Three Poems

Uncle Vanya

Forests embellish the land
They bring joy into philosophy
And instill in men a love of beauty
The air refreshed and made moderate
In those lands. Our actors are soft spoken 
As if in a casual and outdated mode of life
In which their words, embellishing their dinners
Are the rewards they hardly without effort 
Work to find. Forests moderate speech 
By way of the soil. We rehearse the same play
For four years but cannot repeat 
What we discover in rehearsal, since the second 
One line of dialogue has been perfected
The moment has already passed, and to try to recapture 
That moment would waste both the present
And the future. In the present the effort to capture
The memory of the perfect line 
Would distract the actors from responding
To each other with the spontaneous ease after which
We strive. In the future it would waste 
An opportunity, a new way the line 
Could be performed. These plots I conceive easily 
They describe action 
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary 
Draw the hours in and together, and the bells are readied
To make their massive effort in time.

Hannah Daughter

*

Dreams I associated with words 
But words failed the dreams
My atmosphere was syrup 
Telling lies, lies spilling out from the mouth of a daughter
So say you have found yourself in a 
Situation of being winded
You could panic
You could fight back
Or you could remember the anger welling up
After you take out the trash
It will be gone
It just subsides under water like water and moss

*

First I will start with a notebook 
And draw slanted lines, at least a hundred
Before I can scale up to the canvas
And on that canvas make a big deal
You who can see it from far away
The kinds of lines that track the snow
Pass over the earth and Chapman Pond
For future rides the roads refresh themselves
As if the work to push off snow 
Pushes us more easily into work
But we were getting somewhere, even if it was slower 
Than the kind of event you could describe as orange

*

and like just before sleep, when our thoughts become involuntary 
to give us a close-up we see an ashtray or a hand 
we remember the screen has no horizons
I hadn’t faked anything, I had just faked a bet
to become a better doctor
as soon as there’s snow in Colorado

*

I have seen my neighbor’s baby in the evenings
at the head of the table being fed 
he is a king of the building with two fists
deserving of meals 
and of this nightly feast 
this little man is no doubt the child 
who would carry the fishes
on a reduced scale, a man in a stage 
passed through quickly then forgotten
the bulky body of their son
comes up to their waists
in paintings from the thirteenth century 

*

Carpool groups expose us to the truth
Like a game of mad libs, they tell you just what
Word you would choose and expose 
You to that word 
A new family with the strands of the last
They impressed themselves upon me
Making forests distinct
With the ice giving way to a light tread
Barbara makes a fuss over walking
Like a generation of icicles growing certain of their futures
Terrible lives have gone seriously wrong
They have made their peace and nodded off

*

vertical windows show part of the town 
the carpet extends down the aisles 
as if to direct us to walk 
down that library aisle
celebration forms fragments in the living room 
negative corners disturbed by blue

*

in a soundproof booth I asked questions of you 
how would you teach teenagers how to drive
or how to dance, only using a book of photographs 
I wondered if I could approximate my mood
in the four minutes before noon 
I’m in this easy chair reading a golden book
so that’s my special thing in the living room 
it’s as big as my table

*

the carriage dog stops time and other dogs 
new zealand stays green 
green in the movie measures 30 years
it captures the girl who gives a spanish dance

*

Stop staring, stop listening 
Help me out and let me leave
Through at least ten transparent windows
I caught some eyes in the other house 
Silver noise produced silver bells 
A procession of people with something to learn
During the exam the whole classroom watching
I dropped my chalk and ran straight out 
My whole life the past few years I had said 
I had wanted to be a teacher
But filled with grief and the pure memory 
Of dead and drowned sisters 
I’ve dropped my shoes from the internet 
And finally made it out and to the street.
Avenues speak to me 
Of seven possibilities and their 
Tender feelings
Toward me who they have known 
And named 
Jane 

*

It isn’t easy to wake up Jane 

The sky matters

Skaters articulate grey 

*

Skaters articulate grey from every angle
Jugs tell of flowers 
They make into people leaning
From every angle an emerging jug 
Oranges determine and are determine
By shades of grey the sky matters
Out my window and making one mess 
The mess would have me stained
With grey pencil marks 
Drawings of elephants as rewards
For good behavior in Barbara’s childhood
Rather than a fit 
For the car wouldn’t start.

Screen Memory

I remembered one woman: the two women dying
was one woman’s death.
I didn’t know how to ask her why she was crying 
but I knew we were worse 
than the other women we joined. 
I kept asking who else died then. 
I kept asking was it Isabelle but Isabelle 
is still alive in France
the former fiancé of my uncle who later died.
But my mother insisted there was nobody who had died
she had forgotten. Everyone who died 
she remembers dying. But I knew she had forgotten
who the real woman was
who died not long before I wrecked that feather
pulling the vane backwards
so that the memory of two dead women 
flowed in multiple directions.