
the firewood buried under the fresh snow,
the three rough rooms of knotty pine.
tracks of deer and fox,
bird-hops divided by tailfeather slashes.
and the far, far leafless view,
the swell of hollow and hill.
the brook running hide-and-seek
under the delicate capes of ice.
the puddles in entranceways,
the sour steam of wet wool.
the deep scale gripping the lungs,
the squint of light-bludgeoned eyes.
the footprints we try not to plant,
the clean wordlessness of winter woods.
originally published in The Willamette Journal
To: Philip K. Jason's Home Page; PJason's Vita
like the spine of a lover's back,
the broad bay seems a black and white
aerial photo of farmland, silver-tipped,
the fences and walls exchanged
for the zig-zag gaps in the heaving ice,
the fields in rhomboid and trapezoid
sheets that subdue the struggling waves.
Oh what a weight this winter has placed
on this frail and fecund sea.
the bay in its glacial mask,
makes one image the world of mussel and crab
as a place of secret secretions:
crystal, claw, and shell. --And ice
as the skeletal house of salt and blood.
raised by fog-kissed buttresses
against which ice-fields nuzzle and split,
and deep in your fingers' flesh
the steering wheel winces
as the bridge cushions the ice
that is traveling somewhere too.
the channels of open water widen;
scattering ice-slabs mirror
the bleachy clouds on a darkening sky.
Below, a lone gull captains his raft of ice
beyond, the horns of distant ships
blast out their names on the frosted air.
originally published in Chesapeake Country Life
