After the Beagle Poem

My wife doesn't like Bukowski,
maybe for being a cynic
maybe for his words about women,
about his women, for the words,
for the anatomy of his dirty old mind.

But today I read her a poem about a beagle,
a poem by Chinaski himself,
and she swooned and she purred,
and I believe her heart even skipped a beat.

"Our beagle snuffles in his sleep," the old man writes,
and now my wife forgives him
of everything, acquits him of all charges,
every sin erased. She no longer
frowns when I come from the shower,
minutes before having recited "The Shower Poem"
or "Bluebird" while I washed the dirt away.

"Our beagle spreads a paw," he says,
and her shoulders drop
from the heavy weight of love
for a beagle she's never seen.

"Do not bother the beagle lying there,"
and do not bother a woman newly in love
as she sits, not sleeping
but relaxed into thoughts about pets,
particularly a dreaming beagle
who once must have slept
under the eye of a dirty old man.

The Lobster Tank

As we waited for our table
he came, a tender well-dressed man
with a kind smile and a well-groomed beard,
and pushed aside the glass top
and with a long combing prong
lifted the lobster from the blue-lit waters
for the cook.

"Look, sweetie," said one man, tugging
at his little girl. "Look at the lobster!"

The man paused so we could see it there,
then he placed it on a plain tray,
carried it away, pausing so the host and a waitress
could pat it on its shell, the waitress
making a sad puckering expression,
the host worried about the growing
waiting group of hungry guests.

I ate two pounds of snow crabs that night,
my wife ate a plate of coconut shrimp,
someone ate a lobster.

Cooking Tofu

First I take the vegetables,
peppers, snow peas, and carrots,
then a little butter.
I slice the tofu into quarters,
place them in the middle,
white blocks
surrounded with color,
think of it in its cooking body,
christen it
Small Pale Stonehenge
in Cut Garden.

After cooking them,
I take the tofu down the throat,
suck the juice from it,
one cube at a time,
crushing them at the gullet.

Odd curdled creature, milk in form,
ordered in shape
and given nothing to a flavor.

We make a world around us,
take what nature gives and orders it:

snow peas into measured bags,
carrots, eight to a bundle,
peppers, six to a pack,
tofu, strange wonderful tofu,
block of blandness, plain as its hue,
rubber lump of provision
I take into myself.

Of Red and White and Blue

In three tips
and thirteen folds
they gave her the weight
of grief
and the colors of war.

Lightly, the way one holds
a newborn,
they carried to her
and placed in her hands
the appreciation
of a grateful nation
and an empty seat
at the kitchen table
and dry and distant smiles
in hanging photos
and a cold spot on the bed
and a hate of a war and an unquenchable longing,
phantoms of waiting mixed with forgetfulness.

There in her lap
sat the source
of a stir of apparitions,
images
she had never seen
would never see
of his last expressions
the man who took him
the ones beside him
the country she gave him to
the bullet, the gun, the ground
he stood on, the ground he laid on,
the hands that touched him,
that pain that touched him,
the pain that touched her
and touched her
and touched her.

Blue Collar Love

You may think
I go through the slow-turning wheel
of my work day busy
with numbers and schedules,
chores small and large,
not stopping
to open the door
for you to walk into the many rooms
inside my head.

But there are few of the good things
I see, untouched by the dirt and grime of my work,
that do not cause me
to hook a chain to a glimpse of you
and pull you to me,
nor bring me to forget the ache of toil,
the hammer-bruised finger
or the sting of carbon cleaner in a cut.

Just tonight, when I saw
above the swing of my sledgehammer
and the fumes of diesel and sweat,
the three-quarters moon
playing games with the dark passing clouds
I wished they were you and I.

And when I saw long pines shaking together,
dancing to the tune of the wind
as it whistled its way north,
I was swept away in a flash
to the many jigs and diddies
we dance and sing together,
you shaking what your mother gave you,
your head bopping, mouth open in an Ohhh,
and me unnoticeably scrambling for lyrics
to spark a laugh from you.

Every day, each time
life plays the bully
and sits atop me,
pinning me down,
leaving me trapped
and feeling weak
under its heavy knees,

you come along,
the quiet girl in the playground
of this hard world,
to reach for my hand,
not caring that my hands aren't soft,
that I have dirt under my fingernails,
or that my hair is mussed.

The Snore

Every night,
as sure as the presence of moonlight
over the roof
or the whir of the heater
humming through the air ducts,
every night,
like clockwork,
I snore,
and every night
it drives her mad.

And every night,
when the bells of my breathing channels sound,
I'm pulled from my pool of sleep,
pushed and poked
back into the darkness of our room
by an elbow, a straight jabbing finger,
exasperated please of Stop snoring,
Enough, Stop it, You're snoring.

Then it's time
for my quick grumble of apologies
that precede a repositioning curl
on my side--
the non-snoring position,
so they say--
trying to put myself
into the pose of a baby
quiet in the womb of blanket and bed.

But every time,
trying to sneak off into a dream,
I fail to blend in
with the silence of the room,
the whir of the fan,
the sound of stillness and shadow.

Each time, rather than wade out
into the waters of sleep,
rather than dip my toes in first
to check and feel,
I cannonball into the still surface,
full of snore and grunt and gruff
like a discontented hog

truffle-searching in a queen-sized bed,
each time
like a freight train with an unsteady motor,
each time
off-rhythm and out of sync,
sometimes snoring so loudly
that I wake myself
and beat her to the punch
or jab
or poke.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

When they come for you
they wear black pants and shiny black jackets
to keep them warm
and slanted expressions
and soft words and calm gestures
in a faded blue Ford Caravan
with a light rolling stretcher.

They tell your wife that it is customary
for family members to go into the other room
because it's sometimes hard to watch.

Then they move the kitchen table,
the chairs, the cat bowl,
the newspaper on the floor,
move you and zip you up,
push and pull you on your new wheels,
bump you through,
against the counter, the screen door,
down the concrete steps,

then, lining you up
straight with the back of the van,
they put their backs into it
and push hard,
fitting you in like freight,
head first,
the same way you entered
this world.