NEW ENCOUNTERS

Her smile is suddenly there, a smirk at the window
of the jeep. "I want ice," she says; "bring me ice."
And with a grimace half way between threat and hug
she turns away, grabs her barrow and returns
to a hot afternoon of filling road holes with pebbles.

We quickly drive on with a nervous glance back
at what seems a dragon stationed along the route home,
a dark dragon with sweat dropping from her eyes.
All afternoon I wonder if she is there, circling
and full of intruding threats and possibilities.

After a restless night, an early morning, a list
of errands and supplies for island explorations,
we pack a cooler with the last ice from the house
and set out, knowing that somewhere along the road
we'll face the power of this dragon's gutturals.

And, yes, as we slow at a curve, she is there.
"I want ice," she says; "I want...." And before the smirk
is fully there, I thrust the great bag of ice her way
and hold my breath as she pauses to look at it,
to look at me and lift a piece of ice and laugh.

It's a real laugh now, spreading around broken edges
of her face, bludgeoned nose, furrowed brow
that suggests the great swinging face
in old paintings of the dragon who lived with Lilith —
real laughter, shared, our eyes touching across ice.

We hear a little of her past, survival on the streets,
the shade she shares with homeless children,
the anger she struts at annual parades, when ladies
turn away and shake their heads in disapproval;
yet all she want is a little ice... and maybe a smile.

She has the sharpest knife on the island, one
that cuts through anything, including the hardest ice;
but she's a friend who wears hope on a ragged shirt
above a swollen belly: "RESPECT" it says in faded letters;
"RESPECT" in hope bright as the smile she shares.

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A DIVA'S ROLE

It isn't often I get to hear you sing;
you play a role in Rome or with your ex;
and I'm left here to write these lines alone,
amused by the new brunette who still can smile,
who doesn't have to flaunt a tight little ass
as she takes an order for beer and burger
and glances at the notes I've jotted here,
these notes I try to ignore because I know
you'll never see them even if you get
the book I'll send, again, knowing it's vain,
an empty gesture, no way to attract attention,
not from you, whatever role you play.

I heard your voice while driving past the fair,
the big one on the edge of town, with cars
and horses waiting for a run, and traffic
so heavy in all directions I never heard
whether it was you or just another diva
spilling her passions for the world to hear
she got the role that everyone wanted
and now everything else can be kicked aside,
discarded, the way you discard lovers and me,
though that, you said, was just a mistake: "Never,"
you said, and laughed; and I had to admit a poet
with a diva was a little hard to imagine.

What role are you playing now? It's getting late,
and I find myself watching the new brunette
at the bar treat me like a grandfatherly sort.
She throws me a wink as the guy to my right leans
and tries to make arrangements for after work.
Have you taken a new lover this season? Do you sing?
You haven't made the pages of the Times?
There's another role in that, the fallen one,
the one who lost her way, who only had
a grazing brush with fame, who wouldn't care
that she lingers in memory, here and there,
if only in the notes I made during lunch.

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LAUGHTER, TEARS, AND SIGHS

Pretty girls turned away when asked to dance
and wandered across the room with a swish of skirts
and an echo of laughter at which I could only sigh.

And after the dance, when Miss Craig drove us home,
couples would pile in the back of her waddling car
and I'd climb in front and ask why Virgil was still assigned.

"Surely," I said, while trying to hear what was going on
in the back seat, "there's Latin poetry with a bit more power,"
something, I thought, about a guy left out by laughter.

Exclusion from such moments continued for years
of wandering, until I looked around and found pretty girls
dropping by the way in a panic of desertion.

Now I'm old and most of them are gone — and laughter
comes more easily as I sit and share my tale and regret
that I had wanted to laugh, to put them down.

It took a long while to learn to let a tear drop;
there may have been a welling but no tear, nothing to mop;
it was not something, my father said, that a man did.

And now I'm old and it's still difficult. Oh, sure, a gasp
and dampness swells the eye when another friend dies
or sinks into arms of despair or forgetfulness.

But I no longer mind if another watches in surprise
as a tear runs down my cheek and drops on a letter
I grabbed to read while waiting for lunch at the diner.

The world has been too full of terror and horror,
not just what others have done but what we have done,
the dead we've left behind, the spread of hate and poison....

It's difficult for tears to balance laughter when
a bitter laugh so easily becomes a tear,
and tears will wash the world, wash it out and away.

She's old and limps and holds to the rail as she goes down
and glances, without a smile, at my fancy cane,
as I climb up, holding with a tremble to the other rail.

I sigh and nod, she sighs and nods, with no smile.
But there..., was it a sound? From her? From me?
She drops her eyes down steps to slippery stones.

I'm at the top, looking down, knowing right then
she'll become an image in a poem, at least a sketch
before the evening sun goes down, perhaps before

She's home again, safely, as I'll be when I write
whatever words will hold that moment, that sigh
when, in the eye of another, one hears one's own sigh.

She's dark and dour, ignored by an aging daughter,
who rushes on ahead, who doesn't see the fallen eye
or hear the sigh that's left for us to interchange.

A friend will read these lines and say, "I hear it now,
you've dug a trench and thrown yourself in muck.
That's why you smear mud across your sheets."

That's why I'd like to laugh or cry, at least one tear,
and push myself into a chair and sigh at what
climbs over the crest and drops into emptiness.

"An unresolved investment," that same friend says;
"it's what you gather to make another pile of words,"
and everyone sighs or laughs with bitterness.

I'll never know if I could have dropped a tear;
I'd like to say I did, but of course I didn't, not then;
and now, except for anguish at another's pain, it's a laugh.

A soprano said on a Met broadcast the other afternoon
that it's all a matter of technique, not going mad,
but making an audience feel an echo of madness.

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BURNING CHURCH

Our hopes fall faster than rain on an afternoon
when flames, we're told, are rising above the church.
I try to concentrate, to read words,
to anchor myself right here, right now, and wait
for the anorexic waitress to bring a salad.
But the fat guy to my left groans loudly
about making no money and mumbles as mustard
slips down his chin and a whiff of ash stains the air.

"So the church is still burning," she sighs and splashes
a mug and clucks and makes a useless swipe.
I pull my scarf tighter and reopen the book
to make a note about the fat guy who coughs
and asks of no one in particular which church burns
though no one answers as the waitress pushes
down the counter refilling coffee mugs
and I continue to scratch notes in the margin.

A week or so later, the same waitress pauses
to let me finish a line of casual notes
before she says, "It's mostly gone, you know;
but the neighborhood still stinks." She has to mean
the church just over the hill, now boarded up
and looking as if whatever presence it had
has passed into the dust of its old graveyard.
She brings a fresh mug that's full of steam.

The fat guy's not here today. The place is quiet
as my pen hovers over the margins of the book
and reaches back to the notes I made before,
when the church was burning and the fat guy coughed.
The waitress hovers and finally says, "His son
stopped by to say he wouldn't be in for a while."
She pauses and sniffs the air and moves away,
a ready pot in her hand and distant eyes.

A month later and the church is still boarded;
even gravestones have toppled to the mud.
I had almost forgot the burning day when by chance
I open a book of travels through central Asia
and find notes and stains of coffee and remember
with a sudden heaviness the fat guy coughing.
He's never mentioned at the diner, and something
is lost, in spite of his vulgarity.

"You know," she says over the rush of early morning,
"I went up there before they boarded and saw
through a missing window a tray of communion glass,
unbroken and full of soot." She takes my mug
without asking and fills it with heat and smiles
as I suddenly know the rhythms and the shape
I'll give this little world just over the hill
from where a burnt church still raises a stink.

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NEW ENCOUNTERS

Emelda

A Diva's Role

Laughter, Tears, and Sighs

Burning Church