EASTER, 2009

With birdseed that sparkles
like crushed
topaz on the carport
roof I begin this holy day
making my observances --
the rusting seavan,
black garbage bags swelling
so silently on top
under the sun

in the parkinglot
behind the Laundromat
the Laundromat with about
18 aluminum vents
on the roof quite
silvery, actually,
beneath the cumulus

clouds bulging higher
edged so sharply by gray
They seemed carved

I don’t think I’ll ever get over them
when I notice

the couple that lives in their car,
hood up, trunk open and she
seated on a stool
as he combs her hair in the sun

dipping his comb into a bucket of water
occasionally, silently
snapping a whip of waterdrops
off the end of it before leisurely
resuming combing

so that in the middle of everything
everything they do is done
carefully, for example, how he shaves
in the sideview mirror, and folds
his little towel so precisely

forget time, now, that’s gone
you don’t think Christ in the underworld
underwent his last temptation
in three days do you…I mean
it was an eternity at least

as long as this mix of marvels:
my improbable birch tree
it’s thin limbs pulled down by plump
sparrows that watch
me bring my coffee cup

to my lips. When’ll he throw out
more seeds. When O when
will he get on his job! I am

in this world, that’s for sure --
just ask the birds. Yes I am grateful

for the El Tio Juan taco trailer
fate has put
next to the Laundromat
where everyone gathers

to watch soccer and washing machines’
round windows wet
clothes make faces in
children make faces back at

and a mix of languages annealed
by bickering into an amalgamated lingo
we’ve yet to parse: whoozit!

May we deserve such beauty
so ugly and real all we can do
is be stunned by wonder we
wonder what we can do to make doing
nothing holier than something
for nothing’s sake
to help our poor world

this rich Persian rag of a world
so comical with its horror
with its little store, painted like the Mexican flag
run by Arabs who hand me change
with a disdain so dismissive
its infuriatingly murderous

our poor rich world
with its headlines
of international events --
Christ! This neighborhood is an international event!

Thank you for the pleasure it affords!
Mariachi music out the front door
rap out the back
me at the helm on my porch
totally in charge of nothing
but birdseed, coffee, and reading
Yeats! For Christ’s sake! Look at the sparrows!

some focused on seeds
some focused on the cat licking its paws
as it reclines in the ivy
that has climbed with spring-green leaves
shining up onto the carport roof
left over from the fifties:

everything proceeds from where it is
everything is transforming itself
like a million christs emerging from the underworld
or rummaging around
in the underworld off my back porch

buoyed by our sin of pleasure in horror.
The smell of bacon! The refuge
of what is at hand: my neighbors
seem to be Mayans, and next to them
Vietnamese, and across the street
an old white couple continuously prepare their car
for a trip to another world

and Flo, with her two boys
and the neglected dog, and the birds
who have discovered seeds sparking
like brown sugar on a fiberglass roof
while around the corner at the Hells’s Angels’
headquarters the throats of motorcycles are snapped
into fire purely
for pleasure

O world you never deny us
our pleasure you give more and more beauty on top
of ugliness so real it turns
into torrents heaving up telephone poles, sirens spiraling and the flight
of light through our minds to continue to ignite

our hearts until we get off the dime.
Yes, I ask, Who’s going to pick up
that old entertainment center even the Mayans threw out.
Inertia
will carry it downstream along with everything else.
What we have is the ride
and the precious ride we carry within

and I am
at the helm as I nose my canoe
into the rapids and head for the falls.