SHE GLIDES
She glides down stairs
like an ancient queen
gowned in bell-shaped elegance
from waist to floor
as if her legs were castors
rolling silently over her path;
whether level or angled
she glides effortlessly
like a smile greeting
a loved one.
GLOWINGS
A gossamer rose glow
infuses pre-dawn clouds
like a hot bath
steams away goose bumps
before clothes attempt
to make the warmth
portable like sunshine
sparkling off nightfall’s snow.-- Diane WebsterThe Whole Mad Swirl
with my thanks to MH Clay
I was out of control, spinning
on the whirligig of youth,
giddy to be caught
in what Kerouac called
"the whole mad swirl
of everything to come."
I didn't know what to expect.
I was ready for nothing
though I had spent years
in solitary confinement
with books, exams and degrees.
You would think I'd have learned
something about life as it is,
not as I wished it to be.
I went out on the street
to look for work
and was surprised to discover
no one spoke Old English
like Beowulf or Middle English
like the Wife of Bath.
An old professor told me
I talked the way
e.e. cummings wrote
and no one would hire me.
A few years later I married
a woman with several degrees.
She thought I was normal.
We had five kids in six years
and drove landlords bonkers.
"The Lord will provide,"
we said, and He did.
Fifty years later, the five kids
have rucksacks of their own
packed with jobs, marriages,
children and good lives
measured against
the standard of most.
Their mother is dead,
and like everyone else
on this strange planet
I am in the process
of dying in the jaws
of what Kerouac called
"the whole mad swirl
of everything to come."
I have seen almost all
of "everything to come"
except for the best part
and that, I am told,
will take my breath away.
That Old-Time Religion
When I was young and randy,
I went to church every Sunday
to keep my parents happy.
"Almighty God has given us
the Ten Commandments,
not the Ten Suggestions,"
the old preacher used to say.
Now I'm old and randy
but I always go to church
yet I seldom hear a sermon.
What I hear now is something
preachers call a homily.
Homilies are nice.
They let you leave church
in a good mood, ravenous
for the Sunday roast.
But most homilies shoot blanks.
They seldom strike a chord.
Machine-gun sermons
when I was young and randy
sprayed words all over church,
and if they didn't hit you,
you were bobbin' and duckin',
the old folks used to say.
Homilies seldom mention sin
and almost never mention hell.
When I was young and randy,
sin and hell were the DNA
of any decent sermon.
Now, homilies explain
how much God loves me
and italicize that basic truth
over and over by quoting
passages from Scripture.
Few homilies, however, note
that God has standards
and expects His flock to meet them.
"The elevator goes both ways,"
the old preacher used to say.
His sermons often scared me
and I used to stay scared until
Monday afternoon at school
when I'd let Florence Puppo,
who was tall and fetching,
go upstairs in front of me.
God loves Florence, too,
I'd tell myself, so why not
let her sway her way
up the stairs ahead of me.
Homilies are reassuring
but I don't know if I'd be
going to church now
if I had heard homilies
instead of sermons back
when I was young and randy.
A good sermon can leave a scar
old men scratch when the years
go South for the winter.
"God's not playin' games!"
the old preacher used to say.
I'd like to see that preacher
in our pulpit now.
He'd use his blowtorch
of that Old-Time Religion
and let the flames flare.
He'd make the congregation
bob and duck every Sunday
instead of sitting up straight
and smiling on occasion.
Body Art
High noon this winter day
and blackbirds fill
the bare branches
of my dead neighbor's tree.
Max would have loved these birds;
they're as raucous as he was,
bobbing and clucking
as if they're debating
where to fly next.
Suddenly they know
and shoot from the tree.
They're gone but I shout
"Godspeed!" anyway
in behalf of old Max,
immigrant from Auschwitz.
He may be dead but
the numbers on his forearm
glow in my dreams.
Nativity
Snowflakes
Sparkled
With joy
Fall
On trees
And fields
And humble
Huts
Where all men
Of good will
Peacefully wait
For the rebirth
Of their hearts.
Feliz Navidad
Pedro swings a mop all night
on the 30th floor of Castle Towers
just off Michigan Avenue
not far from the foaming Lake.
The floor is his, all his,
to swab and wax till dawn.
The sun comes up and Pedro's
on the subway snoring,
roaring home to a plate
of huevos rancheros,
six eggs swimming
in a lake of salsa verde,
hot tortillas stacked
beside them.
After breakfast,
Pedro writes a poem
for Esperanza,
the wife who waits
in Nuevo Leon.
He mails the poem
that night, going back
to his bucket and mop.
Pedro's proud
of three small sons,
soccer stars
in the making.
On Christmas Eve
the boys wait up
in Nuevo Leon
and peek out the window.
Papa's coming home
for Christmas!
Pedro arrives at midnight
on a neighbor's donkey,
laughing beneath
a giant sombrero.
He has a red serape
over his shoulder,
and he's juggling
sacks of gifts.
When the donkey stops,
the boys dash out and clap
and dance in circles.
Esperanza stands
in the doorway
and sings
Feliz Navidad.
Christmastime in America
You see the oddest things
at Christmastime in America.
The bigger the city,
the stranger the sights.
I was driving downtown
to buy gifts for the family
and enjoying bouquets
of beautiful people
bundled in big coats
and colorful scarves
clustered on corners,
shopping in good cheer
amid petals of snow
dancing in the sun.
One of them, however,
a beautiful young lady,
had stopped to take issue
with an old woman in a shawl
picketing Planned Parenthood.
The old woman was riding
on a motor scooter
designed for the elderly.
She held a sign bigger
than she was and kept
motoring back and forth
as resolute as my aunt
who had been renowned
for protesting any injustice.
Saving seals in the Antarctic
had been very important to her.
On this day, however,
the beautiful young lady
who had taken issue
with the old woman
was livid and screaming.
She marched behind
the motor scooter and
yelled at the old woman
who appeared oblivious
to all the commotion.
Maybe she was deaf,
I thought, like my aunt.
That can be an advantage
at a time like this.
The letters on the sign were huge
but I couldn't read them
so I drove around the block
and found a spot at the curb.
It turned out the sign said,
"What might have happened
if Mary of Nazareth
had been pro-choice?"
Now I understood
why the young lady
was ranting and raving
and why the old woman
kept motoring to and fro.
At Christmastime in America
people get excited,
more so than usual.
When I got home
I hid my packages
and told my wife at supper
what I had seen.
I also told her that if Mary
had chosen otherwise,
I wouldn't have had
to go shopping today.
That's obvious, she said.
The Engine Tongue
The all important criticism
will come forthwith
from mouths
equipped to complain,
driven by the engine tongue.
Words form in torrents
smashing into each other
as they are ejected
in a rabid-throat foam.
Your words or thoughts
are hated
and your grave cannot
be dug fast enough.
The sweating, bored pastor,
one more reviewer
who doesn’t know you,
fumbles the scripture reading
while the grave digger yawns.
Stones
I don’t always do
what I’m supposed to
that’s not a brag
or a regret
facts are stone
stones can be beautiful
they can also cut
or be nothing
some days I am the wind
Waiting for the Umpire
Ralph never planned on dying
but when he did, he was swept away
like a child's kite blown astray.
When he arrived at his destination,
he heard angels singing, harps playing
and Louis Armstrong on the trumpet
so he figured this must be heaven.
A nice old man at the gate, however,
waved him away without directions.
This confused Ralph until he found
an open window in the basement,
climbed in and found an elevator
that took him to the top floor.
There a smiling angel with big wings
walked him up a thousand concrete stairs
and showed him to an empty seat.
Ralph was in the bleachers now
with millions of others, simply waiting.
None of them had a cushion to sit on.
But down in the padded box seats
Ralph saw rabbis, priests and ministers
sitting in the front row, simply waiting.
His barber, Al, was sitting with them.
For 30 years Al had been asking Ralph
while trimming his few remaining tufts of hair
if he had finally been saved or was he still lost.
Ralph would always tell Al he believed in God
but that every year he cheated on his taxes.
Sin is sin, Ralph would quietly point out.
Faith is all you need, Al would shout.
Seeing his barber now in the front row,
Ralph figured that maybe Al had stopped
cheating on his dying wife.
Otherwise, Ralph figured, Al would be sitting
in the cheap seats, waiting with everyone else
in the amphitheater for the Umpire to appear.
Everything on Earth Pulls You
Below the mouth of
the faucet the
fruit lies cupped in
a warm palm, protected
by a periphery of
fingers, like an exotic
plant whose name was
once known, suspended, independent
of its entirety, perhaps on a different
planet where the mass is less and a limb
may be spared in mid-
Space.
-- Nina Sokol
1945
I
A fatal whisper
in the mind
stirs a curtain
not the breeze
bathing behind shadows
you hear a voice
in the street pages turn
their sounds
deadly you drop into
the waters that you
drew
in your mind
of Juliet sinking
into her
tomb of crimson
robes crinkling fingers
pressed against
lips immediately
urging
stillness inside
a wave may
be heard like
splashed
letters landing
on the floor
strewn across
the earth or
corpses lying above
the soil
II
like Pages
and curtains drawn
between
cracks and silences
upon which
only the grazes
of cautious finger
tips stroking
inverted heart
beatings or turn
like lost sun
beams
on withered
weeds somewhere
in the ground
stirring in the interior
of mutated curtains
that remain
undrawn or
faintly unturned
by the missing
hands of your
pages.
-- Nina Sokol
The Prophet
My mother treats everything
as an omen.
She will see a
specific book in the
library,
carefully let
it select her, and claim it
to be a message of
prophecy, sent to me in
particular. The rotation of
certain stellular constellations
reveal a story to her
of my future which she
only tells in the company
of me. Not a religious woman,
nor superstitious, she
will tell me of dreams
that she’s had in the
night, perhaps years ago,
perhaps more recently,
and of how they foretold particular
coincidences later in her
life. She does not tell
me these things
because she believes in them or
has a faith loyal to
their meaning. She tells
them because she thinks
I am still twenty-three
when she had just discovered
my fascination with superstition,
deities and religion. She thinks that
by dropping the name of a
god or guru or showing interest
in Buddhist utterances, that
she will not lose me again.
And so her predicted words
Through well-meant lips lose their
Meanings as love foresees loss
growing sweetly into bitterness.
-- Nina Sokol
In the Dark
In the dark, voices
speak. She knew, because
she had been there a
few times before. He had asked
her to write a love poem
to him, or to them, or
about him, and so that’s
what she thought she had done. But
it was written long after his
phone calls had stopped and long
after they began again. It was
written when she realized
how bored and confused
he really was with life,
how disillusioned. She recalled
how many hours she used to
sit and stare at the phone. The phone,
unlike any other model she had
ever owned before, had a light pink,
almost beige color, just like the one
from her childhood, just like the
one her mother used to speak in, whose
tone she could hear for hours. She could listen
to records incessantly. But her mother’s
voice only for a moment. Extra attention
was given to specific intonations
and a certain willingness, no,
eagerness to give in to the other,
to laugh, was always clearly expressed.
When she takes the receiver, now,
she sits in the dark and speaks and
thinks she is listening to the voices
of others and even sometimes her own,
when, of all the voices, she hears but one,
the voice of her mother
alone.
-- Nina Sokol
Knowing
They knew what it
was. Sometimes their eyes
met. She knew the sound
of his hand on her skin, had
memorized the darkness. It
was his from the start, she knew, and
no one else’s, since he had
been alone in this world, up until
then. That was what he said, at
least. And she believed him, or needed
to, she believed that he was
different from the rest. And
for the moment he was, too,
just like the rest had been. But
he had a special way of looking
at her. He had her face memorized.
She knew this because of the way
he looked at her. He must have been
mesmerized, she concluded and
looked deeply into his
eyes. She knew the darkness,
the pauses, the ignorance, the
silences, she knew his patterns
like no one else or no one
else’s, for that matter. She had
known many men. She had not
known any. She could count
them on her two hands, trace her
palms back through her own
history, place them together and
feel the emptiness. She knew the darkness,
both hers and his, by
heart.
-- Nina Sokol
Father Spoke in Code
Father spoke in code
Mother understood.
She would cry
once he went to bed.
I never understood the code.
My sister didn't either.
As we got older, we quit
asking Mother what he said.
A feral cat claimed our yard.
It would leap the fence
when anyone appeared.
Except, of course, Father.
When he came out to walk
around the garden after supper,
the cat would sit straight up,
then rub against his leg
and look at him as if it understood
what others never could.
My sister used to say
the two of us were proof
Father and Mother
got together twice.
I told her I wasn't so certain.
I looked a lot like Mr. Brompton,
the next-door neighbor.
He used to buy us sugar cones
from the ice cream truck.
My sister, by the way, didn't look
like anyone in the family either,
but that was 40 years ago
when I last saw her.
I went away to college
and she got married.
We were never close after that.
Not even Christmas cards.
Forty years is a long time.
Now, we plan to get together
for a weekend this summer
before one of us dies.
I suggested we wait
till one of us is terminal.
What's the rush, I said.
But my wife told her
I was only kidding,
that we'll be coming
and not to make a fuss.
Burgers and hot dogs
will do just fine.
I know what Sis and I
will talk about that weekend,
the two people we'll always
have in common, no matter
how many years and miles
may lie between us.
Father and Mother have been
dead for decades now
but they're still alive in us.
I talk in code, my wife says,
and my sister cries a lot,
now that her husband's dead.
The one thing I want to know
is if my sister knows
what happened to the cat.
It knew the code,
may have had some answers.
The Zombie's Wife
The zombie's wife
has a dowager's hump
and never sees the sky.
On her way to church
she steps on ants
and swipes at every fly.
Her husband Humphrey
stays at home
and scours the house
for the squeaky mouse
his wife says got inside.
Winter's coming
and the larder's bare
so Humphrey wants
his wife to fix
the mouse for supper
fricasseed or fried.
Maggie and Max
Our son married a flibbertygibbet,
my wife says, and I agree,
but he loves Maggie very much
so I say let's keep quiet.
It's not our place to criticize.
Max is 33, and not long
back from Iraq.
I remind my wife
that Maggie can cook
better than most
so let's give her a chance.
Max works two jobs
and he's never home.
Maggie's young.
Maybe the baby will help
but I doubt it.
Too bad Maggie
didn’t take to quilting,
my wife points out.
The ladies at church
did their best to teach her.
But quilters, I remind her,
don't go out at midnight
to places nobody knows.
My wife keeps asking
why Max married Maggie.
I don't know what to say.
Finally I tell her I never saw
any woman walk like Maggie.
My wife says I never will.
Facing Disapproval at Wal-Mart
Coffeepot not sputtering, no light,
disaster to stop the morning flow
of shuffle step, to-do list
and leaf patterns dark against
the lightening window pane.
Emergency measures needed,
clothes hustled on, cord ripped,
car hurried. The greeter lady
must greet me with a mop.
Such hurry has left water
in the plastic well of the pot
to rain down on the early,
clean and polished floor.
The customer service lady
is accusatory, as well, says
her return man or repair man
or whoever accepts her pot,
her cord not adangle,
that man speaks in amazement
at the clinically clean way
she keeps it, no brown stains,
no damp ground bits clinging.
Her heart is righteous,
her days are pure.
I hurry home, a little shamed.
But the world is soon righted
with my new pot gurgling.
The morning ablutions have
righted themselves, and I return
happily to my complacent,
unrepentant self.