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Three
Poems by Glenn Moss
Music,
Darts and Other Gifts
Sax,
Stax, Soul
Frankie Crocker and WBLS
Voices shattering
windows
You gave those gifts to me
Unintended I know
No
Wednesday night CBS suburban twin bed brotherly scuffle
This
was Brooklyn hot knife edge balance
My eyes sweating
fear
Watching your fingers dance along the blade
D train
wheels wailing call and response as you turned the volume up
Brass, string, reed and skin
Blending, bleeding chords and
harmonies
Memphis, Detroit, Mississippi, Mobile,
Harlem
Raising roofs, stakes and desire
Closing my eyes I
see twitching toes on Brighton Beach
Curling in shame from the
heat of your half-boot
Leathered sole
The comic book muscle
builders pretending to sleep, slit eyed watching girls bounce in
the surf
In a few months you will throw a football into my
shaky hands
The sound of crunching leaves under my feet
staying with me
Later
When you throw a dart
Into my
soft stomach
Laughing
As a track of blood broadens
underneath my t-shirt
Midnight listening to Coltrane and
Puente
Darkness and music covering wounds
Between sets and
sheets
I can still wake up, find a way
Guided by Otis and
Dizzy, sheets of flatted fifths waving in an ocean breeze
A
child led out of a three room maze of a salesman and gypsy’s
unnoted decay
Into the frightening joy of the different
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Memorial
Day
North African sun,
Still
baking Carthaginian bones
Beginning the slow cook of German
and American steel,
Finds you and new desert
companions
Smiling while sand drinking blood out of
frame
Later, behind a desk in Naples
Hair, teeth, B-25
wings gleam
The arc of American victory and your future
parallel
For a moment maybe in your black photo eyes
You
see them converging in your combined future
Maybe this where
illusion kissed your neck
Licking the sweat of hard
work
Leaving enough cool dream protection
To keep your post
war skin from burning
In the heat of different battles
With
county roads and shaking heads of small town shop owners
Immune
to your Phoenician charms
So the retreat began
Not with the
demanding tragedy of Miller's salesman
Or the sweet swing of
the last chords from Joe Venuti's violin
But with the pretend
of a failed magician with no rabbit or rainbow scarf
Still
reaching into empty spaces
No audience but those who remained
captive
Too long and too damaged to stand up and leave
Staring
at the frame instead of the possibilities beyond it
One son
shooting water into his veins
To escape a war
The other
wearing your sergeant's hat to protest it
You drove a jeep
once, bouncing over dunes and ancient streets
But never got
your license here
Waiting for someone to take you
The back
seat
Always the damn back seat
Silent, eyes closed
Dreaming
of those thick haired teeth gleaming days
When you did more
than survive
Power in your laugh
Nothing hollowed out
yet
Sometimes I wonder what kinds of could be-fathers died
around you
Stepping out of the frame into final breath
imagined lives
Honoring memory and death is tricky seductive
I do the best I can
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Walking
The Canal
A
heron watches me from the other side of the canal
Waiting
before wading
I nod, acknowledging its primacy
Walking
south towards the Chesapeake
River finding the ocean's vast
welcome
An Algonquin village fed by oyster and clam
Fresh
and salt water's quickened friction and embrace
Silt and
spawn, the scale and cycle of birth and death
I can close my
eyes, other senses guiding
Hearing the sandpiper's flutter,
the splash of shad and smallmouth bass
Smelling current and
tide, mixed with the tears of long dead slaves and drowned
fishermen
Walking in a space outside of time
The flow of
tomorrows will come
Forcing my eyes open
To see the
vanishing ripple of the heron's step, the shad's turn
Hoping
my tears aren't added to the water I have come to love
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