POEMS

THE WAR EFFORT, 1945

Everything right now is a reminder of the war I was too small to
fly in: green trees warming up in the wind, the bus driver on the
corner, a dead ringer for my Uncle Benny, Army Air Corps, eagle
wings clutching a white star flying out of the blue patch on his
right shoulder, lost over the Pacific I imagined. The old ache in
my palm for the flyer’s .45. Nights were dark. God wouldn’t make
my legs grow any faster or give me a thin brown mustache. You
see, I loved America, and wanted to come screaming out of the sun
in more than balsa wood and rubber band. It was hard to throw
myself into the radishes and potatoes, to believe in the dull earth –
that a little green garden could save us. All the color was gone out of
the giant, oily carp I’d found, dead, lying across from the Buick factory
along the Flint River so close to where the night shift riveted together
the bright fuselages. I don’t know why I had to find it or how my
colorless uncle got so big in my mind. He molested my little cousin
and went, long ago, down the dirty river. It’s just that you make
promises when you’re a kid, to eat everything, to the sidewalk up
ahead that you’re coming, by God. Who can understand this country?
The surplus of feelings. The peace that never comes.

(From Lauds; reprinted in Be Broken to Be Whole)

THE NAMES OF BIRDS

Getting the names of birds after sixty
turns into some kind of race. You still can’t see
the finish line—it’s not that bad or good—
but now you know it’s up there. So, when Gary slowed
the little pickup outside of Manchester
to point out to me the greater scaup
with its stunning blue bill,
water bubbling off as it pulled up beach kelp,
I was surprised. Even more at my immediate feelings
of, what can I say, envy, the way he got there first
and with so much authority, the name, the way
he already owned it. You couldn’t exactly see
the flag he’d planted in that gorgeous bird’s
back, but it was there all right. Maybe I got even,
if that doesn’t sound too tit for tat,
when I introduced him to my humble
little pied-billed grebe in its winter plumage
on a walk by Tulalip Bay.
I babbled on a bit and being less than gracious
I think I immediately repeated the name,
like I was Shackleton discovering the South Pole.
What gets into us after sixty that has us
slowing down at the same time we’re speeding up?
Birds know it. We’re not coming with a gun.
That each one has a name and we’re out to learn it,
well, that’s a human thing. There’s always going to be
the urgency toward the end
and we’ve got a lot of birds to go.

(From The Names of Birds; reprinted in Be Broken to Be Whole)