GRAVEYARD SHIFT

They call it that, I think I'd read,
because, when they took the dead

who perished from the plague, there
simply were no daylight hours to spare.

They dug the graves at night.
Some work does not require the light

of day, and deeds done in the dark
need not always bear the mark

or bear the smell of putrefaction.
That said, I take most satisfaction

from what I can accomplish in the day.
I wouldn't have it any other way.

ON READING King Leopold's Ghost

There are too many sad stories,
too many tales of loss and lamentation.
Just to tabulate the slaveries,
the slaughters, the intentional starvations,
demands more courage than I desire to summon.

And yet to turn away our faces,
to willfully ignore what history
can teach, is deadly dereliction.

Cruelties unthinkable today were once
accepted norm. We need to know
that we are capable of crimes as vile
as those committed long and short ago.
They happened once and, God forbid,
they could and can recur.

Come, take my hand, and, trembling, we shall
go to see Treblinka, learn about the gulag,
visit Wounded Knee, go deep into the Congo,
to confront the Heart of Darkness.

HARRIET AND IDA

Sometimes, when we visited Grandma,
they would stop by to "have a chat."
They were old, at least I thought so then,
not having yet myself reached double digits.
Sisters, but not twins, they lived
four houses down next to the firehall.
Always dressed identical in black, they moved
with slow but steady steps up the street
to where, on certain Sunday summer
afternoons, we all sat on the porch,
the grownups fanning their faces.

I supposed Harriet was the older. She was
first to say hello and preceded her sister
up the steps. Conversation was polite
and seldom varied: the weather; a review,
usually favorable, of the preacher's
morning sermon; an occasional
recital of a list of aches and pains.
They sat side by side like black birds
on a fence and graciously declined
the inevitable offer of a lemonade.
"Thank you all the same, but we must
be getting on," Harriet would say
and give a nod to Ida. I wondered,
but never dared to ask,
exactly what it was they had to get to.

STORM

Winter days like this one,
cold and dark and blizzard blasted,
turn those of us inside into mute survivors.
Conversation seems somehow silly,
pointless, almost a sacrilege.
The walls that bear the brunt
of wind's assault take on biblical stature:
our refuge and our strength.

Hours pass into deeper darkness.
Sleep is fitful, accompanied by
wind howls, mysterious thumps
   -- a tree limb torn off?
   -- a fence rail hurled against the porch?

When half-hearted morning
comes at last, the gale dies;,
the snow abates and stops.
The bird feeder has disappeared
from the maple branch. Beneath
its accustomed place I see
something feathered, fallen,
a chipping sparrow's corpse.

God will have a busy day today
with tallying of sparrows.
   

WAITING TO SEE THE CARDIOLOGIST

The room is crowded with old people.
Some sit transfixed by the yawpers
on FOX news. Some page listlessly
through months-old magazines, then
toss them back onto the knee-high table.
Other simply sit and stare.
While I, myself no youngster, contemplate
the worries none of us gives voice to.
I imagine standing up and announcing
to this convocation of the frightened:
    My heart's been acting up.
    Are you as scared as I am?
I won't do it, of course.
But I wonder what would happen.