USA

Shrmprl@cs.com

IMMIGRANTS

I know how my grandfather felt 
huddled in steerage leaning side to side 
to steady the ship, pressing backwards to stop it. 

I know what he saw as he puked at the railing--
mocking whitecaps and spinning skies,
sea monsters on the horizon.

My grandfather reached the strange land
the way I've entered this century; we stumbled 
down the same gangplank, 

scratched our tangled gray beards to decipher
directions shouted in languages 
nobody spoke where we came from. 

We looked around these landings for reminders
of the lives we'd abandoned-- 
a creaking ox-cart or tail-finned Chevy,

faces of those we'd left buried. 
All we had in our pockets were their pictures 
and the worthless currency of the past.

We followed the arrows and got lost, blinded 
by the lights, the flash, the dazzle,
deafened by the roar of progress.  

At the gate we were given new names. 
We took one glance back
at the vast black sea and shuffled on through.

SWIMMING TO CATALINA

The swimmer in that stillness beyond breakers
that could carry him back
crawls the opposite way, toward open sea.
He's riding a different current.
His stroke opens the water, his kick churns the calm;
he sparkles ahead, fragment of a wave that's
always breaking.  He glides
from green into darkening blue, father and farther
from the lifeguards and sun-bathers
lounging with me on the safety of this shore.
The sea rocks him in its arms; the rollers
wash over him; again and again he sinks out of sight,
then bobs up as though he'd escaped the grasp
of the bottom; and the island's 
still an ocean away, no more than mist 
on the horizon.  I want to shout turn around, turn back 
but he's out where the fins slice the surface, 
where pelicans crash-dive to catch 
the small elusive fish glittering below.
I've never been out that far.
One glance at the gray horizon
and I see the beach he's swimming toward,
the diamonds in the sand, the footprints of explorers.
I step in; the water's warm; the tide tugs.

TWISTING THE NIGHT

Dance with me, Maryann, show me those
        moves again, how to swivel
my hips and shoulders, how to twist

in time, glide smooth as Chubby Checkers
from now to then, from this
        echoing house back to your place.

The needle crackles across the record,
        there's pomade in my hair,
smiles on my shoes.  C'mon baby,

let's twist this darkness away;
death has melted your flesh but your bones
        still shimmy and shake.

Pull on your tie-dyed mini, your white
        dancing boots; come twisting
out of the shadows into the strobes

and we'll twist the old way, close together
        then dancing away
        till we're dancing alone.

The music's getting louder, Maryann;
        look at me twisting,
one foot planted, one waving in the air.

THE BIG ONE

Tremors from out in the desert somewhere;
needles twitch to located the numbers, the causes--
could be bedsprings vibrating
with the motion of lovers or floorboards
creaking under the feet of one
rushing to write a dream down before it's lost.

We've come so far;
our sensors have grown so delicate they register
all births.  The cries of mothers and babies
show as swarms of aftershocks.
The first temblors of love--fingers trembling
on a face, the friction of bodies rubbing bodies--
make marks on the graph; the lines quiver
with expectancy.  Vibrations
from the birth of a poem get recorded
and the decibels of prayers,
and the nerves of gamblers tossing dice in Vegas.

Each kiss, all things coming to life try to become
the big one.  Some erupt; they send waves
far and wide under the surface.  They
rattle foundations, shade down the the old structures.
And we brace for the shock,
swaying like dancers on the uncertain ground.

FATHER'S DAY

My rack's full of the nooses I've worn to work;
ties that bound me to house and family hang in the back

of my closet, crammed together and dim as the years
but this one, now that I've given up ties, 

I might wear some night when I'm alone in the stillness
after my daughter's gone.  This one swirls

with fragments of the universe--exploding stars, clouds
of galaxies, creatures from planets that didn't exist

when I was teaching my kid about the world.
These fibers have a life of their own.  The colors

flowed from the box, I could feel my daughter's touch
as she tested the fabric at some fancy boutique.

This silk was spun by a thousand worms.
The weaver bent over his loom turning thread into cloth,

the cutter risked his fingers as the blade fell,
the seamstress squinted for light in the windowless shop.

My tie must've hisssed under the iron that pressed
the folds in; it came out smooth as my daughter's embrace.

This gift, this process, this routine, this surprise--
how did she know that this was just what I wanted?

It's dangling now, loose and silly around my
collar-free neck.  When the room gets dark it may glow.

© All Copyright, 2000, Sherman Pearl.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.