Instead of can­dles, cake, and paper hats
(which, let’s be real, would have been bet­ter)
I thought I’d walk you down a fun­ny path,
(also : much eas­i­er than writ­ing a letter)

but sit­ting here, too much time has passed
And now I’ve found all this regret :
birth­days missed, oth­ers dimmed, plans
changed, par­ties rushed, and I forget :

Did I hug you on your sev­enth ? Kiss
you on your eighth ? I remem­ber chas­ing
you across a play­ground on your fifth.
Or maybe num­ber four. Cam­eras flashing,

And a lit­tle gift I knew you’d like. I
was bad at sur­pris­es and you
were bad at act­ing sur­prised.
I know the trope : aging Pop looks

back and asks where’d it all go ?
Cat’s in the cra­dle and all that jazz.
I see you less now and there are days
When I can’t recall the last time we spoke.

But here’s a thing. You’re twen­ty-nine today
and that’s how old I was when you were born.
Does that mat­ter ? I don’t know,
But I think it should, if only to say

There’s a point to this father and son­ning,
This end and begin­ning, hop­ing then dim­ming :
a bal­ance between the past and pre­tend­ing
to know what tor­ren­tial future is coming.

Well, I start­ed soft then got soft­er,
but there’s this : You’re a bet­ter man
Than I’d hoped you’d be, and my hopes were grand.
Hap­py Birth­day, my son, from your Father.

This morn­ing I chose YouTube over poet­ry—
cook­ing videos most­ly, and specif­i­cal­ly
the fold­ed Japan­ese omelette called tamagoyaki. 

Not because I was hun­gry, though I am —
I’m try­ing to lose weight
and fast­ing is part of my plan —
but because I could relate
to the aes­thet­ics : thin lay­ers
of eggs, dashi, sweet mirin wine,
daikon gar­nish, soy for fla­vor,
served like nori sushi in a line. 

I’m drawn to cook­ing because my life lacks a plan.
Every day is a cre­ation ; I nev­er know if I can
get it togeth­er, so it’s eas­i­er to watch Jacques Pepin. 

Above me are warm bel­lies in the waves.
Above them are boughs of trees
I can’t name.
Below me are fin­gers of the dead.
Beneath them are the black dreams
of lost worlds. 

We are safe in these meters of sea
if we do not float to the sur­face
or sink to the bottom. 

Your moth­er, your father, your baby
grow­ing old in your arms.
I can’t hold you against the tide.

At twelve he was already taller than some boys in high school, with his stringy arms and long hair that made him look old­er until you saw his freck­les and his bangs. He was so thin his shoul­der blades poked under his t‑shirt like dinosaur wings. He usu­al­ly walked home with his friends, but this morn­ing he was jumped in the bath­room by some kids who kicked him in the balls, repeat­ed­ly, until he puked. He wait­ed until they left then washed out his mouth and splashed water on his face, and since this was the days when a boy could leave school any­time he want­ed, he went out the front gate. 

He loped around a park­ing lot and an alley near the school, wast­ing time until he could go home with­out his moth­er ask­ing ques­tions. When he thought it was noon, he ate his lunch on a bench under an oak out­side a head shop. He could hear a pin­ball machine get­ting slapped and banged inside. He looked through the the screen door and rec­og­nized a kid his own age with no shirt play­ing the table and smok­ing a cig­a­rette. He stepped away and head­ed home through the yuc­ca and stuc­co and cicadas. 

The orchard was too dan­ger­ous to cut across alone. Full of cre­osote and poi­son oak and an old man with a gun. He’d have to climb Mul­ber­ry. At the bot­tom, there was a girl with a red mouth sit­ting on a cin­derblock wall. She twirled a mus­tard flower in her hand, and crushed mus­tard and ice plant lay around her feet. 

“Hey, can you car­ry me?” 

“What?”

“I can’t walk so good today. I need a ride.” He walked toward her with­out know­ing why. Her lips were open like a robe. She was wasn’t a girl. She was a woman, and when she told him her name, he didn’t believe her. He’d nev­er met any­one else with it. 

“That’s my mother’s name.” 

“She’s got taste.” When she hopped off the wall he saw her spine was curved and her back twist­ed into a large hump. She took half steps toward him. “Usu­al­ly I can get up okay, but the sun’s too hot or something.” 

“That’s why it’s called Sun­land.” “No shit. Bend down.” He did as she said, and she climbed on his back. He teetered in a fog of per­fume and warm breath. Her breasts heaved against his back. 

“You wan­na job ? I can’t pay you, but I can sing.” 

She didn’t sing. There was no sound on Mul­ber­ry Dri­ve. It was hard enough to climb alone, and it got steep­er as it went. He stum­bled and squeezed her thighs to keep her from slip­ping. She clamped her hands around his neck. He couldn’t breathe, but he didn’t didn’t want her to fall. He want­ed her not to fall. Already a few hous­es up the hill and he could feel sweat run down his sides. He want­ed her to not fall. 

Mul­ber­ry was a wall. Above it only sky. His Achilles’ felt like they might snap. He stepped off the side­walk to walk in the street. Her voice vibrat­ed in his jaw. 

“Smart move. I knew I picked the right guy.” 

It didn’t feel like they were get­ting any clos­er to the top. Her weight shift­ed, and she start­ed to slide out of his hands. He leaned over, his head a few inch­es from the road, to keep her on his back, and when he saw their reflec­tion in the chrome wheel of a VW, it looked like her body had swal­lowed him whole. 

There is a plumb-black flower in my yard, about the size of my thumb but nar­row­er and pret­ti­er. It’s on a stalk of Sun­down­er Moun­tain Flax and it is the white hot cen­ter of a month of hum­ming­bird wars that take place every June. Juve­nile male hum­ming­birds stake out their ter­ri­to­ry in the late spring, and for what­ev­er rea­son, this par­tic­u­lar plant is high­ly regard­ed among these thugs. If I sit on the chaise longue in the back­ground for any amount of time in the morn­ing or in the late after­noon I am treat­ed to a free-for-all cage fight with­out the cages. Their calls are quick clicks, but if you’ve ever heard them slowed down, you’ll know they sound like trilling whales. They dive bomb each oth­er, drink from the flax flow­ers, blast off and blast back, and some­times they’re so wrapped up in the busi­ness at hand, they don’t real­ize they’re float­ing right next to me for a few sec­onds, until they do, and then they’re back in com­bat. These bat­tles usu­al­ly last a minute or two, but some­time they go on and on. There’s nev­er a clear win­ner, at least to me, and while they’re obvi­ous­ly engaged in seri­ous stuff, the dance of light and motion is a salve against my days.

In the hottest bar in Wisconsin
the singer sings about blind white panic
and crys­talline faces com­ing in from the cold.
The dying singer sings about love,
and I can see the band behind her
sigh­ing into the lights.

In the morn­ing, red crows bang
the high-water pylons and fold back into the sky.
The mild sounds : a moist wing, a fin­ger in a trout,
the girl with the hiss­ing lantern
comes down the stairs like water under ice.
The pines are deep in snow, but they don’t know it yet.

One year, I thought I’d try writ­ing a nov­el in Novem­ber. This is the entire result of that her­culean effort :

Lordez is the girl, the one that was at Lisa’s baby’s par­ty, Lordez Rodriguez, which you’d think her mom could’ve said out loud to make sure it didn’t rhyme – no, not Rodriguez, it’s some­thing-ez though. When she told me I want­ed to say “Pleasedez to meetez you.” I think I did say it actu­al­ly, but she didn’t hear me because the rain sound­ed like some­one was hit­ting her car with ham­mers. We didn’t talk at the par­ty, but when it start­ed rain­ing I was ask­ing every­body for a ride and she felt sor­ry for me. We didn’t talk in the car either because the rain was like ham­mers, except she said her name was Lordez Her­nan­dez, and she’s the girl I was talk­ing about the oth­er day.