Little Rhody

February 19, 2012

Please don’t click through unless you want to read poetry about my weekend written on an iPhone on an Amtrak train.

They ate fish and steak
with the sun in their eyes
for Anthony’s 95th birthday.
There were, what, four,
five generations?
Surely there were people there
born before any of this was built,
all this along the water.
(Imagine it then!
Imagine the Indians!)
And surely there had to be
whole babies born in the future
at the restaurant too.
Them all tubes and wires,
them all maybes,
we’ll sees,
swallowed in water glasses.

The birthday boy,
man of honor,
was bent over at the center
of the table,
being talked to carefully,
almost indirectly.
The way you hum
to house plants,
smile worriedly at dogs.

After the kids had
tired themselves out,
running around coatless
on the gravel,
the adults, those
clumped loosely in the middle,
now softened by wine,
sighed up from their chairs,
slapped hands on backs,
split up, slipped off.

Back at home,
Mom, still in her skirt,
used the old shovel,
to scoop up a dead raccoon
that someone found out in the yard.
Thunked it into the wheelbarrow
carried it off somewhere
where it was better hidden
by the terminal edges
of the gray evening light.

They went to sleep wondering
what it was they’d just done,
if indeed the planet was a little different,
now that they’d toasted time,
said to it: hello there, we see you.

Before bed they’d gone out in the night,
to cool off from the fire
and looked at the sky,
so much clearer now
in the slow atom cold.
And someone had said,
See the big dipper there,
see its handle there,
the middle of it,
the sturdiest part?
That’s actually two stars
though it looks like just one from right here.

There’s actually something
numbered to it,
separate, in pieces,
when you’re not standing
so far away.