Praise Songs

Before the Fall

Guiltless, hearing no sound along the Sound,biking past slower walkers to the headland,watching a snowy egret slide down air

and land like a handkerchief on marsh grass,I never did look down at fallen branchesor cracked clamshells glistening on blacktop,

the road ahead. Then clatter. Crash. And pain'sclearness of vision: stars gleam in daylight,replacing wildflowers, a peony blooms

covered with ants, a white hepatica risesto kiss the sun, then droops, its stem cut clean.x-ray shows white smoke, the malleolus bone,

mallet of a ghost, fogbound, afloat. A strangerlives inside this mask with slits for eyes,this boot cast, the leg I thought I owned.

But wait. Think of the flight and not the fall,not of the bike, the balance lost, the brakes,the break, the parabolic curve through air.

Think of the rush, the salt, the taste of wind,the blown hair, bay of sparkling soda water,starry weeds the locals call bedstraw,

the miracle of all you've never lost.

Tattoo

"When writing, let the object convey feeling,"a poet said. My student silenced earphonesblaring indie rock, and bared an arm

to show the object: a tattoo. I thoughta wingy angel or a scorpionor a dragonfly, such as I'd seen,

inked in lurid color to the flesh,and wondered how it might evoke the feeling.It was a number, 49316,

ice-blue, an upside-down triangle,his Jewish grandmother's five digitsbranded on her arm when young, a prisoner

at Auschwitz. She survived, lived long,and died last year. "She sat too still,wet-kissed a lot, and never was content.

But she stroked my arm where my tattoo is now."Her name? "Rebecca. Rivka. She said Hashem,her God, betrayed her." Wait, I thought, her faith

forbids body marks. My reason failedwhen I remembered photographs of faces,nameless, voiceless. Not Rivka, whose cry,

iambic, meaning I am—"Survive, survive!"—pours through her grandson, who never studiedTorah, who, in his death's-head t-shirt,

torn jeans, and Reeboks, danced out to the beatof "Hold On," jumped the stairs, two at a time,and wrote of a wind-tossed elm. For Rivka Bloom.

Yellow

—For Chris Albertson

The surprise of it, like sunshot clouds,the blur of a finch through dark pines,the suddenness of wheat fields at high noon,

the sherry rose that outgrows its trellis,the chrome of a Japanese print blazingin a fisherman's coat painted by Van Gogh,

color of memory, color of angels,the startling color of his hair, as thoughthe Danish lakes had washed out all impurities,

not like mine, whose ancestors must have wadedmuddier waters. When Chris spoke, I saw North,fjords and mussel beds on coasts

where he spun a rod, fishing for trout.He told me he left Denmark for the South.Early he stirred to jazz lps, to Bessie's

murmurs he would cross an ocean for.On trains, on foot, he taped field hollers,work songs, to cut recordings in New York;

ambushed a tenor sax cleaning a washroom;amazed a bass who hauled bags at the train;raised up a blind beggar moaning "Search My Soul"

on a rain-wracked guitar. Found Ida Cox,old, still in good voice, who would recordHard, Lord, her bent notes filled with pain

risen in praise. What brought him there?Yellow again. Yellow of a wartime childhood.Yellow stars on badges Denmark's Jews

were forced to wear. The king pinned one on.Then Danes, citizens. His father. Shadows lifted.North became South, all colors yellow, yellow.