POEMS

Roadside Turnout—Scenic View Area

                           Ignorantia juris non excusat

I stand here creaking on the worm-eaten boards of my
mistake-riddled life. Themis, leaning on her double-edged
sword—those scales in her other hand—
looms. Acres sway in the balance.

Did-nots dot the landscape. The view ahead
drops off at the same speed I dare go towards it.
As bits of me quit, the bum knee, squinting at signs,
speed seems like a bad idea. I dither.

“Don’t look down,” I think. Spurned pork chop recipes—
all my thoughtless, unkind remarks—clothes-pinned
on the line, flap and taunt, the jurisdiction as inescapable
as the damp weight of my ignorance.
I have squandered my ration of excuse.

A young man making his way in the world is sent
on assignment to the Asian office. The girls there
fuss over him, take him to lunch. They only expect
so much of this Western white boy; they are astonished
         when he picks up his chopsticks to eat.
                    How is this possible, they ask, you know
                                        how to eat with chopsticks?

I look at the dotted landscape of did nots:
         I did not teach them to shave
         I did not teach them to rebuild a carburetor
         I did not teach them to frame a house
                                             or fix a toaster
Can anyone teach a boy to clean his room?
         I did not.

Here in the nots, the spots and stains, things botched,
                                                   “My mother taught me,” he says,
a small point of surprise, a detail I had forgot.

Passing

Footsteps in rain transmute passage from here to then—
it’s the sleeping bread, Mommy, he put it in my mouth.
Grasses yield to flesh yields to bone yields to grasses.

This is the spot. They stood here without calculating the angles
digging struggling unearth out of earth lost music—
trees churning sky despite our heedless, small artifacts.

There was touch once, buttery still,
the pair of them looking, still looking.

The box goes with, the box of words, of delights—
reach across to touch vanished annealings.

Breath times earth equals passing.