Ode to Seven

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
-William Wordsworth, We Are Seven


"If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass



THE SEANCE

If Elvis was here
he could do it
but we lost him
in the back seat
of a bluebird.
Me and Sarah
sobered up like
Katherine in the closet
when we asked Lori's dead dad to knock,
we all sobered up,
kicked our way out-
saw locked windows and doors
all around, pleasant grass outside
not the fake kind
but real, stable grass,
Country Squire in the carport,
the avocado Frigidaire
opened and closed
bilaterally, as was the style.

SQUIRREL DUENDE

St. Pat's let out at three
no one moved until
Sister Josepha left with her
cross-kissing Judas stories
hanging around her ankles
like worn out socks on a poor kid,
no one dared.
A squirrel huddled behind 15 miles an hour,
tried to give me rabies
in trade for my cuddle,
his eye a brown globe
the color of a monk.
I denied this in the confession.

MARY'S OD

Mary, Mary quite contrary
how did your urgent need grow?
Knick Knack Paddy Whack
your old man rolled home.
Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,
so he beat the shit out of her.
She died in her own vomit
several years later,
her bracelet landing
on heaven in the hopskotch.

BURN

We tried to burn the town down
a stampede put it out
as an afterthought
right near the big circle
that drains into several
asphalt tributaries

Wood Canyon, Spring Canyon
Perley Street-

We should have known
by the water marks
on the library walls
the flood couldn't take
it down neither,
a hundred some years before.
It just kept on melting.

MEDITATION

Old Man Ham
had a Hills Bros can,
his wife was really lean.
She kept a Baptist house
no smoke inside, her pies never burned.
He stood and puffed
out by the garden gate,
heard the cottonwoods say:

wow amen.

US

All our fights looked the same
mom's skirts blowed up
as she fell down
her soft perfect bottom
as clean as a whistle.
Old man Ham a trusty witness
as we pushed him out the door,
his false teeth clicked
in the roof of his mouth.
Inside their place next door, Grace
popped her gum incessantly near
something they called an "ottoman".
Sometimes we felt a little poor.

AFTER HE DIED

At night one night
running past the ankle high
black gully windows,
wicked little transoms
under houses built on flash floods,
up past the garden gate,
his chair under that pear tree,
almost empty,
the air was very, very clear.
Through our newest
old door I kept running -
and on the last breath I summoned
his soul from the cotton we kicked
off our shoes in spring.
When I told mom this,
she called for a Nitro.

This is how I remember it.

GRACE HAM'S ADDENDUM

On a muggy afternoon
in late summer three quarters
of the way from Tucson
Grace Ham's daughter
took a turn for the worse on I-10.
Mom turned into puddles
all around the house.
It was wetter than the day
our spaniel Maxi got rigor mortis on the front porch.