BEWITCHED PLAYGROUND

Each could picture probably
with great care his brother drawing
the corded string of a watered silk bag
and mumbling to Basho above the keepsake
pay your respects to mother's white hair
now your eyebrows look a little white too
but all have turned instead to watch this child
a girl my daughter Simone
an astute migrant
skimming the stream of days
toted wherever she wants
to eat the dirt of inattentive towns
to arm wrestle as with
the blind & steal a stoic
shipping him home—
all have turned & run to her because
she has a spider on her neck she has
seen herself
though blindfolded by a cloud
the sun in a yellowjacket
drowning in a cup of coffee she carries
a spider in her hair
blond & blonder dear river.

DOCUDRAMA

Finally, the night did
what night always does, it swallowed
my two friends, their arms
slung around each other's waists as I drove off
chasing my high beams.
Outside their shingled walls & roof
and surrounded by pinewoods
a few minutes earlier that evening
my friends & I had been saying good-bye
when one of them, the man—
surprised by the baby seat suddenly visible
in the back of the car (lit up by an interior light
as I opened the door) —he said, my friend
said Jeez,
they (meaning Michaela & our daughter Simone),
they won't be able to go anywhere.
Seeing I was as far as 150 miles from home
with the car, & my being
a potential traffic fatality,
or worse (deadbeat dad, abandoner), he was right.
I saw myself a moment
as indispensable, happy to be needed, much like
a canoe-paddling guide or gondola pilot.
By my other friend—
the woman—squinting at the baby seat
with pity & amusement, she said For christ's sake,
you might as well wear a chastity belt.
And somehow
the mention of sex dragged death behind it—
I mean
now that I have settled
(with responsibilities)
my dates with this or that sexual tsunami should
be a thing of the past,
right?
So there I was—caught
between being one man or another, neither.
Really, none of this is tragic.
Can I be loved enough? that's my story.

 

LUCKY SLAVES

In the city, meanwhile,
the tenants come home,
the subletters & co-op owners,
dwellers beneath
slate mansard roofs & heating ducts,
they arrive one
by one, that being their way,
one by hopeless
unimportant
hopeful one—slaves—
but lucky slaves,
like the last of those last few Israelites,
they who wandered sighing & distracted
over a path
the Lord of the parted Red Sea had made.
Soon the suppers
of America
will start to be prepared.
First the paring of onions,
and then the frying.
On the forehead of the city the sun
is setting, the brow
in flames, the brain doing a cool
coppery burn. But the floor
beneath our feet remains
firm. It will not
be turned
to ash.

Copyright 2000 by David Rivard. All rights reserved.