Dana Gioia - 99 Poems

What I meant to say is merely this:

What if completion comes only in beginnings?

The naked tree exploding into flower?

And all our prim assumptions about time

Prove wrong? What if we cannot read the future

Because our destiny moves back in time,

And only memory speaks prophetically?

We long for immortality, a soul

To rise up flaming from the body’s dust.

I know that it exists. I felt it there,

Perfect and eternal in the way

That only numbers are, intangible but real,

Infinitely divisible yet whole.

But we do not possess it in ourselves.

We die, and it abides, and we are one

With all our ancestors, while it divides

Over and over, common to us all,

The ancient face returning in the child,

The distant arms embracing us, the salt

Of our blind origins filling our veins.

I stood confused beside my daughter’s bed

Surprised to find the room around me dim.

Then glancing at the bookshelf in the corner,

I saw she’d lined her dolls up in a row.

Three little girls were sitting in the dark.

Their sharp glass eyes surveyed me with contempt.

They recognized me only as a rival,

The one whose world would keep no place for them.

I felt like holding them tight in my arms,

Promising I would never let them go,

But they would trust no promises of mine.

I feared that if I touched one, it would scream.

I.

I watched your headlights coming up the drive

and thought, “Thank God, it’s over.” Do you know

I waited up all night for you — with only

the bugs for company? I tried to watch them

beating their wings against the windowpanes

but only saw my own face staring back,

blurry and bodiless against the black.

Mostly I passed the time remembering

what it was like to grow up in this house.

This little parlor hasn’t changed a bit

in twenty years. Those china figurines

along the mantelpiece, the ivory fan,

the green silk pillows puffed up on the couch

were sitting in exactly the same place

when I first came. And that pathetic print

of Jesus smiling by the telephone—

even the music in the piano stool.

These things should have been thrown away by now

or put up in the attic and forgotten.

But you aren’t interested in family heirlooms.

The only reason that you’re here is me.

I won’t resist. I’m ready to go back.

Tomorrow you’ll be heroes in the paper—

KILLER NABBED AT FOSTER MOTHER’S HOME.

But first look in the kitchen. No need to rush.

II.

She raised me, but she wasn’t family.

I don’t know how she first got custody,

except that no one really wanted me.

My father disappeared when I was three.

I don’t remember him. A few years later

my mother took off, too. After she left

I saw her only once — by accident—

at the State Fair one Sunday afternoon

when I was twelve. I went without permission.

I should have been attending Bible School

to find salvation over milk and cookies,

but I had sneaked away. I couldn’t stand

another dreary day of Jesus. I knew

there would be hell to pay when I got home.

Still I was happy, wandering through the booths,

drunk with the noise, the music, and the rides,

not feeling lonely anymore but merged

into the joyful crowds who didn’t care

that it was Sunday. Moving in their midst,

for once I felt I wasn’t different,

that we all shared a common world of grace

where simple daylight poured down happiness.

Then suddenly I saw her at a booth—

my mother — talking to some man, and she

was holding a stuffed animal they’d won,

chatting with it in the sort of baby talk

that lovers use. At first I wasn’t sure

if it was her. I started to call out.

She noticed then that I was watching her.

And for an instant we stood face to face.

I knew from pictures it was her. And she

paused for a moment, staring absently.

A puzzled look, a moment’s hesitation,

and then she winked at me — the intimacy

of strangers at a summer fair — and smiled

without the slightest trace of recognition.

I turned and ran the whole way home.

That evening when the old bitch paddled me

for missing church, for once I didn’t mind.

III.

God didn’t care. He saw where I belonged.

She told me years ago how everyone

would either go to Heaven or to Hell.

God knew it all, and nothing you could do

would make a difference. I asked her how

a person knew where he was chosen for.

She said, “A person always knows inside.”

She asked me suddenly — for the first time—

if I were saved. I couldn’t give an answer.

“Look in your heart,” she told me. “Look for Jesus.”

All night I lay in bed and thought about it.

I tried to pray, but mostly I just kept

imagining my heart, how dry it was

and empty like a shell that long ago

someone had picked up sparkling from the surf.

But now it lies in a cluttered dresser drawer

where no one ever touches it again.

And if you ever held it to your ear,

you wouldn’t hear the crash of ocean waves.

All you would feel is the harshness of bone.

All you would hear is a hush of loneliness

so small that you could hold it in your hand.

That night I knew that I would go to Hell,

and it would be a place just like my room—

dark, suffocating, with its door shut tight,

and even if my mother were there too,

she wouldn’t find me. I’d always be alone.

VI.

The next night I left home. I walked for miles

through fields and farmland without any aim.

It was so dark I couldn’t see my way.

Then pushing though a cornfield, suddenly

I tripped and slid into some kind of hole.

I clutched the muddy walls to break my fall.

They crumbled at my weight. Each time I tried

to right myself I slipped and fell again.

Stuck ankle-deep in mud, I screamed for help,

struggling in darkness, unable to escape.

Finally I lay there panting at the bottom.

It seemed so deep I didn’t try again,

and, absolutely sure that I would die there,

I fell asleep, still glad that I’d left home.

And I remember waking up that morning

in a deep ditch beside a cornfield. I

was hungry, cold. My clothes were caked with mud.

The first thing that I noticed was a crow

perched right above me on the ditch’s edge,

blinking and cawing at the murky sky.

I lay there shaking, stupidly afraid

the bird would swoop and blind me with his claws.

Trying to keep still, holding my breath,

I watched him pacing back and forth while slowly

the cool green daylight filtered through the corn.

I finally summoned courage to stand up,

and — just like that — the startled bird flapped off.

At first I was embarrassed. How had I

become so terrified of that small creature?

But then I had to laugh. I realized

how many of the things I feared in life

were likely just as much afraid of me.

I knew I could climb out then, and I did—

digging myself a sort of runway up.

Gasping for breath, I knelt down in the field

between the tall straight rows of sunlit corn

and swore I’d never be afraid again.

They found me the next day and brought me home.

That’s when I started getting into trouble.

My teachers always wondered why a kid

as smart as me would lie so shamelessly