Cheese Days

Some of us are preachers
went to kindergarten
played fifth-grade baseball
doctors and mechanics
snuck out at night to steal
danced and fell in love
others still pirates and pimps
cars tomatoes beer or kisses
often with the wrong person
behind the tennis courts.
Years ago for ten minutes
in the morning in homeroom
we sat next to each other
and made each other laugh.
At Cheese Days that’s enough.
Who knew?

From our new homes we look
out our windows at strange
cities forests lakes farms
mountains but at Cheese Days
we come from the eyes of old
friends and our gathered
children, from their surging
and how it peels us with joy
and intoxicating dread. We
love the old who scared us
and even the spaces the lost
make. We cry to see our grown
children laugh and laugh
to see in the certainty of their
beautiful bodies their babies
that will take our place. We
haven’t forgotten wandering
thickets or pulling our hair
jumping off bridges driving
mad nights looking for lovers
we never found or running
from spouses we did or even
our own hateful hearts but
the shoulders of the dead
squeeze among us and the shadows
of who we were who we wanted
and wanted to be are welcome
too—we drink with them
under the tents on the town
square as the sky darkens
and the lights turn on
for Cheese Days.

The houses and yards are smaller
the gardens and trucks bigger
and more people limp and kill
themselves with booze than we
remember. Dead birds appear
magically in the high school
and madness is ten thousand
pounds of cheese noodles.
All weekend sex wafts up
from the golf course and
the black river makes us ache
for something at the edge
of our well-lighted minds.
Despite the season we smell
panicky gusts of autumn
the bones of winter stars
desire in melting snow. If
we close our eyes spring
sunshine makes our legs
strong again.

On the last evening in the high
balm of late summer on the edges
of the town square our moon
hearts grow round and we tell
stories of our lives we never knew.
The beer is cold curds fresh
and over our shoulder the old
courthouse rises weighty
and weightless and glowing
like another pretty ghost
while we breathe the sweet
air of our bodies and laugh
harder than we’ve laughed
in a long time knowing
it all ends too soon scattered
with the crowd buried
with the dead tomorrow
when Cheese Days ends.

—————————————————————————–

Los Ansianos

Today town is upside down
dogs bark in the bowl corona
tables are tipped tourists
with binoculars squint round
hills covered with straight lines
Picasso city colored blood
burnt orange yellow turquoise
old stone brick and the mystery
of ten thousand windows
tunnels and mine shafts
dug by gold and dust covered
men standing statue still
all day long for pesos.

What does it do to the eye
to follow a curved ally
toward music that opens
into a cobbled plaza spaced
with couples in purple
dusk dancing in fine suits
and dresses—none
under seventy years old?

Slow motion, a mime
of passion, is that the long
and the short of it? How
does that account for beauty?
For the way a couple dozen
old people coupled up in good
shoes holding hands with serious
faces step to music and take
away your breath?

Like lions their old
bodies chase game
through tall grass
too full now to smile
they know what the young
can never that this
is all there is who
now chase shadows
all day make love
until dawn then roar
up from the bay
crush homes and roam
streets in celebration
and not know the slow
the limp the trickle
the inevitable ebb
and glorious sleep.

What makes beauty
is what we cannot see
but imagine in hints
of coyness of dash
and flirt— lives on fire
and the charred bones
they dance on—city
of mystery they built
night blankets old heat
the dead that dance
at their side in their arms
how bright the dark
how invisible it glows
as the plaza turns cold.