Friday night with big hairy men
they could be riding Harleys
some wear bandanas as they peer through
large community college telescopes
wide silver cylinders pointed up to dotted dark
between bites of steak and cheese
they ask if I want to see Saturn
she’s clear tonight
they say like sailors looking at the moon
like Saturn sings opera
I sniff the air for beer or pot, but only smell
their sandwiches mixed with May night
they do this every Friday, search the sky
for celestial bodies, for heaven
from earth I join their shabbat
the ring, I see it, planet nestled within
I forget to breathe, then remember
that I too exist
He Pretends To Be A Poet
He pretends to be a poet, but does he even like poetry?
Sawgrass shallows, dark forests and trellises, the
language of description, erudition, evoked through so
much longing to be heard, to be read. But what does
it mean? Instead, he writes about what he knows,
which most nights seems like not a lot, sometimes silence
or that most mundane of all arts, parenting, being a dad,
or he reads half pages of zen books while munching on
frozen blueberries, while trying to remember the pickup time
for ballet. No, he doesn’t live in Paris or London, or
New York, although San Francisco is a writerly city, that frigid
foggy place where he was once young, and a real poet
in his studio apartment with Chinese takeout night after night,
the J Church train rumbling, urban soundtrack mixed with
Sonny Rollins, oh yes, he was cool, back in the day, but now
he sits in the kitchen, barefoot, wondering where his socks are.
Modern Homework
Sitting with my daughter and her iPad, we
fill in boxes that pose questions about
Greek Civilization. Art = statues, writing=
Plato, upper classes made laws, were
citizens, slaves did what they were told to
do. Box after box on the screen, covering
500 BC to 146 BC, until Rome conquers
Athens. Less than memorization, we cut and
paste words from other screens into hers. I
imagine Socrates in the agora, watching us,
wondering what happened, how we stopped
interrogating the machine, our flesh fingers,
puppets, moved to reduce everything to this.
Camp Fire California 2018
all the air isn’t air
ashes, dusty bones, charred remains
houses gone in flames
owners up with wind
Paradise lost
all the air isn’t air
hangs like fog, toxic smog
i can’t see the bridge, they say
san franciscans miles away
Paradise lost
all the air isn’t air
masks they wear masks
white covered faces after
the climate changed
Paradise lost
all the air isn’t air
endless clicking on screens
will the forecast change?
smoke only smoke
Paradise lost
Before Bedroom Light
I wake before light
before bits of sun streak
under shades, memory whole
in this place, this silence
I should thank you more
for life shared
where diapers once were
pitter-patter of feet
us tucked together in
warm white sheets
Hiroshima
smudges, they became smudges, places where people
used to stand, sit, exist, before the blast, easier to
see shadows than the melted faces, missing eyes
enola gay, little boy, happy nursery rhyme in the sky
where men dropped the end of life, bulbous war container
children in the death zone like charcoal burned with no grill
truman’s august angst, questions like grant’s total war to
conclude inferno, force bushido to surrender their young kamikaze
suicide desperation, a nation’s emperor unwilling to stop suffering
until finished, after nagasaki, inception of nuclear era
destruction, non-fiction, we know, we know, but better
to kiss strangers in streets than think of erasing future’s time
Pontiac
my daughter already talks about the
car she wants an Audi, new, shiny
that her friends will admire like
her iPhone with apps that take
wrinkles out of faces in photos
I tell her about my maroon
dented station wagon, Pontiac
1986 Michigan-made to barely
last past puberty
I parked it with pride
my piece of remembering
that life is unreliable
always ready to
start then stop
blind to history my daughter
will never know the struggle of
driving a car that quit, gave up
for her they don’t exist
like rotary phones
like an indigenous name
turned into painted steel
Paraguayan Heaven
Sitting shotgun in a truck, 3 of us squeezed in the front (Cayo, Ernesto, Me), no seat belts, sipping yerba mate. I’m speaking Spanish, asking questions about recycling plastic and filtering water with chlorine. Cayo drives, points his finger up at the windshield, motioning to each vehicle we pass on the two lane Caazapa highway. Yvaga, he says, cielo, heaven. That’s where you will go when you die, his finger silently communicates. Watching this ritual I see the other drivers smiling at us, their fingers also pointing upward, telling us the same thing.
Cayo asks me about California. The Paraguayan campo has no cable TV, no CNN, no movie theaters. He doesn’t question me about celebrities or our president, he asks about the land, trees, animals, what the air smells like, feels like. I tell him about non-native eucalyptus trees, how they suck water out of the earth, take nourishment away from other plants. He understands. The conversation is easy, like the cumulus clouds that float like cotton above us.
Ernesto speaks and at first I think I comprehend, the cadence sounds the same, but then I’m lost in a time before Spanish, before South American roads. I close my eyes for a few seconds, a lightness takes over. I’m hearing a Guarani language not of an evangelizing church or of plundering capitalism, but of a people, a community. A few minutes later we slow down, pick up a hitchhiker, normal in this part of Paraguay. I see the guy sitting in the truck bed, a large heavy sack between his legs. A man on a journey, we both watch the road, I look out the front, he looks out the back.
When the Roses at 7-Eleven Spoke
We sit in this white bucket, usually once a year to
rest on the counter near lottery tickets and cash
register. In warm water, spayed, our thorns are gone,
left somewhere in Ecuador, swept off the floor,
before they packed us tight to fly far away, then taken
in trucks all over paved roads into rectangular buildings
where fluorescent lights are always on. We watch them
buy beer, cigarettes, some stare at us in wonder that we
have petals, red color, were once alive. They touch,
fondle, rustle our leaves, remembering a moment
with us, that wasn’t us. Others grab us, a dozen at a time,
the number of true love, when money doesn’t matter at all.
Days go by and we start to droop, no one smiles anymore,
wilted, jilted, until one day, they just throw us away.
When The Glass Water Bottle Spoke
I see all the plastic bottles filled and shiny,
pasted labels over clear water within. I’ve
never been jealous of that crinkle sound,
sad little ache after the last drop is gone.
Always wondered what disposable meant,
dented, crushed, twisted, one on top of the
next, in bins, trashcans, on streets. Others
tossed off boats, or tide taken away from sand
into sea. Gulped by curious pelicans hungry
for more than digestive death.
Me, I like lips that touch my rim again and
again, tender sips when I’m brimming with cool
life-giving liquid. But I’m a romantic, I believe
in everlasting love, that you will want me forever.
Daniel W. Polk 