55 \ Uncorrected Visions

Alan: Everyone gets to write one poem for their own birthday.  Here’s mine.

55

Most awkward of numerals, these

inverted interrogatives;

their flat, displaced roofs

ripping loose in a gale.

The whole unsteady, no

foundation: the rounded base,

asymmetry threatening to tip

over, crumple,

fly apart.

Fifty-five, still alive.

Clickety-clack, no turning back.

Today I will jog

5.5 miles,

I will drive

not to exceed the speed limit.

I will count out and eat

fifty-five grains of white rice,

parceling starvation's mite.

I will examine what I own:

the double handful of years

dextrous and sinister,

elegant, stubby,

swollen, sore, denying,

affirming; those that accuse

and those that point the way.

I will consider my parents.

Once (for my sake?)

they set all questions aside,

became ecstatic

curves and lines,

symbols of an infinite,

Om and Amen: God.

Once, for me –

or the presumption of me,

it hardy matters.

Eight-five and eight-six,

You have taught me all your tricks.

Today I will not

perform handstands,

will refuse to gaze

ahead.

I will bless my mother and father,

throwing wide arms around them

from such a distance,

will make my bed in their honor,

eat some sticky rice,

fix the sink,

play with the dogs.

Nancy: Genius, or simply human frailty?

Uncorrected Visions

If, as I read, El Greco’s saints are not

elongating in holy passionate flame, but are merely

the product of defective vision, is it possible

that my lines will slowly grow short of breath,

punctuated emphysemically?  Will my reach shorten

and will the arthritic phrases venture less and less

far from the doorstep, and will I no longer write

of the bear licking its paws in the cedar swamp?

I wonder; it would be sad if the birds dropped

out of a deaf sky and anger went blunt as my

skin grew thick, and the cadence of poetry

took the creak creak of my chair into itself

until it was no more than a muted litany

of weakened failing flesh.

But wait: I like those landscapes

yearning toward the light, and I know now

how little will I have to write prosthetic poetry.

If memory cannot supply the shrill of the hawk

then let it fly silently, let it remain nameless, even,

let my infirmities speak for themselves

of what it is to be flawed.

Within these boundaries, there may be

burning saints and more strange beauties yet to see.