Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
     The proper study of Mankind is Man.
          Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle II
 

UNCLE DON

Technicolor summer:
The sweating man
hefts the mower into the boot,
then, starting, dies across the wheel
BEEP
BEEeee
Cut!

People murmur to my mother:
a carpenter (those clever hands)
a gym instructor (sturdy, nimble)
but not the office.

Not the office
where clients murmur to my father,
You’ll handle this, not Don,
all right?

Not the office
where staff murmur to each other:
The boss’s brother.

But it has to be the office,
Uncle Don?
The money has you mortared in
and Aunt Eliza’s never ever
going to let you out.

What consoles us
in false positions?
What sour brown kisses blunt
the thorns of days,
or soften the strangling years
of the rosevine?

Whisky of course -
it’s down as cardiac arrest
but it was whisky.

And afterwards, Eliza cried
keeping her curses quiet for a month,
but still my anguished father fretted,
I didn’t do enough.

     2001
 

YOUNG HAIRDRESSER

Fingers under shampoo
speak with them;
words over towel
touch them; we talk without barriers
skin to skin
as old friends - it’s
hair-wooing
that runs on the comb
that crunches in the scissors.

Then they pay.
Their eyes say, It means nothing,
and I’m always shocked.

     2001
     

LOSS OF THE SON

Eddy lived a few doors down,
a rushing kid of shouts and spills.
His smile would twist my foulest frown;
his innocence hid nasty skills.
At fourteen, Eddy quit his round:
he locked the door and swallowed pills.

Aaron’s numb, and hard to stir;
the wound is not repairable.
And Iris sobs inside a blur.
The thing she finds most terrible:
how could he love death more than her?
Unbearable! Unbearable!

     2002