John Palen
Tikkun Olam
Two asphalt patchers from the city came today
in work boots and yellow safety vests.
The man drove a slow-rolling truck
that trailed bitumen’s sharp smell,
the woman tai chi’d behind with a hose,
spraying cracks in the heaved, beat-up street.
It was the first warm day of spring;
we were out walking under dark branches, bare
except for the small red flowers of maples.
The woman’s art, her
black calligraphy, bold strokes and swirls,
drew our eyes to the layered street’s
brokenness, and its repair.
William Carlos Williams
upon the young
woman on the bus
who sees a wasp
crawl the window
above my gray head
leans across
picks it off
gently
between thumb
and forefinger
and reaching up
to the open transom
lets it go
The Eisenhower Expressway in Winter
We drive alone in our cars in the dark,
sweeping west together in a stream
of headlights and brake lights
toward Forest Park and Oak Park,
Maywood and Elmhurst;
and because the treads of our tires
drag a weight of sound from pavement
the way bow hair pulls sound
from an orchestra of strings, I think
of Barber’s Adagio: the soundtrack
of Platoon through big cinema speakers,
the soundtrack of the end in Vietnam.
It begins to snow. Together in this hour,
we make a music of wordless longing
that carries us to our separate homes.
Grief in August
Grief in August is like winter up north,
when clouds roll in from Lake Michigan
with the first November snow and stay for months.
I find little things more difficult: pulling on socks,
cooking meals, keeping track of days.
Today shouldn’t be sunny, but it is. Hummingbirds
plunder the scarlet zinnias, zooming in and out
and around. Squirrels chirr in the oaks,
drop broken acorn caps on roofs and sidewalks.
A few leaves tend red or yellow. But grief
has shrunk summer to a Nature episode.
I sit on the couch waiting for it to be over,
so I can watch whatever’s next. If you
want to help, you don’t have to say anything.
Just sit with me and watch the show.