Companion Pieces
– a series forever in progress about family
– a series forever in progress about family
by William Dennis
Piercing PointsIn days we called youth, what I named sweet distractions, now seem my life's most piercing points; what sharp-pointed pleasure we took in seclusion, although roses host piercing points. The tin of the river, sent fluttering light through black branches like knitting of witches: A poke in the eye with a stick in the dark by those wood-shadowed twig-piercing points. Beloved geometries, studied together, seemed all to be sine-curves and arcs; Completing more circles than one by the use for our centering posts piercing points. As wide eyed and gaping as boxes of fishes on ice at the market, that's me; I'm just one more sucker, who swallowed them whole, to learn late what they cost, piercing points. Young daffodils flinch from the draft in your wake, Bill—an air like a bad reputation; You dig through the gardens and meadows of springs you recall for your lost piercing points. |
Companion Piecefor Nikki
Be drawn more shyly, like a stem of rose, with hesitating hooks across strange sills, for youth wears cap-of-bells and motley hose. A mantis, young, consuming passion knows, which, captious jester, tips its wand toward thrills; be drawn more shyly, like a stem of rose. And cap-a-pie, the frog’s spots suit her rows of casual tads, abandoned in cold spills, for youth wears cap-of-bells and motley hose. On stony ground or in trade’s waste, there grows the stunted, sun-struck scape in scorch and chills. Be drawn more shyly, like a stem of rose. All pied alike, posterity’s last shows in Hamblin town pulled party crowds, and still... for youth wears cap-of bells and motley hose. And you, my secret, sheltered daughter, woes wait out their span, like seed unsown of ills. Be drawn more shyly, like a stem of rose, for youth wears cap-of-bells and motley hose. |
Happy Birthday, BrotherMarch wind blowing sets never so cold as felt in bones fresh growing old; and yet we’re cast in that cracked mold, so Happy Birthday, brother. The kids will want to move away, ignore advice and gang agley, and in the rain to make their hay, because that is their druther. The dog will shed, the roof may leak, your memory may play hide and seek and on March twelfth give you a tweak– your birthday, and none other. Dates and names will fade away and leave you what you meant to say to that nice lady, by the way, you’ll call The Children’s Mother. But age brings with it consolation– the mortgage paid, that aggravation, grandchildren dear to swell the nation, just call the children’s mother. And sweet young things in stores will smile the while they charge you half your pile at discount, if you’re proved senile, on birthdays and none other. Now, you may hark back to those years, whose snapping winters lack for peers and rabbits all had longer ears, if that is what you druther. So tell the kids, when they were small, you’d been and seen and done it all; they were too young to now recall, so happy birthday, brother. |
What Happened While We Waited Here
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Divorce, Long Afterfor Carollee and then, Clem
They never would have got divorced, you’d say, if they had liked each other–and their child was three; no one does that unless riled. The girl is twenty-five now, if a day. You’d think the phone lines insulate for death, and they had put between themselves some papers. Her face, though, crumpled-up before the neighbors, while something put a feather in her breath. Looks like, where they were then, there you are now, your twenty years of pillory begun. Some things go off, which time can just make worse, say, fish, but wounds heal-up, though God knows how sometimes. Still, when all is said and done, wish such death for you– not soon, of course. |
EcologyI know a man who knows the President and so, that I might catch a Presidential cold, if I don’t wash my hands, is possible, you know. Wish famous men the best you can, I hold, who, while ignoring your demands, do share their woe. Before I wake, deep tides torment the sun’s bright heart, that blister very fire on its face, where howling ions foment charges and depart, as sparks fly up, to trouble and embrace man’s weathered sphere their potent moment at day’s start. El Niño heats December seas beyond Peru, to baulk the plankton-bloom anchovy schools and proud purse-seinning fleets both once cruised gaping through; their sinking leverages, by Euclid’s rules, long fish-meal futures and cat-treats, which I buy, too. My sainted wife, she keeps, besides myself, a cat in her affections, raised since it was young ...to ornament her life, I guess you’d say, and that despite he’ll wash his bottom with his tongue and lick the rose-bud kiss my wife gives with my hat. O, what fine line to tie the sun’s heart to my own uncoils, glowing at the thither end; so linked, I might incline to think some virtue shown– even here, by me, at tether-end– but for the bottom of the feline through which it’s thrown. My children came adopted through a saintly nun, who surely met three Popes of four..., or more, of which God knows the name at least, I trust, of one; and that seems right, although to God I’m four times less familiar, they cast no blame for how things run. |