Two Poems

Consolation of Philosophy

They say He never shuts a door
but He opens a window.

Pinball wizards, psychics, poets,
we the blind
are flush with consolation prizes.

I say, He never shuts a window
but He slams it on someone’s fingers.

Who can resist a calculus
of grief and pleasure?

Item, an I-beam that comes out of nowhere
to meet my forehead, leaving me too stunned,
at first, to notice the blood.

I say, He never shuts the fridge
but He opens the medicine cabinet.

Item, hugs of friends: (a) his stubble
against my cheek, (b) her chest
pressed to mine.

Item, a bench in Riga. No phone,
no clue how to get help
from invisible Latvians.

I say, He never turns on a TV
but He flushes a toilet.

Item, Shelley’s lilting voice
to the dog: “Is that schmeckworthy or what?
When you’re tired of licking, you’re tired of life!”

Item, her face. Even the memory
smashed to fragments like features
snipped from a magazine
for a child’s collage.

Item, Momo’s silken ears, out of which
a sow’s purse will not be made.

Amid the Alien Corn, Ruth Misses Her Lawnmower

The ways of this people are strange to me
and strange their speech, which I must learn.
Who maketh a bargain will take off his shoe and hold it forth in token,
and if I say “shake on it,” as in my own tongue,
then do they dance and mock at me,
yea even Naomi that loveth me well.

Well, I suppose I laughed at her, and her son too,
back in the day when I knew everything.
Once he showed up for a date in a woman’s blouse.
How did I know? I told him about the buttons:
one side for men, the other side for women.
He thanked me but his eyes said, “You crazy people 
with your rules for everything.”

Let the gleaner in barley beware, for sharp are the stalks the scythe hath left,
and my ankle bloody when I tread upon them.
Sore vexed is my back ere the sun have reached his heighth.
Verily I say unto you, it hurteth like hell.

Now I know why my husband loved the mower,
and the lawn too, so foreign, so compelling
in its useless purity. He would have wanted
to get down and run his hands through the luscious grass
we buried him under.

We must, saith Naomi, ask help of a great man that is kin to us.
I will go unto him at the winnowing, after that he hath eat and drunk,
and find him in his slumber. 
I will discover his feet and lay me down, and when he waketh,
then will I entreat him that he place his skirt over me.
I pray that this be a metaphor.

After all that death, what was left for me back home?
The yard going to seed, the gray office carpet
worn to a rat’s labyrinth, the vertiginous
wallpaper pattern of strip malls and gas stations?
So I said to Naomi, “If you’re going, I’m going.”

And, “Thy god shall be my god,” though I know him not,
this god that hath no face nor form as other gods have,
this god that hath dealt bitterly with his servant Naomi. 
The rich man’s servants have let fall barley-corns of purpose on the ground. 
I will stoop and take them up, one by one.