Waking on Sunday

These chimes blowing in faintly now

Don't want me to drift back through a labyrinth

Of remembered chimes to the lost porch

Whose light, like the light of long-dead stars,

Is still arriving, faint and flickering.

They want me to lie here quietly

And savor their dawn concerto.

They need to be heard before they're as lost

As the table where my mother sat me down

To say how important it was to plan for happiness

And think of the good I could do

If I didn't live for the moment, one day at a time,

And didn't forget my family's good examples.

Last Sunday, when I dragged myself across town

To sit in the half-dark of the nursing home,

My mother recognized everyone in the album

But pushed it away, pained to compare

The woman she is now with the woman she was

When the chimney of the missing house

Poked through the leafy canopy.

Much is best forgotten.

Driving back from the nursing home,

I paused by the lake and tried

To concentrate on the gulls and sails

And lose myself in their graceful pastimes.

It seemed they always wanted to be there,

Out on the water that afternoon, pleasing themselves,

Free of the need to make comparisons.

Where they went that evening

Isn't a useful question.

No evidence of a scribe in the bell tower

Listing in his holy book all that's long gone,

All the boatloads of porches and chairs,

Young mothers and serious children,

Safely arriving to the welcome of chimes.

These chimes don't ask me to believe in havens

But to lie here listening,

Keeping the first notes of their song

Clear in my mind as the last begin.

SOON

Soon I'll turn away from myself

And use my language to describe the world

Without praise or blame, just as it is.

In my pages the wind will blow

As it really blows on the living and dying.

The moon will show its rocky face.

No more wasting my words then with asking favors.

No more "Give me your real opinion, please,

On these photographs of my childhood."

No more "Tell me your secret for making friends

So people will stand by my grave, disconsolate."

Nothing but clear observation-

How tides go out and return empty-handed

While wars continue and great migrations.

A girl will chase her dog on the beach.

A paperboy will pass on his bicycle

Nursing his dream of the red roadster

In the dealer's window

That will make him the envy of the neighborhood.

It will all be there in my book,

Pure life, with no discoloring moral,