Half-Finished Bridge
(from "In Confidence") No important work to do today, I think, as I lie in the hammock one last time before storing it for winter, just a few chores around the yard— deck chairs to be stacked and stashed away and the lawn raked despite the pears and oaks hanging on to their green. Stamped on the pencil I’m using, first snow falling on the half-finished bridge, now as in Bashō’s time, the halfway done possibly a road to nowhere, like the wars we shouldn’t start and the marriages we can’t finish. But he must’ve meant that I find myself amidst the season’s first flurries, leaves collecting at my feet as I rock in the wind, writing to my father that I’m grateful he’s still alive and there’s time to erect the rest of the trestle and walk together to the other side, light snow falling on our backs. One Would Hope
(from "In Confidence") that life’s final moments travel slowly, quieting the blood and brain and leaving time enough to hear one’s choice of music, a plucked lute for the teenage boy driving through a crowded street—barely entering a Baghdad square to gather his father from work, talking to his mother about new friends at school or scoring the winning goal in a soccer game—when the bursts of bullets rang. And for the mother leaning on her son, a lullaby, the one her mother sang to her, and she to him. For both of them, one would hope that life was long enough to hear each other’s song. |
Particle and Wave
(from "Cruising at Sixty to Seventy") particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections… —Erwin Schrodinger You and I were doing what we do best— throwing stones— this time from the side of a country bridge into the reservoir, each arcing under the forces of physics until impact, the consequence spreading in ripples, the stone become invisible in the bottom muck, its presence propagating across the surface, as our presence does to the fabric of something less grand than space-time. Then yours and mine cast together, landing in different spots, their wavelets colliding, passing through each other, cohering in some places, canceling in others, the pattern richer for the two than one… then in our excitement, each of us tossing a handful at once, the pattern becoming richer still, not still at all, moving out into the world— children, siblings, parents, friends, adding up to something grand. Billy and Stephen and Me
(from "Cruising at Sixty to Seventy") —for Billy Collins and Stephen Dunn Billy would tell you about the little flame at the end of his pen while he rocks in the hammock listening to wild turkeys rustle last autumn’s leaves as they run toward and away from the stream. Stephen would tell you he’s like the turkeys, unsure whether he’s coming or going, how that confusion has a certain beauty which can’t be uprooted once it takes hold, and I— I’m the one in the hammock, reading both on this first warm day of spring, coming from one to the other, going back, pausing every few pages to let the words plant themselves, and thinking how hard it was last fall to drill holes in each urn’s composite base so this year’s flowers wouldn’t drown— likely red, white, and pink impatiens again, because habits don’t break easily and those flowers crave shade. Billy would say there’s too much shade in the world, Stephen that we cast too much on ourselves. |