With A Heart Like That Read online



  With A Heart Like That

  poems

  Don Thompson

 

 

  You care for people and animals, O Lord.

  How precious is your unfailing love, O God.

  -Psalms 36:6-7

  After the Fall

  Camel: I envy the owl, who is all in one place and not scattered to the far corners of himself like I am, not hung together so loosely; who grasps a thing without plodding to an infinite distance and arriving nowhere particular; who can turn his head and see behind as far as he sees before. How I envy you, Owl.

  Owl: I envy the butterfly, whose flight is not like a scream, nor like a smooth stone flung from a sling to kill a mouse rather than Goliath; who has no necessity, who goes where he will and knows the secret of a touch that does not draw blood. How I envy you, Butterfly.

  Butterfly: I envy the pineapple, who is not made of dust held together by mere joy, who does not depend on shimmering hues that fade so soon; who above all has substance, who is solid and sits upon a rump; who is hard enough to hold off the love that tears a wing, the fascination that pins flight to black velvet; who knows what it’s like to have hand grenades name their children after him. How I envy you, Pineapple.

  Pineapple: I envy the camel, who has the nerve to ignore green, who can go without water and not shrivel; who can chew and spit, who can put his foot down on nothing but the sand of all things and be sustained; who is above all a soft lankiness and a good rich stink upon the earth, never squeezed dry for the sake of someone’s breakfast. How I envy you, Camel.

 

  Chipper

  We have buried our bird Chipper

  who served God so well,

  so briefly, with a chirrup

  and one bright obsidian eye

  to greet us:

  needle point of insight,

  sinless, which pricked

  obtuse human balloons;

  who tapped with his beak

  sending telegrams to angels,

  for birds know

  all the heavenly ciphers;

  who was precious stone--

  sapphire translated into

  the sibilant dialect of feathers

  and writ small;

  who would rest in a hand,

  harmless and patient;

  who slept easily, perched

  high above the dreams that hurt us

  until he fell--his life

  shattering silently,

  no more than a knick-knack

  in this world, but to us

  a meteor among sparrows,

  or a blue tear

  we will trust our God to keep

  forever in His bottle.

  Grace

  Codicil and subclause, addendum,

  precept upon precept,

  the law makes its case against us.

  There’s nowhere to hide--

  not in a foxhole, under a yarmulke,

  or deep in Freud’s beard--

  and no mercy,

  for the law is the law is the law.

  Our vows waffle; offerings

  smolder and stink among old tires,

  worse than Gehenna.

  We have nothing the law wants.

  But sin is no easier.

  We expect honey and get ants

  that leave us like dead bees--

  hollow, thin as cellophane.

  What can we do? Caught

  between bloodless sin

  and hard, dry righteousness,

  let’s give up. Plead guilty.

  Then grace can come to us,

  rising like water from a rock.

  But where the law rules,

  even the rain is carved in stone.

  Crow

  Stand small. Always insist on

  the short end of the stick.

  Take one; put two back.

  And get used to the taste of crow.

 

 

  Plums

  The dull boy behind the lawnmower

  splattering the plums

  that have fallen from branches

  dragged down by their own burden

  is me. Every summer

  I eat a few and complain:

  too soft, too tart--too something.

  I let most of them rot.

  A humdrum husband, I bore my wife,

  ignore my children, and yawn

  banking my paycheck.

  Worse, I despise my old dreams.

  Someone at work left a bag

  of ripe plums in the break room.

  They were all gone by five o'clock.

  Forgive me, Lord.

 

  Rilke

  When untamed angels came to you

  bearing baskets of words

  for the winepress,

  they promised you a vintage

  more intoxicating than mere life--

  than wife, daughter, lovers

  who poured themselves out

  hoping to sip from your cup.

  You had friends, facilitators

  who’d pick up the tab

  after an Orphic binge

  had left you with a hangover,

  reeling across Europe

  frantic for solitude among roses

  and old furniture. How long

  did you think you could live like that?

  There’s no free lunch, no secret

  ecstasy, no elegy without loss.

  Every death kills someone.

  You should have known

  those angels would be back,

  empty-handed and hungry

  for your marrow,

  thirsty for your thin, white blood.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  (1875-1926)

  Tiger

  Consider the tiger, zoo-bred,

  that knows nothing else

  and yet paces her cage, crazy

  for the pungent green freedom

  she can’t even imagine.

  It’s easy to think we’re like that,

  spirit locked tight in flesh--

  except with us

  it’s the cage that can’t keep still

  and grinds, twists, pops rivets,

  while the tiger inside purrs,

  curled up in God’s lap.

 

  Prayer

  Nutrasweet hour of prayer,

  my peace--my chemical peace

  with a bad aftertaste,

  I want more,

  more than bitesize meditations

  or leftovers

  of cold, greasy need.

  Give me something to chew on:

  meat sizzling on a spit

  and black bread thick as a brick;

  give me wine and tears, Lord,

  and wild honey from the comb!

  Sitting With Clifford

  Because I’ve come without limping

  to this gray season,

  much too late to impress anyone,

  I’m not embarrassed to baby-talk

  an overweight golden retriever

  as we sit here together,

  both of us warm and well-fed,

  my book open on his back.

  While the night slips down

  toward freezing, and fog

  sets its ambush

  against my next morning commute,

  and elsewhere in the house

  domesticity churns and clatters,

  I tell him he’s a good boy,

  which is true. He is.

  And for a few moments,

  so much peace infuses me

  that I might be scratching the flop ear

  of an
angel unaware.

  Talk Show

  Dante was afraid of the dark.

  In our time, it’s too much light

  that seems frightening.

  Sin scintillates: no shadows

  and no shame in our game.

  Unrepentant, we confess

  fifteen minutes on a talk show.

  What would Dante think?

  Would the poet who faced Hell

  turn his back on us,

  disgusted by

  our shrill, whiny candor?

  Daibutsu of Todaiji

  You will have no rival

  in stone. Next to you, the Sphinx

  is a soft, shabby has-been.

  Who is Ozymandias?

  Those masks blasted from the cliffs

  of Mt. Rushmore, mere photo-ops,

  have nothing to tell us.

  No comment. They stare

  over our heads, preoccupied,

  looking for something they lost

  in the tall grass of the prairies

  a hundred years ago.

  But you’ve found everything

  ever lost, hid it all again

  under the Bo tree,

  and let us go on looking

  while you sit there, Buddha,

  innocently still, and so huge

  not even the Christ of Corcovado

  could get his arms around you.

  Blind, now that the paint

  has flaked from your eyes,

  you lift one hand: to bless us

  or to feel your way?

 

  Wolves

  A few wolves on the street

  watch us. Only a sneer

  shows us their fangs,

  stained and prematurely blunt.

  We’re not even worth a growl.

  Obsessed with any grass

  more or less green,

  we bleat and rush by--

  and never discern

  through our dim, ruminant haze,

  the sheep in wolves’ clothing

  waiting for a Shepherd.

 

  Memo to Villon

  Illicit brother, black sheep

  fetid with Paris muck,

  scarecrow stuffed with dungeon straw,

  tonsured knife fighter,

  lovesick poet with a slit lip,

  scarred like Al Capone,

  sweet-talking con, whoremonger

  and true believer,

  did wine kill you? Or VD?

  Did you finally hang

  at Montfaucon, Orleans, or Meung,

  nothing but spoiled meat

  sticking to a rickety ladder of bones?

  And did you climb,

  by faith, saved by grace alone,

  from the gibbet to heaven?

  I sit fidgeting in church,

  ashamed to be bored by such niceness

  (but bored--and ashamed)

  and think of you.

  If you sidled in this morning,

  any streetwise usher

  worth his blazer and name badge

  would keep an eye on you.

  That smirk you could never wipe off

  would give you away--

  and how you would heft the basket

  guessing the take within a few cents.

  But here no one values your offering

  of a poem jotted down

  on the back of a pawn ticket

  and given freely--like the widow’s mite.

  Francois Villon

  (c. 1431-1463)

  Chinook

  Everything is loosening,

  finally. The snarls

  in my shoelaces and in my life

  will all come untangled

  if I just do nothing.

  I must learn to sag and slump,

  permit the taut muscles in my neck

  to go slack. Lord,

  I’ve been like this far too long:

  a crazed Chinook struggling

  upstream in the wrong river.

  I’m ready to give up.

  All the way down to the sea,

  unsinkable, I’ll ride

  Your peace through the white water,

  thoughtless as a stick.

  And I promise not to complain

  about losing my grip.

  Sometimes letting go

  is the only way to hold on.

  Soon

  I keep looking up, expecting

  the north star to flicker

  and go out. Soon

  the litmus moon will turn red.

  Do roots suffer from wanderlust?

  Even boulders among the hills

  seem poised to leap.

  How high? How far?

  And how soon?

  I fidget through the days,

  feeling for the first time

  an unsuspected migratory instinct.

  Song

  They sing me; I jingle.

  I’ve become their brimstone ditty,

  top ten, throbbing on

  every boom box in Hell.

  They hiss; they puff their cheeks:

  it’s not a night breeze

  clacking the blinds.

  They whistle me while they work.

  But I’m still silent, tongue-tied--

  a shrug in a wrinkled shirt

  and not a man.

  O Lord, give me back my voice!

  Let me torture them with psalms

  until they howl

  and run scared to their pit

  and stuff their ears with ashes.

  Come tune my harp again

  to its own oddball, unheard-of key.

  You’re my strength and my song.

  I will sing You!

  Dog Day

  Bailey Blue, good morning--

  so far. The sun has not risen

  for either of us

  and the moon has nowhere else to go.

  Sit with me, stranger,

  grand-dog left here for now

  (and maybe later)

  by a daughter with a stray heart.

  Lift your mellow, unknowing eyes

  and unload on me

  all your loneliness and impatience;

  let me scratch you where I itch.

  This back yard is enough,

  California-diverse

  with dry evergreens around the pool,

  apples rotting beneath palm trees,

  and you: purebred Dalmatian

  named for Irish liqueur and a mutt

  your mistress can’t remember

  except for her loss.

  I’m a mutt myself, not much

  of a dad or grandfather;

  but I’ll take you in for now,

  comfort you, and let you be

  all the black and white

  should-have-beens I’ve shredded

  pasted back together

  to make something like love.

  Hyakutake, Mandelstam, God