Something Like the Attic, and: Teaching English in the Biology Lab, and: Scattering, and: Snickering Like the Pharisees

Something Like the Attic

I'm up, as always, before the first lightWith the dark birds I can't identify,The ones that crowd our maple like a mob.5:05, July, like the time in redOn the clock radio when I awokeFor the 6:15 to 3 shift at HeinzWhere I worked for two summers, shoveling,For weeks, dried beans that spilled from broken bagsIn boxcars, cleaning up while Funovitz,The forklift man, parked on the dock to smokeBecause his seniority had earned it.I looked for rats as I filled the short tubs,Inhaling the white dust inside somethingLike the attic where my father would sleepTo ready himself for night shift, his sheetsStained so often by sweat they turned yellow,My mother said, "As if he pissed the bed."Weekends, he slept with her on the pull-outIn the middle room of three we rented,Lying on the white sheets my mother ironed,On the pillowcases with pink rosesI sometimes saw before my mother slid Shut the heavy, Saturday evening door,The thick panel that stayed open all week,My mother always awake, no matterHow early I rose, even in the dark,The attic closed against the stink of sleepAnd sweat, my mother saying "Listen now,"Turning me toward the brown birds that nestedOn our windowsills, the ones we could hearUntil the traffic to Pittsburgh thickened,Backed up from the stoplight three blocks away,Starting to build a neighborhood of hornsAnd engines in the blue air of morning.

Teaching English in the Biology Lab

The sea life chart is a propFor Melville, the mounted catA visual aid for Poe.Pigs and rabbits, unborn, sitOn shelves like family photosWhile everybody opensTheir textbooks to DickinsonAnd Whitman, Wharton and Crane.

Tenth grade is the year for frogsDissected, worms halved and pinned.It's the year of seeing lifeIn scrapings from post-lunch teethAnd finding a place to parkTo touch an undressed body. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, a weekWith the Harlem Renaissance.Late in the year, each morning,They look at muscles with joy,They learn the layers of skinWhere pleasure and pain begin.

When the first new driver dies,A boy gone to recklessness,The fetuses swim in jarsAs if they might still be born.When we switch to Salinger,The skull atop the desk waitsAs if I can throw my voice,As if it's about to speak.

Scattering

From six to ten pounds, our cremainsWill weigh, the visible fragmentsWhite or gray, the largest piecesGround to sand-size for discretionAnd the ease of our scattering.

Not comforting, this summary,But better, pre-need, than the oneDescribing decompositionBy traditional burial.

Better yet, post-burning optionsCarry romance for the living— Etched keepsake urns, ash-speckled cards,Jewelry that carries cremainsNear the wrists, the throat, and the heart.

Carry ceremony, as well—Scatterings at sea, in meadows,Off cliffs or the small balconiesOf the deads' high-rise apartments,

Because height, most often, is craved—From airplanes, from helicoptersAnd hot-air balloons, even fromThe raised barrel of a shotgunTo ensure a high arc of dust.

And lately, fireworks, with music,Those ashes blown into rainbowsTo ooohs and aaahs from the living,Bringing to mind what's new, the launch

Into space, the years-long orbitUntil small meteors of ashPlummet again into burning.And now there are those who will payFor lift-off to the moon and Mars,

The beautiful, infinite rideBeyond solar system borders,Escaping, they convince themselves,The great scenario of ash,

How the Earth, in a billion years,Will become a planet of dust;How, finally, it will spiralInto the huge, expanding sun,Which, while dying, will scatter Earth As if it needed to renderAll of our cremains to swirlingIn eternal...