YET AGAIN

She reads to him every night,
her eyelids as gummy as bread dough,
the words trickling out like wooden soldiers,
precise, regimented,
inflection as faded as bleached wallpaper

And his eyes locked on hers’
seeing but not hearing;
or hearing but not seeing,
watching the words form on  her lips
like ice crystals on glass.
His legs stir beneath the covers,
more reflexive than enthralled

She suppresses a yawn,
repetition surrendering to boredom,
the story unchanging night after night,
like the stars in the evening sky,
permanent and familiar,
yet unattainable in their scope

She bookmarks the page in the book,
knowing it matters not to him,
each page the same as the last,
the spoken words just one more exercise
of synchronicity between larynx and lips
but it matters to her,
for each passing page
is a measure of her own sanity

ESMERALDA

Esmeralda is a funny sounding name

like
the metallic groan
of faulty plumbing

or
a broken screen door
swiveling on its hinges

or
the squawk of
rain-drenched sneakers

When  I was a child of
five or so,
with ringlets of honey-toned hair
swiveling past my ears

there was a neighbor on our block
who, whenever he would see me,
would call out in that derisive sing-song
peculiar to all bullies

Hey, Esmeralda!
Hi, Esmeralda!

And I at age five or so
wanted to shrivel away
in my own skin
and throw up from my first
bilious taste of humiliation

And thanks to the thoughtlessly cruel
taunting by an adult,
this five year old learned

how to crawl inward for protection,
and how to distrust the human gaze,
                                                                                                       
and how to view oneself
as an oddity

He’s probably dead after all these years,
but in those odd moments
that hang like distended organs,

I can hear his voice
as wickedly sharp as a scythe
slicing my ego with the thrust
of every syllable
calling out:
Hey, Esmeralda!

My question has always been:
Why Esmeralda?
Why not Bob or Jane?
Mary or Charlie?
I guess he chose it
for only one reason:

Esmeralda is a funny sounding name

SILENT BALLET

We are like a silent ballet,
predetermined movement without cadence,
cues missed, leaps untimed,
unbalanced spins, misstep
followed by misstep, and yet
we push our way through the choreography,
our bodies telling the story
the music refuses to play,
our ears incapable of hearing,
nonetheless: we defy gravity
with every leap, a tribute
to our synchronicity with silence

GOING BACK

It stands its ground
like a disheveled drifter
wallowing in hard times,
its best years reduced
to a fading memory vanishing
like dew under a July sun

This is the house of my childhood,
the repository of happier times,
careless and carefree,
imprinted on my brain
like a recurring DVD

Over half a century ago
is when I spent my final night there,
a kid of twelve, uprooted
like an impudent dandelion,
only to be transplanted across the city
to our new home

Like an old man,
this house has shrunk with age,
a sliver of the stature imprinted
on a child’s memory. It looks
weary now, the siding faded and peeling,
shingles missing, front steps
rotting and buckled as if from fatigue

The lawn that I scampered across
is overrun with crabgrass and bare patches,
symptoms of neglect,
like the house behind it

I lack the courage to knock on the door
and request from the current owners
a tour of the interior, for fear
of what I might find. I risk my

recollection being repudiated
like a drugged hallucination,
a young boy’s idealized memories
mocked and trampled and as parched
as the front lawn

I close my eyes, turn my back, preferring
 to hold on to my sixty year old vision,
freshly painted and lushly landscaped,
infused with laughter and the scent
of Christmas trees and birthday candles,

because if I step inside, what other
memories of my youth will I find
tattered and soiled,
neglected and false?

CRYSTAL FALLS

Morning mist over the lake
          the frosty breath of the northwoods
          rolling like a sigh over the water
          chilled and quiescent, eagles overhead
gliding in curlique patterns
over the treetops, the birches

as tall and trim as totems, their ashen trunks
          staunchly defying Canadian winds.
          Only the drone of motorboats
          squander the stillness, fishermen,
poles in hand, heave lines into the snapping air,
eyes fixed on the water, their minds

clear as the sky, wait patiently for the kiss
          of northern pike upon their lures.
          To the west, faintly, like a
           growling stomach, storm clouds
gather and groan, delineating one more chapter
in the saga of  Crystal Falls.

STEEL MAN

He was a man of steel
                my father

Thirty-nine years pouched in the searing belly
                of the thirty-six inch plate mill

an acrid finger poking from the shore of Lake Michigan
                in an act of brazen defiance

For four decades he endured
                the blistering breath of white hot ingots

as they slithered through the mill
                performing their reptilian undulations

of semi-liquid menace
                with temperatures so intense

it felt like your skin was charring
                and your bones were melting like so much wax

Every day his lungs filled with iron ore dust
                as dense as the canopy of fog

hanging over the predawn lake
                and every week a different shift

scrambled his circadian rhythms
                until night and day lost their identities

causing my brother and I to live in dread
                of waking him in the middle of the afternoon

when the unforgiving night shift
                cheated him of valued rest

For thirty years he carried a scar
                on his right leg, a permanent memento

he often joked about as if it were a mere insect bite                
                before admitting to my brother and I

right after his retirement that an errant crane
                had nearly cost him a limb

Now the mill is cold and deserted
                an oxidized corpse on the bank of Lake Michigan

and as if their fates were forever bound and dissoluble
                they have both succumbed to nature’s forces

the cold, unflinching mill
                and that indefatigable man of steel
                                                                      my father