for months they rolled the concrete floor
in wheelchairs, simulating.
Through a window I watch them cartwheel now,
gray sweatpants rising against the whitened hill
traversed by wire asterisks and coils.
At first I feared they pitied me,
the way I flinched at the building’s smell.
Now the tin roof howls, the lights go off
to the sound of locking doors. Go on, breathe—
no way the machinery of my lungs
is going to plow the county road.
Didn’t I try to run over a guy,
spurned love being the kindling stick that rubbed
against his IOUs? Easy to land here,
anyone could — though I think laughter
would elude me, no matter what the weather.
Compared to calculating how far to the road.
Signs there say: CORRECTIONS CENTER DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS.
My instructions were: Accept no notes or photographs,
and restrict the conversation to such topics as
how to teach the dog to nudge
the light switch with his nose.
Now the women let their snowballs fly — as if
the past were a simple matter that could splat and melt.
Only my red dog turns his head
toward the pines beyond the final fence
before the generator chugs to life.
Early Cascade
I couldn’t have waited. By the time you return
it would have rotted on the vine.
So I cut the first tomato into eighths,
salted the pieces in the dusk,
and found the flesh not mealy (like last year)
or bitter,
even when I swallowed the green crown of the stem
that made my throat feel dusty and warm.
Pah. I could have gagged on the sweetness.
The miser accused by her red sums.
Better had I eaten the dirt itself
on this the first night in my life
when I have not been too busy for my loneliness—
at last, it comes.
Twenty-five Thousand Volts per Inch
The weird summer of lightning (to be honest) was not a summer, but a week
when we sat every night in a far corner of the yard
to watch the silver twitch over our drinks.
It may help to know the sky hardly ever spasms here,
which is why we savored the postscript smell of nickel,
ions crisping in the deep fry.
The bolts made everything erogenous, the poppies and the pumpkin vine—
we could hardly bear to leave our watch post
but had tickets for the concert at the pier.
And we could not bear to miss the jam band from our youth,
which we feared discovering lacked talent and looked foolish
in their caveman belt buckles and leather hats.
Whew. That we found in them a soulfulness, an architecture
of tempo changes and chord progressions
left us relieved. Childishly
we hummed along as the sun got gulped down like a vitamin
and boats of cheapskates gathered on the bay.
When the lightning started, it was fearsome and silent
as usual. We were older, we knew this,
but the past proved not to be all suicide and motorcycle accidents.
Here was proof the music had shown some finesse—
even if it pillaged the discographies of black men from the Delta
it did so honorably, erotically, meaning
“that which gathers.” So we held hands and drew near.
And the flashes lit us, when they lit us, in platinum flames:
then we saw, behold, below the bleachers,
a man whose rubber sneaker toe-tips
punctured the darkness as he spun.
He lurched and spun and lurched and fell,
a messenger from the ancient cults
until his stomach’s contents were strobed ruthlessly
once they splattered on the tarmac. Sky says: Rise,
feet say: Heavy. Body would say: Torn in two
if it weren’t already passed out
with all the good Samaritans busy remembering
the words to the tune about the rambling man. Oh
Bacchus, Dionysus, ye Southern rock stars
of antiquity: Thank you for shutting the black door
behind which he vanished, so we could resume
holding each other, like two swigs of mouthwash.
Then the brother who was not dead
played another of our childhood songs.
Tsunami Museum, Hilo
Because she comes here just a few hours a week, you are lucky
to have found her—
Mrs. Ito, who is ninety-four: you have to bend way down
and speak loudly in her ear.
To ask for the story she floats on these words: wreckage and sky,
the wreckage and sky,
when she tells how her house lost its moorings at dawn
to the shoulders of the surf.
How because she could not swim she clung to a door
and rode it the night
of April Fool’s Day, 1946:
the whole seaward part of town destroyed.
So the museum sits now in the lee of the headland
across from the bus station
where drunks sail to sleep on its wooden benches—
the sun outside has fried them through.
Wreckage and sky, the turmoil and the clarity:
timbers lobbed by the wave-crest
versus the constant stars. Or the wild hair of the drunks
versus this morning’s placid bay.
For sixty years she has sailed on the door
of her story, and now she is sorry
she cannot tell it well enough — she left school to work
in the hotdog plant
years before the wave. Yes,
there were others who survived,
but they were children, so they were quick,
outsprinting the surf—
they did not spend the night
all stretched out on the sea.
Which was a deeper black than you could ever imagine,
though what she says is:
All my friends are dead—
not the wreckage, just the clarity
when you get to be so very old—or in the hospital
with no brains left.
Only me, she says:
she’s the one who was saved.
And then she holds up her index finger, for you
to throw your life ring on.
Driving Home from the Conference like a Pill with a Thousand People Inside
We turned off the highway at Chuckanut Drive
(everyone told us to turn off at Chuckanut Drive)
where, when we finally slid from the cedars,
the ocean smacked us in the face.
Jane squints down into her steering and talking
(her voice like the hushing of the wet road)
about how her mother fled from the house
(one of the many times he beat her).
How they wore their pajamas into the store
after crossing the parking-lot stripes in their slippers—
see how easy it is to start over
after the hangers screech.
In the motel, there’d always be a picture of the sea
(as if all you needed was the idea of its rocking)—