Choosing Your Clothes

The day you died, the sun came
up (as expected), and I slept later
than usual. When Katherine called
to tell me you were beating
the windows out of Sammie's do-it-all
trailer, I told her to relax. There
were things about you she could not
know, I said.

I could not know the next morning
would find me pulling your husband
away from your body, dead now
at least eight hours.

Death is not lovely like the trailing
ivy that covered the chain-linked fence
that fenced you in. Not easy and light
like the breeze that lifted your hair
and let it fall softly across your face
that last day in May when you told
me you were better.

I saw a picture of you in the house
when we were trying to find something
to bury you in. You were young and small
and smiling. Katherine and Glinda kept looking
for the three piece outfit, the one with black
slacks and a vest and a long-sleeved white
silk shirt. The outfit they felt best represented
the you who would be on display for friends
and family.

I was overcome and unable to breathe
in that small house, utilities turned off,
boxes all over the floors. And I felt
I was suffocating in the slow way a person
does when they think nothing they do
makes a difference.

I excused myself from that room and your life.

Today, I have only this: a purse
with five pairs of sunglasses; a memo
to yourself (with a call list that included
me); some small change, a few ink pens
and your address book.

I have thought about calling the numbers
in your book so many times since that day,
but always reason wins out and I decide
there is no point in calling.

I still can't bring myself to take flowers
to your stone. To make more of you in death
than I could in life.

************************************************


Juat looking over some old poems. I'd like to do
something with this one.

Bad day today.

Wish I didn't have class tonight.

Dropping the euphemism

He has five children, I'm papa
to a hundred pencils.
I bought the chair he sat in

from a book of chairs,
staplers and spikes
that let me play Vlad the Impaler

with invading memos. When I said
I have to lay you off
a parallel universe was born

in his face, one where flesh
is a loose shirt
taken to the river and beaten

against rocks. Just
by opening my mouth I destroyed
his faith he's a man

who can think honey-glazed ham
and act out the thought
with plastic or bills. We sat.

I stared at my hands, he stared
at the wall staring at my hands.
I said other things

about the excellent work he'd done
and the cycles of business
which are like

the roller-coaster thoughts
of an oscilloscope. All this time
I saw the eyes of his wife

which had always been brown
like almonds but were now brown
like the crust of bread. We walked

to the door, I shook his hand,
felt the bones pretending
to be strong. On his way home

there was a happy song
because de Sade invented radio,
the window was open, he saw

delphinium but couldn't remember
the name. I can only guess.
Maybe at each exit

that could have led his body
to Tempe, to Mars, he was tempted
to forget his basketball team

of sons, or that he ever liked
helping his wife clean carrots,
the silver sink turning orange.

Running's natural to most animals
who aren't part
of a lecture series on Nature's

Dead Ends. When I told him,
I saw he was looking for a place
in his brain to hide

his brain. I tried that later
with beer, it worked until I stood
at the toilet to make my little

waterfall, and thought of him
pushing back from a bar
to go make the same noise.

Bob Hicok

*********************************************

Found this poem in a box I brought home
from my office. Kept it long ago when I was
counseling people who had been terminated
from employment.

Don't think I ever read it to anyone.

My dismissal was not quite so nice,
and I don't think the person who let me go
left my office feeling anything other than
worry about workplace violence (she brought
up counseling twice during the whole ordeal).

She is so very, very not connected.
To this life. To the universe. To love.

I think I feel something close to pity.

I know I feel violated. I know I was unfairly
released. I know my being aches.

Not sure about the line breaks in the poem.
They seem random to me, but maybe that's
the feeling Hicok wanted to convey.
The random nature of these things.

Sunday in Macon

My mother, nearly blind
from cataracts, follows me
through the courtyard. The pool
is covered in its winter black tarp.

Though I assume she cannot see
this closure of a season, she finds
a reason to remark: "How many
little feet must have trod this path

all summer." And I think, "People
see what they want to see even when
they cannot see." But I only follow
her comment with some helpful

advice. This way, Mom. Step up
here, turn right there, the coffee's
over here, the doughnuts are old,
the milk outdated at the Deluxe Buffett.

And she just follows me, listens to my
advice like I'm a sage or a saint. Gives
herself in her stockinged feet to my
every suggestion. I even tell her

which container is the strawberry
jelly, which button is caffeinated coffee,
which chair is clear of crumbs
and relatively safe to sit in.

As small as a world and as large as alone


Bad day yesterday

and totally drained today. Going to have lunch
with a friend then come home and start packing.

My mom, my youngest and I will leave for Naples
tomorrow. The trip has been planned for months.
I wasn't worried about the cost when I planned the trip.

I was working. Thankfully, most of it has been paid for already.

I want to just will myself to let go of all of this nonsense
for the next 9 days so I can just enjoy seeing my sister,
my nieces, and my new great nephew.

The ocean has always been such a calming presence,
so I plan to just lie on the beach all morning and into
the afternoon.

Just lie there and look out at the water
and think about how small I feel in the presence of such
a great expanse.

And hopefully I'll find a shell that will sing to me
so sweetly I won't remember my troubles (thank
you ee).

My hat's off to you, mr cummings!:



maggie & millie & molly & may
. . . e. e. cummings

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

Was advised

by friends
to subpoena my personnel file.

Geez. Don't think like that. Need to think
like that now.

Never a write up. Never a complaint.
But there are bad bad bad people out there
who would like nothing better than to see
someone else suffer.

What a bunch of bunk.

This whole thing I mean. Not the advice.
The advice is given from others not so naive--
others who actually care.

One thousand Eight hundred and Twenty Miles to Dodge and Back (Including a Tornado)

Wow. Amazed today and riding high.

Billy Collins alone was worth the price of admission,
the hotel cost for 4 nights, the cost of all the food I ate
and wine I drank. All the tanks of gas I burned and the tornado
I barely missed(had to get off the road and didn't
make it to Jersey until Friday morning).

More about it later. So much I want to write.
So much I don't want to forget.

Being there was one of the most inspiring events
of my life.

I even left the troubling letter below alone. Honest.
It didn't enter my mind until I started home.