Peter Weltner

Dessèrts poétiques

 

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Michael’s Gift

 

A plaster cow and donkey, five sheep, one chipped,

two shepherds chopped from pine, their crooks

twisted oak limbs, the magi garbed in silk ripped

from old scarves.  Joseph’s badly faded.  Mary looks

downcast with re-painted doll-like eyes.  The baby

Jesus is wrapped in cotton swaddles.  The palms

are plastic.  So’s the manger in the cave.  Michael can see

it’s backlit like a stage, not by the star.  What qualms

he feels as he ponders the shoddy nativity scene

in the church yard are not calmed when his mother

whispers in his ear, “It’s Christmas, son.  Hell’s

shut down for folks like us, heaven-bound.”  Mean-

ing what?  Could it be really true there’s another

world less sad than this?  Be good, he’s told, or else.

 

He’s bullied at school, called a gay boy, a faggot by

the tougher guys.  He never wants or means to stare.

They beat him with willow switches, make him cry,

leave him hurt and dirty in an arroyo.  He doesn’t care

his teachers think him lazy during classes.

He’s tall, strong, but hates to fight and knows more

than other kids, stumbles sometimes, wears glasses,

boasts he doesn’t believe in God anymore, would implore

Him to make them quit it if he did.  Is it selfish

of him to pray for himself when he doesn’t even try

to stop abusing himself?  Maybe he’ll die.  It’s absurd

the world’s unkind.  “Make a wish, make a wish,”

his mother says. “It’s your birthday.”  With a sigh,

he blows out the candles.  They must know, have heard

of why he’s bullied.  It’s past time.  He runs away,

leaves Corpus Christi to the morons, takes a bus

to Frisco, crashes in a pad, is invited to stay

in a derelict Victorian where gay hippies fuss

over him like a baby.  He needs to escape

after a few days.  What they do is sin.  He’d lose

his soul if he were to succumb.  “God’s what you make

of yourself,” his mother had said.  “What you choose.”

But he’s chosen to defy her the Christmas I meet

him in the Capri, nursing a ginger ale.  Great genes,

I think.  In my bedroom, naked, only a cross

round his neck, he begs me to let us greet

the new year together since the crowd scenes

in gay bars scare him, fill him with a sense of loss.

 

We date for three months.  It’s fine.  I don’t know why

I feel it can’t last.  He finds a job in Fields Book-

store, likes to cook, go to movies, try

new trails in west Marin.  He’s very good look-

ing, though he isn’t persuaded when I say

so.  But I tell him to leave anyway.  I stop calling

him, dropping by his room on a bay-

side alley off the Embarcadero.  Everything

I do is hurtful.  I’m just one more mean school

yard bully, a trite, blaspheming, uncaring lover

who abuses his love by looking for another

better than him.  Better than Mike?  From the letter

he writes after he’s left, I know I’m a fool.

He’s enclosed the cross he wore, still a believer.

 

May each of us, at the end of our days, be spared

the wrath of our cruelties, the rage of memory’s

curse, reminding us of our unkindness, those who cared

for us whom we failed.  We, who do only what pleases

us, may we be forgiven for not loving enough,

for achieving only what was convenient,

what desire sought, who believed we could bluff

our way past death and need never repent.

In our last hour, relieve our minds and souls

of our hard words, each unkind, uncaring thing

we’ve said and done, you, who are music, who sing

in imagination, the angel fable says controls

our final moments, save us as we die, preserve

the love, the gifts we were given and didn’t deserve.

 

The Village

 

A shallow creek, a peaceful lake

in the park, squirrels, songbirds, meadows.

The smell of baking bread, of fresh flowers

in crystal vases on the table by the foyer.

The whirr of her sewing machine. She’s mak-

ing a new dress.  In our backyard, by willows,

Mother unbraids her hair.  Hours

pass as luminous as her laughter.

Sitting in her swing. 

Or a morning on the green.

The village’s streets and square,

earth, sky, all I’d seen,

my people kind and fair:

why old men die while dreaming

 

A Promise

 

A curved, black, spindle back chair.  A once plush red

cushion faded to rose-soft orange or pink.  A pale

olive green sweater drapes over it.  The floor boards–shed,

barn dark–are centuries old.  Tan, like a rusted nail,

two shoes, work boots, laces untied, rest.  Ceramic

cups, a bowl for cats.  A part of a chair, carved

arms, the paint worn smooth, no wood exposed.  A hutch, thick

slats, built solid.  One door’s swung open.  It’s piled

with stacks of white or gray porcelain bowls and plates.

On its side, the weathered wood of an antique ironing board

hangs from a nail.  The ghost of a snow shovel waits

out the glass door propped on a wall.  Old things adored,

the snow shining bright as a flashbulb.  So ancient deeds burn

through time.  I promise.  He’s just stepped out.  He’ll soon return.

 

In the Last of the Thousand Lands

 

Haltingly, an old woman’s walking

far from home.  The road

is muddy in the early spring.

Husband, children are dead.  The load

on her back is like a bag of sorrow.

 

Snow is slowly melting in a meadow.

Birds peck at seeds in a tree.

A farmer is plowing fresh land,

the just turned field rust-tawny

where sliced and sheared.  A stand

 

of birches.  Faint mist.  Pale sky.

The pebbles, rocks by her path

glisten like mica.  Such beauty

she sees, though mindful of death,

stones sparkling like stars.  A crow

 

looks glad it’s time for sow-

ing.  Green sprigs are like dreaming,

like dawn ever-shining, limbs

stripped of ice, newly blooming,

the pungent woods, the hymns

 

finches are singing.  The forest

is where she must wearily go

to reach oak, golden ash, the rest,

the sleep she is seeking, to know

what trees know, the roots below

 

her feet, the ground like a window

she spies through.  To walk

through years frightened, then catch sight

of loveliness.  She watches a hawk

fly like an arrow through white

 

clouds toward a garden of camellias,

dahlias, irises, roses–

like a lover’s last flowers she’s

been given as day fast closes

to evening’s shade and shadow.

No more grief.  Weeping.  Sorrow.

It is the thousandth land

she’s reached, journey’s end.

“I’m tired,” she says, and

waits for him, her dearest friend.

 

And he comes like solace to

an aged wanderer, to her,

Imagination, to who-

ever is a traveler,

who wishes life might bestow

 

on her today or tomorrow

before it is too soon over,

a vision of woods, plowed

fields, birds, clear water,

flowers, blue skies endowed

 

by grace of nature, by which

I mean by hope, dream,

desire, all the rich,

sweet mind conceives of that might seem

more real than dying if art could make it so.

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