PAUL,

i. AFTER READING A POEM BY GEORGE SEFERIS, I MADE DINNER

Houston, April 2019

The coarse and leafy stalks, like memory,
Began to soften in my hands. The kale
Massaged with olive oil and salt. Silently,

You sat on the couch as if in grisaille,
Scrolling through the twitter of the state.
A fragile, bluesy cover song was scaled

To minor on the stereo; the last late
Light of afternoon cast behind closed blinds.
Earlier, we walked in truncated

Circles through the park up to an inclined
Vantage point. Falling water pooled endlessly
Below a blinding, glassy skyline.

If we squinted, we could almost see
That vague dizzying sway of a tall palm tree.

ii. BIOPHILIC DESIGN: A HOSPITAL WALK

M.D. Anderson, Houston, April 2018

The vague dizzying sway of a tall palm tree
And the clear bitter current of a mountain stream.
Each picture was a variation on a theme,
Reminders of places we will never be
While wildflowers opened to nature’s middle C.
We lapped the floor, your smile not what it seemed
As we passed the nurses treating their teeming
Machines. “Sunset on the Beaufort Sea,”

One caption said, and I was reminded
Of the song our father used to sing,
The lyrics returning, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.
There was some Northwest Passage we were hoping
To find, so we walked on—together but alone.

iii. CROSSING THE WASHINGTON AVENUE BRIDGE

Minneapolis, December, early 2000’s

So we walked on, together but alone
With our thoughts.
Christmas break, snow falling.
We came looking for the spot—
there was no headstone—
Where the broken poet suddenly broke his fall.
Poor Henry. We held the riveted railing
In our gloved hands
above the marooned beams
Stretched out over half-frozen eddies swirling
Below us. The landing
they call Bohemian
Flats, a place immigrants settled, downstream
From the falls
that built the city we called home.
(Where is home now?) You recalled
a Dream Song,
Lines weighed down by heavy boredom,
And we watched our spit fall through the gloaming
Light, like floating prayers hitting home.

iv. OUTSIDE THE BARN, WE LISTENED TO THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, 1994

Light, like a floating prayer hitting home,
Flared and faded, the bonfire slowly
Turning to ash as we passed the joint
Between us like fragments of poems
Just starting to form on our tongues. Holy
Or unholy, it wasn’t a point

We wanted …And strange, for sure, we laughed—what glory—The stars and the moon in some pointillistGlow—how high we must have been—and our laughterWas the story.