She, being the midwife

and your mother’s

longtime friend, said

I see a heart; can you

see it? And on the grey

display of the ultrasound

there you were as you were,

our nugget, in that moment

becoming a shrimp

or a comma punctuating

the whole of my life, separating

its parts—before and after—,

a shrimp in the sea

of your mother, and I couldn’t

help but see the fast

beating of your heart

translated on that screen

and think and say to her,

to the room, to your mother,

to myself It looks like

a twinkling star.

I imagine I’m not

the first to say that either.

Unlike the first moments

of my every day,

the new of seeing you was the first

—deserving of the definite article—

moment I saw a star

at once so small and so

big, so close and getting closer

every day, I pray.

I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I’m hard of hearing.

To the cashier

To the receptionist

To the insistent man asking directions on the street

I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?

At the business meeting

In the writing workshop

On the phone to make a doctor’s appointment

I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-hard-for-the-hearing

Repeat.

           Repeat.

Hello, my name is Sorry

To full rooms of strangers

I’m hard to hear

I vomit apologies everywhere

They fly on bat wings

towards whatever sound beckons

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry

           and repeating

                       and not hearing

Dear (again)

I regret to inform you

I       am

here

The world baffles with sounds,

the worst of which is a human voice.

You would think that with a judgment like that

I would hate crowds, but better a pub’s intermingled dozens

than the sound of one fool speaking his mind.

The dozens drum and buzz and hum.

Against the dozens I could ring a wet glass

and sing C above high C,

could settle a bet with bold harmonics,

could stun down the bark of a barracks of dogs.

But against one idiot all another idiot can do is shout.

Imagine a life in which shouting was the precondition

for every action, if you had to shout to step, shout to sit,

shout loudly to effect any outcome.

What when you did speak would you say?

What wouldn’t sound old to you, 

about what could you not say I’ve heard this before?

What a relief it would be to scream yourself hoarse,

to be forced into silence,

the one note you know you can always hold.

Farewell, sweetheart, and again farewell;

To day we part, and who can tell

     If we shall e’er again

Meet, and with clasped hands

Renew our vows of love, and forget

     The sad, dull pain.

Dear heart, ’tis bitter thus to lose thee

And think mayhap, you will forget me;

     And yet, I thrill

As I remember long and happy days

Fraught with sweet love and pleasant memories

     That linger still

You go to loved ones who will smile

And clasp you in their arms, and all the while

     I stay and moan

For you, my love, my heart and strive

To gather up life’s dull, gray thread

     And walk alone.

Aye, with you love the red and gold

Goes from my life, and leaves it cold

     And dull and bare,

Why should I strive to live and learn

And smile and jest, and daily try

     You from my heart to tare?

Nay, sweetheart, rather would I lie

Me down, and sleep for aye; or fly

      To regions far

Where cruel Fate is not and lovers live

Nor feel the grim, cold hand of Destiny

      Their way to bar.

I murmur not, dear love, I only say

Again farewell. God bless the day

      On which we met,

And bless you too, my love, and be with you

In sorrow or in happiness, nor let you

      E’er me forget.

 

Beyond the cities I have seen,

Beyond the wrack and din,

There is a wide and fair demesne

Where I have never been.

Away from desert wastes of greed,

Over the peaks of pride,

Across the seas of mortal need

Its citizens abide.

And through the distance though I see

How stern must be the fare,

My feet are ever fain to be

Upon the journey there.

In that far land the only school

The dwellers all attend

Is built upon the Golden Rule,

And man to man is friend.

No war is there nor war’s distress,

But truth and love increase—

It is a realm of pleasantness,

And all her paths are peace.

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands

gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger

on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.

You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look

of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite

every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,

you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,

though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam

that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys

until you realize foam's twin is blood.

You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,

so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,

glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,

never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you

all roads narrow at the border.

You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,

and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave

where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,

but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands

as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful

for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful

for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels

sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,

for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,

the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.

You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,

at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping

of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.

You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd

but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,

how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,

until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,

and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind

as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,

you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond

of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas

your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.

There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,

it will always whisper, you can't have it all,

but there is this.

Thrushes, alert for opportunity,
sleep in winks of thirty seconds or less.

Has Guinness tracked the longest sigh on record
and was it exhaled in exasperation or ecstasy?

In the measure of apothecaries, one scruple
equals twenty grains, a lot of data to debunk.

Four centuries ago a watchmaker set up the first circus
of fleas tied to carts. Since then,

entertainment has changed a lot—explosions, all the rage.
Not long ago whistling in an office could get you fired,

and now who of us blinks at torture taken to the brink
of drowning, not once per body, but a vomitous number

I’m not going to hurt you with, and who asks how often
mouth-to-mouth—the torturer locking lips with the tortured

to revive him for another round. An alarm rings
to wake the thrush for the next

threat, thus serving the species for survival
of the fittest, while in the Situation Room, our best,

fit to kill, compute opportunity costs with the poise
of the guys whose billboards brag, “We buy ugly houses.”

Give me the scale that weighs a whistle, a flea,
the song of a thrush, the sum of pain caused

by people of conscience, people ignoring it.
Is opportunity tired of being missed?

Does it sigh the way we sigh?