Len Roberts

Doing the Laundry

Having mastered the wool,
the cotton, the linen
cycles, then permanent
press and the delicate,
I dance
in the laundry room
when you're gone
off to work, our
son in school,
sorting the lights
from the darks
so they will not
run, just enough
bleach to remove
the stains from
the whites, I
whirl
to the spin cycle's
beat, lightly hum
to the dryer's roll,
bringing down
the three wicker baskets
from the three closets
of clothes,
singing a song
on the stairs
where the brass angel
stands and guards
our house, my thumb
rubbed across her face
and down her wings
no matter how full
my hands are,
no matter if I drop
a sock, a shirt, a bra,
wanting to kiss her lips
but finally knowing better
than to go too far,
suspended there a split second
with love overspilling my arms.

"Doing the Laundry" appeared in MANY MOUNTAINS MOVING and THE TROUBLE-MAKING FINCH.

All day cutting wood, thinking

of Han Shan boiling roots
for tea, of my father's head
circled with blue clouds of smoke
from the packs of Lucky Strikes,
wondering how many more years
I'll live, if I'll die as I've
dreamed, face up in a field,
not like my old man, hungover
on a Sunday morning that
suddenly turned into black
wings landing on his chest
and lifting him, a scene
I keep coming back to
even as I cut the wedge
of the black cherry that's
got a good three-foot diameter,
hope it'll fall the way it's
supposed to, trying to gauge
the wind, Han Shan repeating
No way that can be followed
is the way, leaving me with
the chainsaw blowing blue
exhaust because the mix
got a little rich when I got
to the bottom of the can,
wanting to cross myself
above the gravelly snarl
for my long-dead father,
for my living son, but
afraid to take my hand
off the saw, knowing all
too well it could kick
back and take part of my face,
bearing down until the first
creak comes and I scramble
through the bramble path
I'd cut a swath in earlier
to make my escape, every thought
gone except how fast that more-
than-80-foot tree would crash,
how much distance I could put
between me and it, knowing I
shouldn't, even as I do, look back.

"All day cutting wood, thinking" appeared in FIVE POINTS and THE TROUBLE-MAKING FINCH

Contemplating Again
the Jade Chrysanthemum,
or Why the Ancient Chinese
Poets Remained Unmarried

Cast out of the house again,
   Fuming
at my wife, my teenaged son
   who has come
back from his previous life
   barely
disguised as a pig who drops
   underwear,
socks, books, video games
   anywhere,
I keep repeating it's no
   wonder
the ancient Chinese poets
   remained
unmarried during their
   walks
of Ten Thousand Miles
   and river rides
of Ten Thousand Sorrows.
   I try
to imagine Tu Fu watching
   Kung Sung
dance with two swords, teach-
   ing him
the black art of calligraphy
with a wife jabbing him in the
   ribs,
whispering for him to keep his
   eyes
to home, she knows he is not
   contemplating
the jade chrysanthemum or the
   deep
heart of the emerald, those are
   boobs
he's staring at, he's not kidding
   anyone,
or Li Po raising his cracked blue
   jug
to the moon while his cracked boy
   blasts
another monster-rock video three
   rooms
away, or Po-i driven to chew ferns
   because
he couldn't balance the budget,
or Emperor Wu of the Han listening
   to tales
of the spirit world, trying to pro-
   long
his life despite his children's
   tuition
being due, me fingering the list
   of a hundred
chores to do this Spring as I
   watch
smoke rise from the chimney a
   good
half-mile down there, serpent
   coiled
with tail in mouth a few
   seconds
above our house before the
   north wind
from the hill blows it apart.

"Contemplating the Jade Chrysanthemum or Why the Ancient Chinese Poets 
Remained Unmarried" appeared in QUARTERLY WEST and THE TROUBLE-MAKING FINCH.

Acupuncture and Cleansing
at Forty-Eight

No longer eating meat or dairy
   products or refined sugar,
I lie on the acupuncturist's
   mat stuck with twenty
needles and know a little how
Saint Sebastain felt with those
   arrows
piercing him all over, his poster
tacked to the wall before my fourth-
   grade desk
as I bent over the addition and loss,
tried to find and name the five oceans,
   seven continents,
drops of blood with small windows of
   light strung
from each of his wounds, blood like
the blood on my mother's pad the day
   she hung
it before my face and said I was making
   her bleed to death,
blood like my brother's that day
he hung from the spiked barb
at the top of the fence,
a railroad track of stitches gleaming
for years on the soft inside of his arm,
blood like today when Dr. Ming extracts
   a needle and dabs
a speck of red away, one from my eyelid,
   one from my cheek,
the needles trying to open my channels
   of chi,
so I can sleep at night without choking,
so I don't have to fear waking my wife
   hawking the hardened mucus out,
so I don't have to lie there thinking
of those I hate, of those who have died,
   the needles
tapped into the kidney point, where
   memories reside,
tapped into the liver point, where
   poisons collect,
into the feet and hands, the three
   chakra of the chest
that split the body in half, my right
   healthy, my left in pain,
my old friend's betrayal lumped in my
   neck,
my old love walking away thirty years
   ago
stuck in my lower back, father's death,
   mother's
lovelessness lodged in so many parts
It may takes years, Dr. Ming whispers,
   to wash them out,
telling me to breathe deep, to breathe
   hard,
the body is nothing but a map of the
   heart.

"Acupuncture and Cleansing at Forty-Eight" appeared in THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW and in THE TROUBLE-MAKING FINCH.

More Walnuts, Late October

Another fall dusk and I was out
with my son to pick up
the fallen walnuts, holding them to
his nose and
my nose to draw the bitterness in,
smearing the brown stains on our hands,
the same yellow-brown whorls of my father's
   fingertips
those nights on Olmstead Street when he
   poured coins
onto the glittering table, the cigarette
   smoke turning
his pockmarked face blue, covering his
   eyes with clouds
I could not see through while I wrapped
   peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches at the white counter,
dropped them gently into the brown bag
for the long day of flash cards and blue-lined maps
   tomorrow.  And
that day came, and another, another, until
even the rain on the windows and the Christmas
   plays and the nights
of polishing shoes in the cellar blurred and
   finally disappeared, year
after year taking away one of the songs he
   played in those five o'clock gray
evenings, the words fading slowly from Tommy
   Edwards' The Other
Side of the Mountain and Please Love Me Forever
   until only a few
scattered lines remained, a wordless humming
   that floated
over the emptiness, the blank spaces, brought
   me here to the swishing
of my son's feet through freshly fallen leaves,
and the sudden, always unexpected thud of walnuts
dropping from the bare, black boughs.

"More Walnuts" appeared in PARIS REVIEW and DANGEROUS ANGELS.

© All Copyright, 2000, Len Roberts.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.

 
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