Meeting Bone Man
Imagine the Halloween skeleton
of your childhood.
Usually, when you
meet someone,
you extend a hand to touch
living skin to skin.
You exchange a smile,
a pleasantry.
But not with him.
Meeting Bone Man
is not quite like meeting
anyone else.
He may stride
all legs and arms
in your direction
delicately, deliberately.
He may click and slide,
clattering gladly up to you.
He may seem to smile,
toothy and brilliant,
but assign no emotion
to that expression.
It is his only one.
It is the one and true way
teeth fit into the head.
Your teeth look at him
in the same way.
You just don't know it.
When you meet him,
you respectfully acknowledge him
with a nod or note of recognition.
No scream or gasp.
After all, you know
what you are seeing.
You admit him,
you let him in.
There is no point pretending
you have not seen him
once you have.
He may offer you
his spidery hand to shake.
And, he may not.
It is best to follow
his lead.
After all,
touching him
will not change anything.
You need not fear that.
You cannot catch anything
from him.
You already both have
the same condition.
And he knows this.
You look into his eyes,
as is our custom.
But with Bone Man
this will not get you far.
In seeing what looks
like nothing,
he actually
shows you everything.
Bone Man is inevitable.
In the end,
we all lie down in pieces,
in dry and tilting disarray.
Grieving
Thinking of her
is kind
of a search, a voyage
of looking
for signs and moments,
shadows and gasps
of her. I still
move toward the phone
then stop myself,
a foolish son
who doesn't remember
his mother is
dead. So begins
the search.
A hummingbird
dips into a
blood-colored flower
and I strain
my eyes to search,
to see
the other side
of my breath.
A Nineteen Year-Old Veteran
Make room for the nineteen year-old veteran
rolling his wheelchair down this
immaculate airport terminal hallway,
his face fresh as a high school diploma.
He should be shooting baskets
in a sweaty, screaming gym,
watching a cheerleader
out of the corner of his eye,
and dreaming of wrapping his legs
around her in the back seat of his car.
No such dream today.
But there is plenty of sweat
and more than enough screams
while he dreams of his legs
lying against a broken window
in the back seat of a humvee
in Baghdad.
Before My Father Was My Father
Before my father was my father
he slipped off a sinking ship.
In 1942, in the war waters of the Pacific,
two explosions tore holes
in the skin of the SS Coolidge--
underwater mines,
the captain should have known were there.
This mammoth troop ship shook, shivered,
and then leaned into its own death.
Its yards of steel strained and winced,
shrieking in unnatural directions.
While thousands panicked
my father slipped out a porthole
with a friend who couldn't swim.
He could see Espiritu Santo Island,
and, knowing that a sinking ship
is not your friend, out he went.
He wriggled through the porthole
and then, with chest and stomach
pressing the ship's side,
slid down that vast grey metal wall,
which was slowly flattening itself.
He crawled past welds and markings
which were not intended to see daylight,
designed only for the emerald light
of a drowned world.
He groped his way over thousands of rivets,
and acres of steel, curving and slipping
into their own wet grave.
Finally, he could let go,
and with the SS Coolidge,
he too plunged into the sea.
But unlike the ship, he could swim.
He came back up, tossing water droplets
from his army haircut, breathing,
and splash-walked to the shore
of an island named after the breath of God.
At ninety years old, my father has let go
of wife and home and so much more.
He walks now in the waist-deep waters
of age and quiet, toward an island
whose name we do not know.
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