Clean-Up Man

 

In his binoculars, the man thought he saw a circling

of eagles, but  I saw turkey vultures.

 

Something nearby was dead. Eat or be eaten. Once

in Bostwana, we watched a pride scrabbling in

 

a buffalo carcass as the lion and his mate, sated

yet alert for vultures or hyena, lay nearby.

 

This man, to his pride known as the garbage-man

or clean-up man, scavenged left-over food from all

 

our plates. Now appetite and senses dulled, he eats less,

forgets waste, dead meat, the words for vulture,

 

hawk, osprey. When he scans the sky with binoculars,

the only name that remains is eagle, the eagle. . . .

 

 

Flamingo Dream

 

Pink vision with knob-stick legs and bat-wing

feet: listen—the man in the moon can

 

see your neon flash even through

cloud. Parchment beak, feathered down,

 

a careful adagio of time, you tell me

a story of white lilies and blue-green

 

algae, of winter and summer's hard sting.

In your eyes, both the blink of dawn

 

and ember of last light. There poised

on one foot, a shred of desire—

 

windsong, furrowed water,

tropical warp, and a slow stuttered rapture.

 

 

 

Ice Bear Dream

 

What does it mean to have inky skin, guard hairs,

and glassy needles of fur that trick

 

the eye into seeing white, when there is none?

You are a cunning boar, sometimes crashing, yet

 

still graceful as you move from place to place.

Polar creature, Arctic heart, you seem to revel in

 

your accidental beauty. Keen of sight and smell

and touch. Patient enough to wait, then wait

 

longer for what you want most. Merciless with the

weak and always hunting. It’s all about the hunt.

 

The catch satisfies only briefly as does the ice cave

where we sometimes lie in raw embrace.

 

 

 

Cherrywood Dreams

 

Who has it? The four poster cherrywood crib now

considerd unsafe. Meant for newborns and brought

 

from the old country. Her sister maybe? She

remembers lifting this bobble-headed infant sister

 

from it, dangling and dancing the child, then sneaking

her back before discovery and consequences.

 

She remembers, later, the rough collie, legs poling

through its bars, as her doctor uncle hung an IV

 

from one knobbed post and tried to save the dog

fed strychnine-laced meat by the mafioso neighbor.

 

Dead dog. Dead mother and so many who once

lay swaddled there before old enough to walk into

 

wilderness. On this crib, each round knob: a bead

for someone’s beginning. Though painted white

 

for generations, it’s stripped again and lightly-oiled.

Cradle to Mt. Sinai stone and then to cradle again.

 

An outmoded item. But test it. If you, Baby, can spend

a few months in this antique, maybe you’ll flourish.

 

Yes, you the yet-unborn—all these beads count.

May this old crib offer you wild and unsafe dreams.

 

 

A Girl Named Joy

 

This is not a fairy tale: They said her name

was a joke, that she was ugly, fat, bug-eyed,

had poodle hair and dragon teeth.

Said she walked like a duck, and no one

had a grandmother named Pussy.

 

They were twelve. Their teeth were straight.

They flicked long, straight hair off

their faces. Their mothers thought they

were in the bathroom brushing their hair,

but they were sharpening their tongues.

 

So Joy fasted, wore braces, unkinked

her hair. She took ballet and wore contacts.

Then they said she was a copy-cat duck

who’d studied ballet. They said she

had Pussy, and they’d never be her friend.

 

She might have hung herself, but she didn’t.

Instead, she grew, married, grieved

when Pussy died, had children. And to

make sure her story had a fairy tale ending,

she wrote about those girls. . . .