Benjamin Gorman's Shared Poems

a layer of snow stills sound.
but the darkness,
night itself
draws out panic,
blood from a wound;
its rising tidal bore
threatens to submerge all;
entranced I watch it swell
far into the night
mad-morbid curiosity
to see how far it will rise;
deeper into darkness
terror-mad but paralyzed
by the swelling weight of it
the tide that cannot float me,
the pressing bulk—
all in quiet,
deeper into quiet

All through Tuesday
it rained down Jujubes in a steady drizzle.
Red green yellow orange purple streaks
of falling candy colorized the streetscape
bounced like psychedelic hailstones
became a cartoon carpet.
At first, of course, we caught them
in pots and pans
poured the particolored gems
into jars, cans, tins, bags
even Maggie’s shoeboxes
(she has a lot).
But the novelty in anything wears thin
and how many Jujubes
do you think you'll eat in a month? a year?
The city streetsweeper drivers got a lot of overtime
and I’m sure there were more than a few
sick dogs and kids that night.

Wednesday it was strawberries:
fresh as you please
beautifully formed
lust-red and sweet like nobody’s business.
A math prof from the U
gave a shot at quantifying
this heavenly harvest
but wasn’t sure whether to use
quarts or acre-feet.
It was quite a mess on the streets
and by the sound of the screech-and-thuds,
I imagine the insurance adjusters
were anxiously reviewing their “acts of God” clauses.
We’ve now got preserves out the wazoo
and the freezer’s packed tight;
I’m mostly worried I’ll never taste
another strawberry as good.

You can imagine the anticipation about Thursday.
Good ‘n’ Plenty or heads of lettuce?
The news said Vegas offered some interesting odds.
But nobody won the betting pool at work:
it was potato chips.
Who’d have guessed?
Lovely things, each a work of art
fluttering down like petals
golden wherever the sunlight caught them.
That’s when I noticed the sounds—
the Jujubes had made a loud patter,
the strawberries, wet thudding plops,
but the potato chips were quiet on the lawns and foliage,
and where they hit hard surfaces
the sound was a delightful sort of soft ticking.
The funny part
was different neighborhoods reporting different flavors:
salt-and-vinegar around campus
barbecue over in Grandview
sour cream and onion in Linden
cracked pepper up in Worthington.
We seemed to be in between—
a mix of salt-and-vinegar and New York cheddar.
We ran out of ziplocks in five minutes—
who wants stale chips?
There was a good deal of traffic that day
as folks drove to their “flavorhood”;
at least the accidents were fewer.

We’re almost giggly about Friday.
It’s the wee hours now—
the thing seems to start around dawn.
People I talk to aren’t sure
whether to break out wheelbarrows
5-gallon paint buckets
or tarps.
I haven’t looked forward to tomorrow
this much since I was a kid
on the nights before my birthday.
Funny, I can’t even remember now
if Monday was clear or cloudy.

I thought of him today
for the first time in a long time:
an old man’s face reminded me.
The man lacks those baby-blues
but something about him
was similar enough.
Or is it the power of anniversary?
(he’s gone 16 years this month)
Not the arbitration of calendars
but the palpable cycles of things—
Earth in orbit, seasons’ concatenation,
tides in blood and the deep soil of memory.

In many of my dreams
my father, too, is a regular visitor.
Gone over eight years,
he wanders in and out of my sleeping stories
with banal routine,
his presence unremarkable.
How odd this seems on waking—
were I to see him then,
how differently I’d feel!

I suppose the dead don’t leave;
they change rhythm, frequency
like a zoetrope spun too slow or fast
or a Dopplered train whistle;
we lose sight of them
do not hear them speak
not because they’re “gone”
but because we forget
there is more than one way of seeing,
more to hearing than our ears.

Remodeled long ago,
house with bones forgotten,
the window in the walls
opens onto darkness.
Did whimsy stake this claim—
glass-eyed helpless victim?

A wall on either side
obviates this portal:
no looking out from in;
peeping Toms are thwarted.
No songbird’s music heard,
no defenestration.

The strangest thing in this:
open is the window,
as though to catch a breeze
never, never coming.
Now trapped between the walls
darkness, only darkness.

Today's poem already happened to you:
the scrap of paper that pirouetted past you
as you walked back from the grocery
or the feeling you got
from the look in the young woman's face
at the crosswalk as you stopped at a light
(eyes dark, a glistening tear in one corner)
or finding the secret window,
now hidden within the wall of the house expansion
but left open, as though to draw in
a breeze from a phantom summer.

Don't worry. It's not too late.
They're happening all around you.
You should catch them fresh
and jot them down
because some of them need
fertile ground right away
or they'll never take root.
Just breathe in deeply. Exhale, relax.
And look this time.