Kim Robinson - The Martians

The way so much of it had to be
inferred through the suits we walked in
cut off from the touch of the world
we watched like pilgrims
in love from afar alight
with fire in the body itself felt
as a world the mind apulse in a living
wire of thought tungsten in
darkness the person as planet
the surface of Mars the inside
of our souls aware each
to each and all to all

The way we knew the way had changed
and never again would remain the same
long enough for us to understand it
The way the place was just there
the way you were just thinking stone there

The way everything we thought we knew
in the sky fell away and left us
standing in the visible world
patterned by wind to a horizon
you could almost touch a little
prince on a little world looking for

The way the stars shone at noon
on the flanks of the big volcanoes
poking through the sky itself
out into space we walked in space
and on the sand at once and knew
we knew we were not at home the way

We always knew we were not
at home we are visitors on this planet
the Dalai Lama said on Earth
we are here a century at most
and during that time we must try
to do something good something useful

The way the Buddha did with our lives
the way on Mars we always knew this
always saw it in the bare face
of the land under us the spur
and gully shapes of our lives
all bare of ornamentation
red rock red dust the bare
mineral here of now
and we the animals standing in it

We were brothers in those days you and I
Mom off to work ten hours a day
No child care no friends no family

So off we went on our merry way
To a nearby park walled by city streets
Where Jamaican nannies watched us play

One eye on their charges all stunned by the heat
Kids here and there mom following daughter
Me following you so cautious and neat

Hands gripped as you rose on the teeter-totter
Intent as you stepped on the bouncy bridge
Then tossed your head back burbling laughter

When you reached solid ground and stood on the edge
Looking back at the span you had crossed without falling
Plop on the grass to eat our first lunch

You tease as we eat your laughter upwelling
Pretend to refuse your apple juice
Knock it aside and laugh at its spilling

And laugh again at the flight of a bluejay
Off to used bookstores’ dim musty aisles
Retrieving the books you have pulled out and used

To toss on the ground and collect people’s smiles
Until I stop you and you throw a fit
And so into the backpack off hiking for miles

Your forehead snug on the back of my neck
Home then to microwave Mom’s frozen milk
So that when you wake ravenous for it

I’ll have tested the temperature with a lick
And can lay you out in my elbow’s nook
And watch you suck to the last squick squick

And then you nap again I write my book
And for an hour I am on Mars
Or sitting at my desk lost in thought as I look

Down at the perpetual parade of cars
Your cry wakes us both from this dream
And we’re back at it the movement of the stars

No more regular than our routine
Untellable tedium not just the diapers
The spooning of food the screams

But also the weekly pass of the street sweeper
The hours together playing with blocks
I set them up you knock them down nothing neater

And all the time you learning to talk
Glossolalia peppered with names
Simple statements firm orders Let go walk

Telling me to do things a game
That made you laugh also knowing
When things were in different ways the same

Blue truck blue sky your face glowing
With delight as your language grew
Till description became a kind of telling

Power I spit out the sun I sky the blue
Sitting in that living room together
Each in his own world surprised by new

Things spaced out lost to each other
Used to each other like Siamese twins
Confined to the house by steamy weather

Me watching volleyball on ESPN
Listening to Beethoven reading the Post
You moving your trucks around babbling when

You felt like it absorbed focused lost
In your own space so fully that watching you
I forgot my many selves collapsed to one and was most

Happy the past is gone David I asked beloved of
God do you remember Bethesda
The way my mother would have

Asked me Do you remember Zion
And David looked at me curiously and said No
Dad not really I know how the house looked but all

That comes from pictures in Mom’s albums you know
Yes my first memory is not of Zion but
California the Christmas I was three a brown

Trike put together by my dad next to the tree but
My dad tells me he bought the trike assembled
How can we say what did or did not

Happen David watching you I tremble
You know the world are sophisticated
You say you do not remember

That time and now you know so much of hate
Of anguish of death
Will you ever again be so elated

By the sight of swans swimming under the wharf
Shrieking with laughter as they dove for tossed bread
I hope we are these moments deeper than self

Deeper than memory always connected
Inside each other hoping
This helps hope stave off dread
Brother of mine boy receding
I will try to remember for us
The time when you could be so purely happy

Hiking alone in the Sierra Nevada
I stopped one evening in Dragon Basin
Above treeline by a small stream

Trickling down a flaw in the granite
On the floor of this crack were
Lush little lawns green moss

Furring the banks krummholz bonsai
Clustering over low black falls
Transparent water glossed on top

Standing there I looked
Over the fellfield basin a cupped
Hand of stone catching rocks

Inlaid with a tapestry of plants
Lichen sedge and saxifrage
Tippling green the pebble all bare

Under jagged ridges splintering the sky
Beside the rill I made my camp
Ground cloth foam pad sleeping bag

Pack for a pillow stove at my feet
In the failing light my dinner steaming
To the gurgle of water and the sky

And the stars popping into existence
Over the crest of the range still
Alpenglow pink spiking indigo

The line between the colors pulsing
As they faded to two shades of black the number
Of stars amazing the Milky Way perfectly

Articulating my fall up and into sleep
And was never tired
Dreamed the same dreams