Some Poems on Holding

In the Soul's Soil 

It takes about seven hours.

And they do a few thousand a year,

about 800 people die waiting

for a suitable heart.

He knew a kid who memorized amazing facts

about the heart.  It’s hard to do,

but not that hard to understand,

the kid would say about transplanting.

It’s very different from a tree –

the soil will take any tree, but the body’s big on rejection.

In My Father’s Woodshop, Learning to Hammer

“Don’t hold it so tight,” he would say,

bouncing the hammer by the very end

of the handle with ease.
I gripped the narrowest bit of neck,

right up under its iron head, and tapped carefully

like it was a hard third thumb, not some wild

wonderful limb full of as much power as danger.
From the corner of his eye, he watched
at the smallest angle from glancing away
so that each time my nail went slowly crooked
it took only a slight adjustment of the eyes not to see.
He did not believe you could gently create
a corner, a union.  Either you flattened your own finger

or someone else’s.  But after the thumbnail

had turned black and fallen off,

the box held treasures inside

its square hand and held together.

Types of Dishonesty

She took a perfect glass orb to bed.

In the morning, her palms glittered

And her sides ached as if she’d laughed all night

At some unimaginably happy thing.

He went to bed with a cup of paint

And held it upright all night.

No one could guess in the morning.

And even he sometimes forgot the color.

At the store, at the check out,

They dropped a bag of peaches.

He cut around the bruises and

She insisted upon eating them.

A Grip Holds No Release

Sudden falls revitalize the enemies

of deceit: Maroon is not purple,

but maybe we are me.

For any reason, emptiness 

volunteers to leave.

Time proposes many mountains

then takes some down. 

Just cast a stone to rip water! 

But know: it can’t scar, 

it sews itself back up.

(I’m having a harder time.)

Trees also won’t negotiate.  

But if a fence stands too close, 

they’ll swallow its wire very slowly.

Think of those barbs, shouting on

their sharpness inside a trunk.

Such patient humor lives in trees!

The work finalizes the reason we began it. 

But some work has no reason. 

Some reasons need no work.