Changing
So many women turned into trees
or reeds or weeping stones.
There was a man bent over a pond
who became a flower. Another died
but rose from the bloody ground
as a speckled plant.
One man wrinkled into cricket form,
a woman wove a spider’s web.
Everyone was changing.
You could see bark closing over flesh,
bodies melting into streams,
brothers lifted into the night sky
as if their bones could become light
and their breath clouds between galaxies.
We used to understand the flight of birds
or the strange roar of thunder
on a clear afternoon.
Once we stood on a cliff,
looking out at the sparkling sea.
We were famished then, I remember,
so anxious for roasted meat and bread.
How I loved the way your eyes burned,
your wild hair transforming into gold
as I watched, eager to change my body,
to leap over the boat of a dangerous god.
I look at the sky
and think of genius and mighty telescopes.
My father would have walked to the subway,
sometimes in the rain.
Across the world, the sky is thick with bombs.
At night, as we watched TV, my mother
feared the worst. Sometimes a plane
from one of the airports would rock the roof.
Sometimes a bulletin, girls dead in a church fire,
or an island with missiles pointed at New York.
We would eat later than my friends,
the food thick with gravy. We didn’t say grace,
but my parents would share a beer.
Sometimes I carried plates and cups
to the kitchen. Sometimes I stood at the sink
until I fell asleep. My mother was grieving
for her old country, its cobblestones and dirt.
She loved its rivers and castles rising
above the distant city in the mist.
My father had a rifle that didn’t shoot,
and a good hiding place.
He never talked about the streets he walked
for hours as the battle raged.
Sometimes he lay awake for hours,
drinking vodka when the heat got too much.
He said he would drink until he fell asleep
or he no longer cared. It was funny when he told me,
but I don’t think he liked it at the time.
My mother would go to the movies alone,
or that’s what she said. My father and I sat
in the living room beneath harsh lamplight,
blinking, clearing out throats until it was time for bed.
A Thousand Years
You’re lost inside your houses
There’s no time to find you now
While your walls are burning and your towers are turning…
Jackson Browne
Fires everywhere, even the dirt is in flames,
even the air. Look out at the sea,
how waves crash against rock, how seabirds
dive and burn.
Look at the grass, how it smokes,
how everything solid melts and turns to gas.
Such a terrible dream,
and now the doctor comes across the yard.
Soon night will fall.
Fish will haunt your dreams,
sailing the falls, dying in the paws of bears.
Soon it will be summer, soon the sun will widen in the sky.
What you have left may be enough
if you can hide it underground, sleep for a thousand years.
