Poem from Luckily

Black Feathers

I saw you fade from doorways, saw you broken loose on a train.
        Carrying brown bags overflowing with food,
I asked how you could have left with no goodbye.
        You were young as when I held the sad Italian girl 
in your window, words from underwater gripping me 
        as if I were slippery. I meant to see you off 
at the airport, but when you let go, we were on a plane 
        lifting off over water, my bags gone, purse, all money. 
When we landed in Paris, my clothes disappeared.
        Leaving the airport, we walked down stone steps 
into the city - you wore a long black coat like the angels, 
        holding your left arm around my body, dressing 
me, right hand below my heart. You said we'd see Rodin's 
        knee, but we stopped at the house of your friends --
the son broke spaghetti into boiling water, the mother crazy 
        and gray, alone on the fenced-in grass, her husband 
just watched. The daughter gave me a sapphire dress, 
        her grandmother's who she loved and missed, 
soft cloth in a tissued box. You somewhere else 
        in the house, but your hands still covered me.
I heard your voice, and said I was afraid of not finding my way 
        back through the streets, the terminal, all that language 
and water. Looking up from the sapphire blur, you were 
        next to me on a train home, arms around my waist, hands 
meeting at my hip, coat sleeves soft, black feathers.

Poem from Five Kingdoms

Five Kingdoms

What is the blue in the temperature drop? 
            Is the stove doing its arithmetic 
                        so that heat is not just felt but seen?

Do you know the whereabouts 
            of the color photograph of a dog, 
                        tide tables, a car down below?

What is the plan for your own and another's vital 
            signs, the rose red yellow? If you drape 
                        the windows with seaweed,

is that the simplest means for extinguishing 
            the species? Do you keep all of your money 
                        under the bed because of the cold war,

because those now living lay down years ago?
            With the dropping of the first bomb, did our average age 
                        limit drop? If we place lucky objects, perform

activities a special number of times, if we are ugly or disfigured
            in some way, and we diagnose our contact with live
                        animals, broken glass, auto exhaust garbage

grease and solvents, lead, can we forgive our impulse 
            to rob, steal from, cheat, for causing harm to others 
                        with our thoughts, training a blow torch

on hundreds of thousands until their skin came off like gloves, 
            a child a white flash running in the street. Recite 
                        the lucky numbers and the multiples,

collect and remove tacks razor blades nails lit cigarettes, 
            touch them before using, before you break in two, categorize 
                        the five kingdoms, count all the living things.

Poem from Spell

THE FACE OF JESUS
I was thinking about why souls have bodies,
what can a body do that a soul can’ t,
and about the Amish or Mennonites, the ones whose

children were so sick with the same disease
that struck generation after generation,
until finally one doctor figured out how

to help them. But while he was figuring,
he asked them about the disease
and their kids, and the people said

that they believed the children had been sent
to help them better learn to love, which lifted
me out of my own body for a moment,

reminded me of when a church responded
to my request for money for some of the homeless
people in my town. I opened their response,

sitting in my closet office
with tiny bugs trying to drink the water
out of my eyes, with the small oblong window

in my door like on the doors of the insane,
the impounded, so someone can see in
to be sure the one inside hasn’ t hung herself,

but small enough that she can only see
the outside world as the size of an envelope,
when I opened the church letter

and read it, I was so surprised that they thanked
me for being the face of Jesus. I thought how
can I be the face of Jesus, I’ m not even that

nice,  and I’ d certainly had many unkind thoughts
about my co-workers just that morning
especially about the woman built like a truck

who was always trying to run me down.
But though it seemed an over-the-top thing
to say, like naming me Pope or Cardinal,

I realized that a spirit would need hands
to touch someone, and that the person
who has those hands and that body can be flawed

and sick and crazy, selfish and withdrawn,
and sad, and still be an instrument of love,
like when a musician gave up

on teaching me to play Summertime,
and simply laid his hands
on top of mine, banged my fingers into keys.