And wasn’t that he
on the bike yesterday
in the heart of downtown’s
rush hour traffic?
I was struck by how thin,
almost frail, he looked
but how you could feel
the charge of his energy
generating out–
a crisp salute to a motorist,
a forceful left hand turn signal–
his whole body vibrating will,
intention.
And he turned
weaving among
the trucks,
construction vans,
honking cars.
Poem 23, June 23
Letter
On Father’s Day,
I read a letter, dated Oct. 3.
My father wrote it to my mother,
whom he had not met in 1945.
He was active duty,
a machine gunner near-casualty
with a new MOS after the
Battle of the Belgium Bulge.
He wrote:
I will try today to answer
the nice letter which I
haven’t received from you.
Hope you are not married
when this reaches you. HA.
I am still fine as can be.
I don’t know what to write
though to you. I have written
the same thing so much
I know you get tired of Reading
Such Stuff.
Wish I could tell you when I will
be home But that must be one of those
military secrets that I have heard
so much about.
He came home in December of 1945.
They married in March of 1946.
If I think about a man in China,
will a man in China
think about me?
If I press my ear to the ground,
if I whisper sweet prayer,
if I roll to the right & bite
into an apricot, will he?
If I tumble into green valleys,
if I lay down in cold creeks,
dry my feet on warm pebbles,
crack open a beer, hold its neck
& drink, will he do the same?
Does he know, I wonder,
what his people have done
to the Earth? That his factories
spew black death, that his people
have killed the Black Rhino,
that their growth is the end?
If I sit on mossy stones
reading books about butterflies,
if I pull a burr from my beard,
cast it into the river,
will it find him?
If I perform an absurdity:
if I stuff French Fries
into my pink underwear,
will he deign to do the same?
If I think about a man in China,
will a man in China
think about me?
