17 Growing up poems

As the guests arrive at our son’s party they gather in the living room— short men, men in first grade with smooth jaws and chins. Hands in pockets, they stand around jostling, jockeying for place, small fights breaking out and calming. One says to another How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So? They eye each other, seeing themselves tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their throats a lot, a room of small bankers, they fold their arms and frown.I could beat you up, a seven says to a six, the midnight cake, round and heavy as a turret behind them on the table. My son, freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks, chest narrow as the balsa keel of a model boat, long hands cool and thin as the day they guided him out of me, speaks up as a host for the sake of the group. We could easily kill a two-year-old, he says in his clear voice. The other men agree, they clear their throats like Generals, they relax and get down to playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

It starts in sadness and bewilderment, The self-reflexive iconography Of late adolescence, and a moment When the world dissolves into a fable Of an alternative geography Beyond the threshold of the visible. And the heart is a kind of mute witness, Abandoning everything for the sake Of an unimaginable goodness Making its way across the crowded stage Of what might have been, leaving in its wake The anxiety of an empty page. Thought abhors a vacuum. Out of it came A partially recognizable shape Stumbling across a wilderness, whose name, Obscure at first, was sooner or later Sure to be revealed, and a landscape Of imaginary rocks and water And the dull pastels of the dimly lit Interior of a gymnasium. Is art the mirror of its opposite, Or is the world itself a mimesis? This afternoon at the symposium Someone tried to resurrect the thesis That a poem is a deflected sigh. And I remembered a day on a beach Thirty-five years ago, in mid-July, The summer before I left for college, With the future hanging just out of reach And constantly receding, like the edge Of the water floating across the sand. Poems are the fruit of the evasions Of a life spent trying to understand The vacuum at the center of the heart, And for all the intricate persuasions They enlist in the service of their art, Are finally small, disappointing things. Yet from them there materializes A way of life, a way of life that brings The fleeting pleasures of a vocation Made up of these constant exercises In what still passes for celebration, That began in a mood of hopelessness On an evening in a dormitory Years and years ago, and seemed to promise A respite from disquietude and care, But that left only the lovely story Of a bright presence hanging in the air.

. . . It was the summer I fucked up    the summer    fucked up   me fucked up   a fuck-up in the summer   & I spent time laying under stars too much   time I wasted  the stars  you lied to me under the stars & the summer was endless   the summer endless   it was an endless summer . . . . . . endless   & I said things like   “If I ever see you again” but   I’ll never see you again   I never saw you again   I made sure of that & I circled   the lake   I went in circles    the lake was endless   it was summer   I fucked up   too much time & I never saw   you again   & I . . . . . . circled & it was   endless & the stars    lied to me   the summer light   moving so slowly   I saw the summer light move   endless & when I see you   the trees will cluster   green rage green   trees raging with love   endless love & I’ll never see you   again   I made sure of that . . . . . . wasted under the stars   the slow summer   light   the endless fuck-up & you never again   you lovely   you summer you   everything that is now never again   whatever that may be   the rage I loved   me under the stars then & now   endless   wasting away me   haze wandering around endless . . . . . . haze  it was endless  too much time & you   lied to me & I    said things like I can’t describe the air on my skin can you   can you please   I know it was important & the light from stars   moved   so slowly   & you   moved off forever   how can you save everything   everything   important   endless . . . . . . summer light   the fuck-up   the lake a circle   circling   the lake how can you save everything   how can I   answer you the light of summer stars I’m sorry  for my light   the endlessness of my endless & my   fuck-up the me that is   now   looking back & thinking   & this summer circling . . .

we were riding out to an abandoned farmhouse on his pearl black Triumph deaf to the sound of bleating sheep that was when he told me it was the same model James Dean had swapped for three days after they’d finished filming East of Eden I tried to tell him that was cool but he didn’t act like he’d heard me so I hugged him tight and set my head on his shoulder and watched how the yellow moon was shifting behind the pines like the face of a jailbird he’d told me before that his wife knew he didn’t swing her way but she was keeping quiet about it for their kid’s sake we rumbled into the dry grass and started cutting through the cornstalks into a big clearing where he kicked the bike stand and told me to get off he tossed his chrome aviators and then we started our hike to the farmhouse which was sagging in the field opposite of us we were quiet on the way like a couple of thieves about to rob someone blind I stood back as he tore a warped door off the barn and flung it into the gravel inside the air was dusty and thick and the moon was still with us cocked behind a streaked window like we’d traded places and now we were the jailbirds serving a lifetime sentence without parole John pulled off his steel-toe boots and told me to wait for him up in the hayloft I left my loafers there and climbed a wood ladder until I was looking into the eyes of a great horned owl he kept shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what was about to happen I was going to be John’s first but while I was gathering the wet straw I smelled smoke and slid back down the ladder that was when I saw the fire licking the crossbeams and ran outside John was passing through the wheat like a final judgment his figure was muscled with flame and I kept silent as he reached for a head of grain and burned it to the ground

i think i'm okay most days not all days some days being sixteen is fine some days it's too heavy to carry today was medium which is better than last month

I drove her to college three hours we didn't talk much at the dorm i carried boxes and met her roommate and said okay well and she said yeah okay dad and we hugged in the hallway and i drove three hours home

Twenty-five and nothing is decided i thought it would be by now i thought i'd have more of an outline turns out the outline comes later or not at all and you're doing it anyway