For my friend Michael Bernstein,
murdered by terrorists, December 21, 1988 The plane ascends beyond Heathrow.
I stare out at the dimming countryside,
as wing lights tick through clouds,
rivulets of rain streaking my face's reflection.
There is an explosive device beneath my seat,
plastique wired to a timer, fused long
to detonate in winter darkness.
Soon my tattered flesh hangs
from the bulkheads, bone and sinew
vaporized in a heart's pulse.
My eyes float through the broken fuselage.
Wreckage and human carnage rain
from the night sky, the whine of vertical velocity
masking the screams of those still living,
if only for a few moments longer.
I ask myself why.
I have hurt no one, offended no one.
Yet I am a victim of invisible terrorists.
They do not know me, they will never know me.
I no longer exist. They have seen to that.
But I know them. (I have always known them).
They cannot remain invisible forever.
My eyes are still floating, watching.
Te szegény, szegény.
[You poor man, you poor man.]
"Nem én kiáltok," Attila József
I
fifty years ago
his eye fixated
dark vacant stare
two steel barrels
silent & not vacant
trigger gently fingered
squeezed firmly
& eternity rushed in
his disappearance
echoed along Wood River
passing beyond Sawtooths
who was he
avatar for all fathers
who look at their sons
pondering & wondering
how they failed them
wanting desperately
not to fail them
one more time
II
many times I traveled
down Williston Road
once while a storm
blew in off the Gulf
once in a swamp fog
once on a gibbous moon
waning & questioning
why you also chose
to disappear shedding
family & friends
suddenly & so easily
gone yet in plain view
many times I traveled
down this long road
III
traveling Williston Road
this time the last time
there will be no explanation
to my question why
no words at all this time
a plastic esophagus
offering bagged nutrients
respirator a constant clicking
IV
returning home now
this painfully familiar road
its skirtings of live oak
burdened with Spanish moss
approaching storms
swamp fogs & moons
whether waning or waxing
all soon to be forgotten
once blue edged flame
has taken all that remained
to its final disappearance
Birds call us into the moment.
Victor Emanuel
at every compass point
fog gauzes horizons
northward Egg Rocks
sulking stone rookeries
westward bay’s edges
southward open water
thousands of miles only
sea its many mysteries
eastward Monhegan Island
somewhere mist growing
thicker we sail deeper
our bow quickly scatters
delicate-legged storm-petrels
rafting in gentle seas
dancing across waters
separated into oblique
gray-green sea foam
levitating wings arced
facing vertical wind gradients
above wavelets they patter
surface film foraging food
plankton tiny crustaceans
fishing boats chummed detritus
white-patched rumps flashing
undertails as they skim
skitter in every direction
dark wing points meeting water
they disappear into fog
reappearing in different places
to dance again disappear again
Gorky called them streaks of black
lightning soaring proud free
over gray sea plains
gregarious pelagic tempest
messengers shunning land
preferring migrating life
soon they depart these waters
returning south nesting rocks
Tierra del Fuego & South Georgia
distant antarctic climes
as lifting fog dissolves
channel buoys clang & moan
gull screech & cackle announcing
slow approach to Monhegan
Duck Rocks & Smutty Nose reveal
shadowy waterlines to starboard
to port darkening shores hint
early morning sun reveals
storm-petrels disappearing
taking little interest in landfalls
For Hugh MacLennan
(1907-1990)
sun setting beyond
the Citadel
fair Nova Scotia
with stars visible
& a quarter moon
over the Maritimes
farther west sun
dips behind Montréal
steep shadows sent
across city canyons
frozen St Lawrence
snow & ice
turned crimson
arboreal apparitions
dark along its banks
& all the while deep
waters pour seaward
across Québec
draining Great Lakes
into a dark Atlantic
sun passing westward
Ontario anomalous land
sprawling northern wastes
timber & rock & water
only animal footfalls
maniacal loon cries
towns tied together
by thin steel rails
cold macadam
prairies almost endless
Manitoba plains afternoon
bluish snow muted
& wind a continuous flux
scouring long drifts
over frozen seeds
of Saskatchewan wheat
through lonesome coulees
into the Cypress Hills
Alberta beyond
to the Rockies
& beyond them
British Columbia
& its island coda
a nation formed
Atlantic in the east
Pacific in the west
an unborn mightiness
unknown to itself
