Poems from Wrestling Light

Bridge Over Lake Lavon

Across a drought-scarred lake I drive as sleep
invades and the effect of coffee dies
like the bare, winter-like branches once deep
beneath a blanket of God's tears and sighs.
A scavenging bird rests on a dark stump,
like me, watching the August fog at dawn
burn away like fires in a garbage dump,
he too tired to hunt, I too tired to yawn.
Oppressed by the news of the world, I turn
the radio off.  "I am almost there,"
I think, "And there is nothing new to learn."
I'm near the end, close to the shore, close to where
I'll open a hard door that will seem
like home, say a desperate prayer, and dream.

For Dave Dravecky
   (June 18, 1991)

If the visions I had when I thought like a child
had come to fruition
then I might have been an enemy of sorts --
hoping against the strength of your arm
studying your moves to keep from being picked off
swinging for home at your expense.

But you got lucky.
I was too asthmatic,
too bookish, lacked too much talent
to cut giants down.

How fortunate did you feel
when the power of the comeback arm
snapped at cancer's return?
Hanging, falling from the mound,
dethroned and returned to mortality.

St. Paul the mortifier
might say you are lucky this morning --
you lose an arm to the black mass,
but I struggle with my whole live corpse.

This suspended moment
under the anesthesia
I try to blame the god of science
who takes swings at the faith of cripples.

Someday, my daughter
will cry over what I know is trivial,
and I'll take my two arms
and squeeze out the sobs,
but you --

you'll adjust.

And maybe I won't be angry forever
at the dark we wrestle with
at the light that let this happen.

Candle

I'd lie awake
and watch for the small light
that would peek outside
my mother's door.
Every night
she would like a candle
next to her replica of the Pieta
and the monsters would not come around.