TO A NEIGHBOR

TO A NEIGHBOR

                  Je pense donc je suis

                   —Descartes, 1637

                       For Sonny Lowe

Because of your small son we find ourselves

inducted, offering meals at the rude altar.

Within his frenzied orbit we find ourselves

trading dishes across the truce of doorways,

sharing intimacies, bartering the intangible.

Coming home from the niteclubs,

at the changing of the guard, you slip

into the evacuated shroud of my body heat:

in this way we learn the odor of each other’s skin.

On the clothesline, garments whip small plots

of insurrection against the approaching storm.

I saw you with the wounded face of a stranger

test the loneliness of granite. Bluesman or poet:

we each have a vested interest in the art of suffering.

The cats crave the simple praise of hands before they’ll eat.

To hold what is good also requires merciless attention.

On the anniversary of my grandmother’s death

I learned the name of my mother’s death; took refuge

in the ordinary: a boy carving pumpkins, the tv’s baleful stare.

Not the lump in my breast, or the generational patterns

we belabored and distrusted.  The mirror of the son in your eyes.

What truth faced my father (like yours) who raised

another jar against the darkness until it swallowed him?

Over coffee, laundered secrets struggle against

daylight like young birds, or new-born planets—

The juxtaposition of distance against the kenning,

the knowing; the fatal separation of mind and body:

I suffer, therefore I am has kept so many of us safe for years—

The cup of coffee, a fragrant vessel across the River Styx.

Death eats my mother’s bones until they shine 

with the purity of snow while we gather stones

to build walls against the coming of winter,

no longer able to shrug off the inevitable—

the genetic cloth of familial patterns

unravels us with the same mistakes.

Early warning signals do not efface the reflection

of your son’s eyes against the mirrored river.

None of us chooses family, neighbors, or love.

Despite everything, like death, the spectacle

of hope persists, colors everything we do.

10/24/94