Past Past

Past the clinks of the metal bat, the high school boys running bases—fielding something, past the flirty girl in pink, still. Past the fat mother and her baby on her lap, swinging together, stretching the strip of rubber suspended by chains. Past the river that’s lost it’s sway, bent straight by men and edged with concrete, broken concrete. Past the curiosity of the concrete, past the young man smiling at his woman, her lids half lowered. Past her face, smooth as a nickel. Past sheets and skin and the jelly roll. Past the usual line of five o’clock cars snagging the walking-bridge joy. Past the White River. Past loneliness and lolling on a log by the river, past eyeing a knob. Smooth, beneath the fallen tree. A shell or a snail. Past leaning forward for it’s touch, the bump’s touch, the unexpected polish. Past not caring. Past dying—not past here. In thoughts and ant hills. Feeling spring in the nose, the weariness of bones. Half in dreams. Half in memory. Wondering what it means. How to get it back.

Shadows

Hillary outlined a plan. Mentioned standing up to China, not holding hands with the Saudis. Mourned magnets we manufactured in Muncie for guided missile systems, out-sourced along with the factory to another country. Her blazer was smart. Gold. My new haircut slopes to the right. Trendy. I peer through the small hoops of my Walgreens glasses. The left side of my body hurts. And my heels. On the way home from the hairdresser, yellow sprigs of forsythia bouqueted the sides of chipped houses. Magnolia trees dropped wax-like leaves here and there and deep red branches of roadside bushes opened up with pink or white blossom. Winter so tight with gray, made me forget. Indiana can be beautiful. The potholes hurt my self-esteem. Maybe forever. Now, the sun streams in from the kitchen window. Over my kitchen sink. Over my left shoulder. Winks back at me from my computer screen along with my wavering shadow. Strange things shadows, like mute mountains. Witnesses without tongues. I almost believe they are spirit, like I did at eleven. My daughter is eighteen. Same age as my husband, when I met him. How odd. I may never get to Europe. Hillary may beat me to it. One way or another.

Before the gods were invented

Before golden rains or swans sullied maidenheads—
earlier than Mary’s Mother-of-God-swansong
or Woden’s bartering an eyeball for wisdom,
Before the golden calf, Loki, or Abraham’s covenant
with God—prior to Jesus, Joseph Smith
or Durga’s ride on a white tiger
Before Siddhartha’s footprints dimpled the earth
from India to China under the trunk
of an elephant-headed god, whose broken tusk
still waxes over a thousand Hindu thresholds
from the Malay Archipelago to Brooklyn,

Before the Renaissance’s Amida Buddha’s bronzed
hands poised in a mudra of contemplation,
or his eyes bent on a dogma of devotees
chanting: Amida, Amida, Amida—open
the pure land’s gates,
Before Dante’s hell yowled for the wailing whirlpool
of weeping sinners, before the invention of gods,

Maybe, they fished. Caught spotted catfish or silver trout.
Watched the birds. Sure, there were divisions—
but nobody divvied up heaven’s devotion of the earthy world.
Before the gods were invented, maybe they listened
to the wet, soily days of spring
and accepted death—dying like animals do.