Angel in the Library (for Cheryl)
It's the only place you find people and silence
at the same time. People quit before the word, so quiet
thoughts come. Thoughts always attract angels.
The girl with the blackrimmed glasses, the Cowichan sweater,
sits on the floor between stacks. Book open on her lap,
she argues death with Lowell. The angel leans close.
The girl's hair was not always this color. It's been peroxide blonde,
copper, and cut weird too. Drugs were a problem. As a child she prayed
Let me die before I wake. They stood by in their ponytails,
Winter coats, hands folded attentively in front of them, but what
could they do? They wrestle with one, allow a hip to be put out
with another. And the girl? She's here, isn't she.
Night Windows
Grandfather, I'm already out of your world as you hush
towards death. You haven't left mine.
My reflection in the night window reminds of you
thousands of miles ahead of me.
With you there and me here I hardly got to know you,
Already too big for your lap when we finally met,
and only once did I sleep in the attic room
on Kalverstraat. What a scare to come home late
and hear pitching from the dark Waar ben jij geweest?*
No lights on, nothing except your crusty impatience.
Yet you'd been hours at the bay window
of that room in which drapes were never drawn,
guarding neighbors in and out of the black night,
between rooms, me up the path.
Too late to spend an evening, but I'm learning
how you orchestrated that dark spill
with the glowing baton of cigar, lifting hand
from knee to mouth to knee.
And eventually - deaf, and then deafer -
how it gathered you. As your arms might have
me. Maybe someday I won't crab
at dusk when bruised
light collects in wooden drawers and pants
...
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