Each Choir had 6,666 Legions,
with 6,666 angels in each of these
and I knew as sure as the fluorescent light
in that second grade class kept blinking
that I had been one of them, still was, but sent
to Earth because of some unforgivable sin,
that all I had to do was lift the window
and I could soar out onto Ontario Street, wings
erupting from my shoulders, the white shirt
tearing off, the school's striped tie
and gray trousers floating away, and I knew
   I had fire
in my tongue, my right hand filled with lightning,
that Sister Maria must have seen it but decided
to keep quiet so the others wouldn't bow
   down to me and lose their places
as we Pledged Allegiance and recited
   the Commandments, the Mysteries,
the invisible wings on my either side telling me
   again 
my true father was not a road man for the Golden 
   Eagle bread company,
my mother not a textile stitcher who danced
   nights with drunks at Boney's, 
knowing I could soar above the blue Earth, up  
   into the darkness
where my brother did not walk alleys calling
   for rags,
that dogs howled when I walked by because
   they sensed
the fire in my body, that the dates of my birth,
   3/13/50
added up to the magical number of 66
and gave me power over seasons and planets, able
   to make
Margaret Blake throw up because she tripped me, 
giving Ronny Michaels the hiccups for shoving
   me down the stairs,
sure even then I would ascend again some day,
despite my heavy body, the warts on my hands,
and I would become who I was, and I would know 
   my real name.

The Sparrow and the 
Winter's Nest of Snow

Long winter day of cutting wood, old cherry trees
strangled by poison ivy, one a good three foot thick,
the trunk set aside for the lumber mill, the rest
cut up and stacked while I thought
of my distant son in his distant room,
of the full-page poems he sends in the mail,
   The winter's nest of snow 
scribbled in his first-grade red and yellow
   and blue letters,
and the picture with each one,
huge oak trees and tiny daisies, always 
   the sun in a blue sky.
And I remembered my father's drawings
   before he died,
how the sparrow came into each sketch,
sometimes on an arcing branch,
sometimes on a gutter,
the scruffy brown feathers and yellow-orange beak,
the tiny claws clasping whatever it was on,
sparrow with its small song,
sparrow indistinguishable from the winter's brown weeds,
sparrow of the mind of my father that has flown
   into darkness,
sparrow above the glass of Schaefer's, the pack of Luckies,
sparrow of the blackened heart and short distance flight,       
   sparrow of 47 years and a mad wife. 
Sparrow darting now over my buzzing saw and bent head,
   making me look up
at the steel sky, upstate New York winter wind
   whipping my eyes, 
poor, stupid sparrow in this five below,
searching for the winter's nest of snow,
sparrow stumbling down the streets of Cohoes
   mumbling Irene, Marjorie, Irene,
sparrow pulling out the racks of doughnuts, cakes
   and pies
those early mornings of the Golden Eagle bread route,
taking the iced curves in the road at seventy miles,
pock-marked, skinny, malarial-ridden, drunken sparrow,
I follow you a few seconds in this light, then let you go. 

Twenty-six years dead 
and still you stir 
my sleep, wake
me four a.m.s
the entire week
before your final date,
point me to sit
and learn the assigned
words, commit
to memory the capitals
and states,

           the value of x
always bringing you
hovering, close, your
beer breath in my breath,
clouds of Lucky Strike
smoke bluing your face
as you bent to trace
the known and unknown,
as though 
         that might explain
why the woman had left
or the other son's death,
how you had come to weigh
105 beer-soaked pounds at
the end, a stick figure 
of a man bent over a sheet  
of scratchings you tried
desperately to show me
made some kind of sense,
whispering in that hushed
voice I hear as clearly
now as I did then
to pay attention
to the equal sign,
that what is given
is given is given.