Squash

Summer Squash

Near the end, when my mother

was mostly cotton pajamas

and bones, we could see the tumor

rise out of her belly, as big and round

as a prize-winning tomato.

With every heartbeat, the thing

pulsed its own defiant life,

pushed its roots deeper

into a pancreas and liver no longer

rich enough to be good soil.

My brother, the pharmacist, found

it first while turning mom,

put his hand on the swollen fruit

like he might have felt

for his children, kicking with life,

safe in their first dark and secret

place.  He tried to talk me

into touch, but—watching his hand

rise and fall—I could not bear

such labor, as clinical and intimate

as sex.  When all was said

and done, I returned to my home

states away, to the summer garden I had

hurriedly stuck in the ground—eggplants,

peppers, tomatoes, and squash.

Every previous year, the squash vines

spread green through their end

of the bed, bloomed yellow flowers

as bright as the morning sun, sprouted

a squash or two, then suddenly

wilted and died—I determined this year

would not be the same.  According to

Extension Service Publication 2348,

“Insect Pests of the Home Vegetable Garden,”

I have squash vine borers, clearwing

moths whose larvae chew through

the stems of otherwise healthy plants.

Remedies include “chemical prevention

of egg deposit” and “manual removal

of larval young.”  Bore holes tell me

I’m too late for prophylactic action,

so I take a penknife to the garden,

search plant stems for protruding frass

and a bulge, cut as gently as a lover

along the axis until I see the hidden

living worm, gut the fat white thing,

and, with the blade, scrape the bastard out.

Phoenix

The Visit

July, Phoenix

            c. a long time ago

I.

                                               

Wednesday, I step from the plane

into heat     I am

in the belly of an old bird

            trying to rise

from flame

She sees me first

and smiles

            the same old toothy grin

We hug, make

mental adjustments

            age enhance memories

fast forward  hair-color  weight  skin

Later, at her house

in the gravel backyard

            I see a Bird of Paradise

blooms  orange  yellow and  red

flowers along a stem

fashioned

of fire

When we talk

I make myself clear

about how we again

can be dear and dear     When I am confused

            I find it helpful

to be very clear     She sits

quietly and seems

            to  listen  think  hear

II.

Next morning, when we walk

I see saguaros

            as tall as telephone poles

She says they cannot

grow arms

until they are 100 years old

            I think, such a long time

to wait for limbs and love

In her refrigerator

she keeps a case of Snapple

            a cornucopia of juice:

mango madness  kiwi lemonaide

tropical punch

The first full day

            I drink five

Friday, we drive to Sedona

where bloodshot rocks rise

from the ground     Windowless castles

            made of trapped sun

and pressed heat

In hushed reverance

we enter the Chapel of the Cross

for the cliff-side view     Monks chant

            on tape     Later, we eat

at Taco Bell

III.

Early Saturday, Williams, AZ

            We ride a steam train north

to the Grand Canyon's

southern rim

with two of her friends

            Beth and Pete

I hold my camera

            forward out the window

and photograph the train

disappearing into juniper and sage

She identifies a cloud

and explains the season

of monsoon rain

            In front of us Beth plays

with Pete's hair

            while he sleeps

The whistle blows

when we arrive at the edge

            where canyon falls off

into canyon and the river

            runs out of sight

at the bottom of thousand-foot walls

While Pete and Beth

eat at Bright Angel Lodge

we walk the rim to Yavapai Point

            in drizzle and mist

Four deer cross our path

            like apparitions

of people we might have been

IV.

Sunday, driving

back to her desert town

            she says this

and this and this and this

            I say, agreed

That evening, she naps

and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps

            and sleeps as if my visit

has made her very tired

I watch a documentary on the Titanic

            in which it sinks

V.

Monday morning, Sun City

            We eat granola and split

the last cold Snapple

            I surprise her

with a flash photo as she walks

through her bedroom door     She appears

            startled like a rare bird

caught off guard

by the camera’s mechanical

            and shuttered desire

           

At the Phoenix airport

            in front of my gate

before I step from dry heat

into the body of a plane

            we  embrace and stop

one moment to lock mental images

in place:  brown hair  green eyes

the curve of a cheek

            the final expression

on the other's face

Uxmal

Uxmal

In the Yucatan at Uxmal, the full moon

lights gray stones, shines behind palm leaves

on great hewn stones.  Cautious as an ape,

the moon slips through sky.  Whiter than bone,

the round stone hangs above temple and earth—

bright, tethered captive in the eyes of a lizard.

Mayans call the iguana, mystic lizard—

silent temple guardian by day, but in full moon-

light, he jerks and jumps about the hot earth,

singing lunar songs, dancing on palm leaves,

praising leaf, stone, and sky.  He holds a bone

to the stars, remains of some ancient man or ape.

How can the quiet iguana praise life—ape

wild abandon and zeal—so unlike a lizard?

He sees the tourists walk with old bone

steps in the great halls of Uxmal, no moon

fury ever in their eyes.  Immune to leaves

and stars, they sweat, grow fat, ignore the earth.

I came to Uxmal—hottest place on earth.

Sunburned, young, I felt the eyes of an ape

at every turn:  picking through cold leaves

of lettuce at lunch, watching breathless lizards

in the sun, climbing stone steps to the moon.

He was the sad, howling flesh on my every bone.

I have seen the beauty of sculpted bone,

lying in the high green grass of the earth,

shaped smooth and white like the curved moon,

seen in myself both precious bone and ape.

I have walked like tourists and heard lizards

sing—a motion in the wind, in the leaves.

But I am more than bone or ape, I am leaves—

their delicate tracing of veins like bone,

the sound of the wind in them like lizard

song.  They turn yellow and red, fall to earth

and burn in a slow fire of musk like apes

smell—they flame in the shadow of the moon.

I am like the lyric leaves plunging to the earth,

full and faceted—beauty, bones, stone, ape—

Sing lizard, praise our lives to the white moon.

Sestina written in James Dickey's year-long seminar in verse composition during grad school (1990s) at University of South Carolina.

Cluck

The Chicken House at Night

A shiny, black beetle with a curved horn

like a trumpet stands on a post, and the air—

full of summer and dark—wraps sentinel corn

in a tailored cloak, dress-grade and uniform.

Crepe myrtle limbs secure far boundary lines,

and pink blooms flare under the vigilant stare

of the moon.  Heavy toads parade from ivy vines,

patrolling grassy fields, vast beneath the pines.

The chicken house cloisters a dozen red hens,

sleeping heads bowed, bony feet tucked,

but one red hen roams the grounds, extends

her wings, a night-yard queen—she clucks.