My favorite poem
{one}
Something tells me Shakespeare
Would never have gone by “billy.”
The name commands very little from adulthood
Rolling as it does on small balanced somersaults.
{two}
From years away
I hear children playing in the road
Unscathed by the passing traffic
Hitting tennis balls
With aluminum bats
Sending them orbiting off over foreign ground
Over the neighbors roof
First, a bend ash
Second, some collapsed hubcap
Third, a stolen fluorescent cone
(it took three of us to carry it from the ditch.)
I tagged each base as my brothers ran off
To find our ball on the other side of our world
And as the gravel spit itself
From under my running feet,
I hear them all calling my name out
“Billy….Billy!..... billy!”
I believed I could keep circling forever.
{three}
My little sister is making man
Of our lawn, shaving it too close
And letting the dry soil cloud like the Midwest,
Though we are far from there now.
In sixth grade
I stole my brother’s razor and pretended
To grow up, face to face to the mirror,
I trained my hand
To glide the razor against my smooth skin
With the grace of the lawnmower
Disturbing the surface of the yard
But resolved nothing.
And I would have gotten away with it
But in the finishing moments
I grew impatient, drew my head and chin back
To nick my youthful skin.
It stung at first, then the blood swelled against the later
As it to boast at its escape.
And I rinsed my minor wound, cleaning nothing,
Then ran from the bathroom to hide my face in a towel until dinner
{four}
People ask me and I answer
Nothing is wrong with “William”
Perched on the line like a hungry bird.
But everything becomes devoured by maturity.
Something dies and is buried
In the empty lot, a young bird
And quiet comes to an empty house
Children play ball there
And curse over the sacred ground
The other birds, amazed by the estranged
Displacement of generation,
Call to the children to com back outside
And play again under the estranged sun.
Nothing is wrong with “William,”
I tell them, but why do things have to change?”
{five
I once attempted to learn cursive
A angle of loops and circles. I finished,
Unsuccessful, and waited, misplaced
Among the settled rows of desks
For the teacher to come with her ruler
Maybe I decide, I have remained
Attached to my young name
Because I would hate to have to learn another,
Afraid of the illegible language of children.
{six}
December was the shorted it has ever been
And the warmest. I remember
What we call “snow” in Florida,
Though it melts impatiently as it falls earthward.
To celebrate, I did not rejoice in Christ’s honor
Instead struggled to reconnect
To the visions of sugarplums I no longer dream of.
I spied from second-story mall railings
Not on Santa, but on the children who worship him
Then dart off like wild pigeons
Still clinging to their mothers and fathers
Christmas day, I too clung to my father.
He unwrapped more toys than I did
And I helped him test them,
Drove to a 7-11
To check the reception on long distance
Walkie talkies. “red Dog one to Blue Fox Three.”
He came in loud and clear.
{finis}
The dawn is up. We wait at the dockside
Since midnight. My 18th, threshold
Of nothing really, but cigarettes and lottery tickets,
Neither of which I celebrate,
And instead of parading down the lapped shore,
Tightfisted and unruly, I have been calling my name out
To the water’s edge for hours,
Begging my youth to remain attached
To my branches like unripe fruit.
I hope I listen.