The Martians(139)

Surely tear at the surface of the rock

And some few atoms I hoped would stick

As carbon incorporated into my bones

For their seven-year cycle or

For good perhaps and so I sat

Digesting Mars and the view the sun

Ablink through the Berryessa gap

The wind rising each life has its trajectory

Up and down in the shimmer of ordinary moments

Sudden euphoria stab of grief the pattern dustdevil

Funneling down spiraling up in most

Exquisite sensitive dependence

On unknown factors that dusk nothing of the sort

Happened it was a matter of will a

Meditative discipline exerted day after

Day for years to make a world

Transparent in me and my mind at home

And as I swallowed parts of another world

This one wheeled about me like a veritable

California

THE REDS' LAMENT

They never got it right

not any of them not ever

never on Earth by definition

nor hardly ever on Mars itself

the way it was back in the beginning

the way it was before we changed it



The way the sky went red at dawn

the way it felt to wake under the sun

light in the self rock under boot

.38 g even in our dreams

and in our hopes for our children



The way the way always came clear

even in the worst of the gimcrack chaos

Ariadne's thread appearing or not

in the peripheral moment lost

lost then found and walking on

a sidewalk through the shattered land



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

TWO YEARS

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