I didn’t get you roses from Ecuador,
nor one of those cards one grabs, in a rush,
at the checkout line,
nor a Swarovski fawn for your collection.
I didn’t get you Chinese-made balloons,
bright and gaudy,
nor a Nepali cashmere scarf,
nor your favorite Swiss chocolates.
But at lunch, between bites of spaghetti
and sips of San Pellegrino, you will catch
your grandson’s eye like a reflection
of majesty in a crystalline Alpine lake,
your careworn travels having brought
us all to this joyous table.
I am a foul weather friend, dear poetry.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings
There in the back of the closet
of the room that was once my room
and is now a museum to childhood
is a photo, slightly curled with age,
of ten scrawny kids in awkward poses,
baseball gloves stretched out as if
to catch a ball just out of view;
and there in left field am I, shielding
the sun with my glove, tracking
the fly ball, an ice cream truck playing
its melodies, metal bats ringing on
nearby fields,
May the road to fulfillment
be long and steep and smeared
with fog, moss-lined, leaf-strewn,
rockslide-prone, oft-closed for repair,
haunted, the darker the better, no sun-
or moon-light, bulbs of streetlights,
if any, smashed, filaments exposed
to the cold like nerves, scarred by
lightning, by overturned freight trucks,
by mudslides left uncleared, the only
life or light that of your high beams,
flickering, weak like a voice shouting
praise at a waterfall, how beautiful,
how
