TO QUIT LIKE OUR FATHERS
In each corner of our street's vacant lot,
Four of us started our personal holes
To China. We carried the sign language
Of Cub Scouts--food and water, peace and friend--
Enough, we'd been counseled, for anywhere
We might sprout. And what else could we manage,
Emerging, giddy with discovery
Like benign aliens who believe Earth
Will welcome them? And what did it matter,
An hour into sun and struck rock, to quit
Like our fathers? But I started seven
Secret holes, digging by myself to find
The route between the stones, before I jabbed,
That week, a test hole through the paper globe
In our classroom, beginning just below
Lake Erie, extending that sharpened branch
Until it burst through, miles from Africa,
In the Indian Ocean, which would wash down
That shaft, draining into America
Like an unplugged sink. How angry I felt,
Pulling back the stick as if I might read
The foolishness level, calculating
The ignorance quarts I'd need to never
Chatter, then catch and freeze: So I wouldn't,
From then on, consider consequences,
Turning into the timid, somebody
Unable to risk himself with strangers,
Friends, or women he might possibly love.
THE TOP BUNK OF A FORD
I should have ended on the cracked asphalt
Of stupidity when the heavy Ford
Backed over my drunk and sleeping body.
Hours earlier, I'd had a chance to choose
The common sense of shutting own my mouth,
But I'd slurped two dozen beers and slurred out
My complaints about the shit-war and where
America wanted me to spend it.
I had two semesters left in one kind
Of R&R;, and I owed principal
And interest on immaturity's loan,
But when I sprawled to sleep on that driveway,
I was planning to repay no one but myself.
I should say I woke believing I was
Rising for an early class, but I knew
I was under the top bunk of a Ford,
That whoever was dragging me from sleep
Wasn't sending me to work. "Jesus Christ,"
I heard, "Goddamn it to hell" and the rest
Of profanity's trite variations,
And I was calculating, sitting up,
How many inches that Ford could have turned,
Given the angle of its settled tires.
I said nothing to the driver who'd braked,
The passenger who'd rolled down his window
To swallow the air as soon as that Ford
Hit reverse, but I listened to enough
Eyewitness testimony to prove
I'd hit the quinella of good fortune,
Memorized the tread of the right front tire
Which would surely, in inches, have made me
Exhibit A for the consequences
Of bad judgment. And then those two sat down
Beside me, the three of us leaning back
Against the Ford and saying nothing while
We faced the brightening sky as if we had
Chosen an alternate way to be awestruck.
THE BALM OF GILEAD
One summer I learned about
The doctor who cured patients
By long-distance, sending sickness
To limbo through the power
Of belief. Thousands, he saved,
From far away, and those who
Couldn't call sent writing samples,
Clues enough for healing, though
I needed the miracle
For the mute the afternoon
I failed the buddy system
Of the church camp pool, following
The wall to fourteen feet where
The water deepened for diving,
Pretending I could push off
To the backstroke of bouyant faith--
Reach and pull, reach and pool, strokes
So simple the animals
Used them, though suddenly, jostled
Free of my handhold, I reached back
And sank in the stoical
Splendor of silence. Touched bottom
And rose, said nothing and reached,
Sinking again and floundering
Up to the white inner tube
Of the lifeguard as if I'd been
Swimming for hours and cramped, as if
Expert, but tired, brought ashore
Like the exhausted channel crossers
Who refuse aid with the beauty
Of courage, teaching me, that day
And the remainder of that week
The rewards for faith--health, hope,
Significance, salvation,
And The Balm of Gilead,
Which would heal me, nothing said
By the ministers about
The second coming of that cure
Sold, before the phone's invention,
To save thousands from sickness,
From drunkenness, debauchery,
The horrors of the mind. God's gold,
Suspended in solution,
Fixed inattention to health,
To studies, although the rest
Of that popular potion was
The distraction of brandy,
Something like "Salvation's Candy,"
Ten cents for Life-Savior Jesus,
"Scripture message included,"
Years ago, with that sweet hope,
What I bought after I was saved
By the O-ring of the lifeguard.
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Poetry, Part I
Poetry, Part III - The Doors of Hell
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Poetry from The Literary Review