Welcome to the Woodshop

 

Welcome to the Woodshop

Young Kai at the age
when muscles grow quicker than caution
after his worst fuckup ever
shall spend a day in his father’s woodshop
and they shall build an urn for Kai’s future ashes
because dad thinks it’s time
for Kai to think ahead

First step, Kai, is to choose the tree
whose life ended to enclose
your dusty shadow

There’s pine sweet as sugar, eagerly shaped,
easily injured by careless blow

There’s oak so hard your enemies can’t nail
but so resistant your teachers can’t bend

There’s acacia like a pretty dancer
with freckles dancing in curls of grain,
fickle to the chisel

There’s walnut so dark
you want to touch and stroke,
disrespected by fools who seek the blond

There’s redwood the pacifist
bending to gales, outliving fire,
outlasting dinosaurs, thriving in fog

Or there’s bird’s-eye maple
staring back at the life
you’ve sanded and shaped

From seeds to sawdust
what shape your grain, Kai?
What color your soul?

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen

The Museum of Transport

 

The Museum of Transport

Where is the red canoe?
    —Lashed to the roof of the van.

And the van?
    —Overheats. Stalls in Sacramento,
    so kids and I explore a paddlewheel
    riverboat converted to hotel.
 
Kids like it?
    —Meet a man shaky on a cane
    shows us what used to be the engine
    room. Says it was stinky and scorching.
    (“Like our van!” kids say.)
    Now it’s a wine bar.

So the van starts?
    —Not yet so we walk to the
    Railroad Museum. Step into a
    Pullman sleeper car, feel it rocking.
    As a child I rode one like this.
    It rocked.

Then the van starts?
    —Runs, stalls in Placerville.
    Kids and I push it to a shady spot.

What do the kids say?
    —They’re used to it.

Do you get there?
    —Yep. Finnon Lake.

And the red canoe?
    —Patiently waits. Never breaks.
    We untie, bring her down.

Worth it?
    —Sometimes, driving freeways,
    the brain overheats. Here, the antidote.
    We paddle, we glide. Lunar light
    splits the water, smooth as syrup.

Do you camp?
    —Frogs peep. Campfire murmurs:
        —It’s a long road to the moon
        but someday you may travel there.

And the red canoe?
     —May she never be history,
    never museum.

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.
Painting by Janet Katherine MacKay.

Gift

 

Gift

In my head
I hold a mental map
of all the pipes beneath these streets
because I laid them there;

and in my fingers, spark
of all the wires
on those poles
because I strung them there;

and in my muscle,
lift of lumber — stud, joist, rafter
ever after because
I nailed them there.

Child, I built your bone,
your vessel, your nerve.
Now dance, now play.
Now taste your father’s kiss.

…..

First published in Visitant —thank you editor Andrea Janda
Photos from Pixabay

Lion Dreams

 

Lion Dreams

Harvey lurches, never walks.
His body is a puppet strung loose.
Can’t hit a baseball to save his life.
Roger the bully calls him Special Spaz.

I like Harvey, like his questions
that teachers won’t answer.
Questions like “If a lion eats you,
do you enter the lion’s soul? And then
when the lion dreams, do you dream?”

Next time Roger calls him Special Spaz,
Harvey says “We’re each special in our
own weird way. You’re special, too.”
“You calling me weird? Huh? You—”
That’s when I get grade-school famous
for kicking Roger in the nuts. Which
makes me special in that weird way.

A few decades pass to now,
this grassy park overlooking the Pacific
a continent’s width from Atlantic grade school.
I’m sitting on a black metal bench
eating a KFC drumstick. A man
beside me with short white beard,
white hair in a ponytail, tosses popcorn to
strutting doves and says “If you eat chicken,
do you swallow chicken soul?”

I gape, we laugh, we marvel at the meeting,
shake hands. His arm jerks at the elbow,
loose-jointed. Grip firm.
He says “I teach Theology at Long Beach.”
I say “I fix houses. Rehab and restore.”
“You remove the rot. Funny,” he says, “how
we are what we are before we ever know.
All of us, from conception, we are
swallowed by lions.”

…..

First published in Red Wolf Journal—thank you Irene Toh, editor
Photo by “mystery cat” on Unsplash

May 4, 1970

 

May 4, 1970

All our earthly tie-dye rags plus
a mason jar of muddy Mississippi water
because we’ll never see that river again—
you, me, one dog crammed into a Volkswagen
aimed at Vancouver, Canada for permanent exile—
when we hear the news on crackly AM radio:
Kent State. Four dead.

A truck stop, Little America.
As we walk in, we see jaws clench.
Tough crowd. Could be my T-shirt—
    STAY HEALTHY
    AVOID DRAFTS
Waitress—cowgirl boots, red white and blue
sash on her neck—pours us coffee, two cups.
“I’m so sorry,” she says and glares
at a trucker who is flipping us off.
You add cream, and it curdles. Spoiled.
Waitress without asking dumps your cup,
brings another and fresh cream.
“My bad,” she says. “Shit. Ohio.
I’m so upset. Sorry.”

Just that, fresh cream. A little warmth
from a waitress who is doing her job.
You touch my hand. “We can’t go,” you say.

Future can change so fast. Ours,
steering east, Saint Lou, re-dipping our toes
along the cobblestone levee among
seagulls and cigarette butts as we pour
the mason jar back home.  

Four dead. We stay.
In kindness, we work for them.
And that waitress.

Note: On May 4, l970 the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University anti-war demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine students.

…..

First published in Moss Piglet. Thank you editor John Bloner

Coming Out of Retirement, Age 70

 

Coming Out of Retirement, Age 70

A milestone
like re-losing my virginity
as I crawl under a deck
among spore-puffing dirt,
as duff prickles my navel
as I jack up a beam, then pound and pry
with unsure muscles to remove a rotten post,
install another, then lower the jack again.

Humping toward me over curling fern,
a woolly bear caterpillar who knows inborn
of construction, of transformation,
who seems to say —

Welcome back to funky earth,
to sawdust in nostrils,
to splinters under fingernails,
to blood-seeping scratches
    discovered in the shower.

Welcome back to a world
built better by your body.

…..

First published in Verse-Virtual. Thank you editor James Lewis
Photo by Micha L Rieser

The La-la of Life

 

The La-la of Life

Grandson,
unlike most of humanity
enjoys the sound of my singing,
so together we make up songs.

He with green eyes, jug ears
and the occasional goofy smile
is an honest audience, a toothless critic
who enjoys lengthy vowel sounds:
    ooo ooobie  
and
    gree-een eyes, green eyes,
    gree-een eyes, green.
He frowns upon hard consonants.

Did Beethoven sing to babies?
Did Buddha? He shoulda.

I compose, grandson edits,
new melodies fill the room.
Don’t listen.

…..

First published in Verse-Virtual —Thank you editor James Lewis
The photo: yeah, that’s me in 2007. The grandson is now driving a car.

Airport, Burlington Vermont

 

Airport, Burlington Vermont

Two men in T-shirts are sun-roughened,
muscular in the non-gym way.
They know physical work.

On the window glass the older man
with smudgy finger sketches a map
from memory. He speaks of a trickling spring,
a field cleared by hand, a fence of stone.
A grandma who swore she was a virgin,
a grandpa who swore she was not.
Twin graves on a hill. Sold.

The younger man says, "That little farm,
every time I set foot on it, I felt hugged."
Embarrassed, they each look away to the tarmac
where jets are rolling for Newark. Chicago.
Some damn city. Now boarding.

…..

First published in Califragile—thank you editor Wren Tuatha
Photo by Dan Petit

If I see one more fucking Zen poem

 

If I see one more fucking Zen poem

I will scream.
Enough with the footprints in moss,
the happy crickets.

I’m repairing a burst water pipe
next to a Buddha statue
on a McMansion lawn
in a soppy hole I’ve dug  
as twilight darkens
while the client frets at my hourly expense,
tells me my fee is “unconscionable,”
he a psychoanalyst whose fee, no doubt,
has conscience.

The rising moon is my lover’s breast
with shadowy crater her nipple,
those night clouds her fragrance,
the winking jet my desire,
the meteor my sperm.
As I solder copper pipe, boots in mud,
in this labor in my anger
I am strangely happy.

…..

First published in Anti-Heroin Chic—thank you James Diaz, editor

Extra Large 200th Birthday

 

Extra Large 200th Birthday

Let’s gather my children,
their partners, their offspring—
shades of hair, skin, eyes, a palette of DNA
mixing cultures and continents.

Let’s celebrate first by repairing the deck,
a carpenter’s holiday
prying, cutting, screwing until suddenly
I trip on the crowbar and
I’m falling in front of everybody
fortunately sideways onto soft grass.
Thunk.
I’m fine, slightly bruised,
dug a divot in the lawn and
everyone now reminded that 70 is old age,
judgement possibly addled.
They say I took fetal position on the way down,
good instinct, a carpenter’s regression.

Family tradition: a pie not a cake.
Gift of a sweater vest, size Extra Large.
I’m a man of medium build, but always
in their eyes Extra Large.

One candle, only one
because 70 would melt the pie
and counting physical body years
misses the point. We are spirit
expanding as ripples in a pond
beyond the flesh. Add up our ages.
My years plus children plus grandchildren
total exactly 200 years old this day.
I’m spreading, not dying.
Happy birthday to us.

…..

First published in Poetry Breakfast—thank you editor Kay Kestner
Photo by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

Note: my 200th birthday was August 19, 2017. Today — August 19, 2024 — we are 256 years old.