Your birthday’s come around again, and I

can think of nothing  but those 33s

collecting dust behind the stairs.  Fading,

their cardboard jackets hold a thousand ghosts—

the brooding bands, standing with arms crossed

in front of brick walls or railroad tracks

that needle-off to infinity; moonscapes

in psychedelic reds, blues, and black;

the denim jackets, the moused hair, the scowls,

the desert landscapes.  They wait in the silence cast

by all the years.  And I wish I could rise

above the clouds, above this disc of stars

and dust, and gently lift the needle up

and back.  I’d let it slip into the groove,

that first song yawning out a sunrise,

the vinyl night spinning down to nothing.

And every time, before that last track ends,

I’d lift the needle yet again, content

to hear these same old songs, desperate

to avoid the hiss before it plays, or after.

 

 

 

This summer, cicadas choir in every tree,

a key-shop drone that fills the molten fields

of corn, while your Dad and I drink beer

on the patio and talk about the heat,

the war, the Red Sox.  The house is new, and you

play beneath our table, smeared with sunscreen

and draped in arabesques of light and shadow.

Cicadas climb the nearby goldenrod,

like blood-eyed bullets ticking toward the sun

in slow-motion, and I can’t help but think

that when they come again, you’ll be in college.

I wonder what to tell the future you.

The usual, of course: I wish you health,

success, and happiness.  But we in the past,

we’re always trying to tell you something.

Like people at the station, we wave and shout

as the train pulls away—“Don’t forget

to wear your hat and sweater!  Be safe, call home!”

And as you pick up speed, we turn for our cars

and draw our coats against the cold, hoping

you’ve heard.  Calum, this all goes so fast.

 

 

 

Of course.  Equations float like jellyfish

Beneath the surface of his thoughts, cold blooms

Half-seen through the lap and wash of daily life.

He makes a left on Central into green

 

Cathedrals of oak—cicada thrum

An endless quantum murmur—and hears the swish

Of tires on pavement.  But all he sees

Are fractals, sines, and cosines, those tangled shapes

 

Beneath the real, unnumbered world.  Unseen

Through tinted glass, he taps the wheel and drapes

His arm across the headrest still perfumed

By his ex-wife’s hair.  He changes the CD

And wonders where she is as sunlight knifes

The clouds in patterns too complex to sum.

 

Jonathan Edwards and the Wasp

 

Like cast iron darts fletched with gold,

wasps shred the August air

as they build their paper palace

against the cornice.  From the stairs,

 

it seems a gibbous moon, pale

and cool, has risen in the house

and changes all our fortunes.

The forenoon wanes.  I think to douse

 

the whole bedamnéd thing with oil

then watch the roiling flames consume

that tiny heaven.  The wasps,

like rebel angels illumed

 

by fire, would plunge in sooty streaks

below.  I’d wreak this hell

but for the house that holds

both innocent and infidel.