How It Is (Later), and: I Thought, and: Needs

How It Is (Later)

“Something is singing in the grass,”I wrote — oh, years ago — in a poemthat left unsaid what it was that sang.

The grass now is parched, the white horsein the poem has gone to green pastures,yet something is singing still by my window.

Some words keep to shadows or slip offin a bank of clouds, leavingbut traces of themselves; some, we chisel

into stone slabs to anchor our deadamong the generations, and yet the dead returnat evening with their tales and consolations

and whisper us to sleep like a lullaby.We wake to the mourning dove’s soft call,the rooster’s exultations to the sun,

each singing what was given it to sing,timeless, separate from our dominion,but of a world in which we share

a rising chorus of ambiguous songs,even as we enter another day of our livesin the loneliness of how it is.

I Thought

for Bill Broder

I thought I had traveled beyond the rangeof the human eye or the ear’s measure

but no, there was my house, standingwhere it always stood, and the pot of red geraniums

I thought I would find something wondrousand strange that I had never seen

but no, it was the bird-lady roundingthe corner with her sack of stale loaves

I thought when I opened my door and called“Is anyone home?” I heard

a voice I faintly recognizedor remembered from a dream I had

but no, it was only the old implacabledin of silence waiting for me to enter

and replenish its empty bowl

Needs

My mother planned for her funeralas if it were a polar expedition,and she paid cash in hand, that no onecould say of her that she was beholden.

Jobbed out for housework at the age of eleven,she was schooled in serving the needs of others,although it brought a stiffness to her heartand a tongue that could hone words to an edge.

She lived alone, twice widowed, for fifty years,cleaning one room a day, then starting overuntil the day she reached up from her ladderand found a shadow into which she fell.

And when it came time to leave forevershe wore the gown she chose, and her music,“Over the Rainbow,” played softly in the viewing room.And there were flowers and wreaths — one bound

with a white ribbon bearing my name in gold,which she herself had bought for the appointed hourin case I forgot, and in plain view of others,brought on both of us an unbearable shame.