Raw.

The whistling wind was raw
and I barely had any jacket on
because I was young.

At the end of the alley
was a rigid, dead rat.

I remember thinking
that I had to make a choice:
whether to leave, then and there,

or whether to go back to my parents’
inferior brand of love, expressed
in food, mostly. Not what I needed,
but there it was, three times a day.

I chose to go back, of course.
I was only 10 years old, maybe 11.
But I paced in that alley for a long time,

and I buried the rat under the rosebush,
the one my father planted for my mother

on the day I was born.

But that’s just it.
I don’t remember anything,
even though you say I should.
If I met you then, I met you then.
It doesn’t mean you know me now.
You should go back to your wife
who looks for you
in her heart

or out your front window.
Do you ever bring her flowers,
like the ones you just brought me?
I am not your lucky paradise. I don’t own

red lipstick
anymore.

Not for a long, long time.

Nature can be anything.
A leaf twirling in the sun or
the rock I once kicked
all the way down the alley
on my way to school one day.

I think nature is swell.

I wish I had more to say about it,
but sometimes it’s hard to write about
a thing that can be anything.

I hope you will understand.

It’s not that I’m anti-love,
exactly.

I just think there should be
other ways to organize things
like lives or every little hair
on someone else’s head.

But I digress, don’t I?
I never said I was against

love,

only that sense of ownership,
that impulse to say

every little hair on your head
belongs to me

I feel it,
tingling in my own open hand,
even now.

The year that I was six and I woke up
on St. Patrick’s Day and said to you
“Toe of the morning!” because I was
new to reading, had filed away
a greeting card or a decorative sign
or something in my mind as a way
to celebrate this day with you,
you didn’t laugh at me.

The year that I turned eight,
you let me write a message
on each party invitation.

Thank you for both of those things.
You were tops—or, Mother, you were toes.

Listen, they’ll tell you
good health is everything,
but some things are better.
I have lived in rivers of egg yolk,
once drank a whole pan of bacon grease
on a dare, one Sunday morning in my
long underwear, when I was about your age
and all of us young fellows knew
we would die sooner or later anyway,
and whether “later” or “sooner”
didn’t seem as big a deal as it does now
with minds clouded by age
and that feeble intention to have
more time and more and more and more,
and to die as an old, dry twig
rather than a blade of grass, still green.

For the first time ever,
I can’t locate you in space—
by which I mean, I send out
the usual signal from my mind
and you don’t answer.

It used to be a ping
that I could feel between
my eyes, or sometimes
my shoulder blades,
my wings

if you would rather.
I don’t know what it means
not to hear from you—or,
I guess, feel from you—now.
It’s something like when

I went away to college,
would call you from a payphone,
sometimes. Long distance, collect,
and sometimes your mother,
feeling charitable, would accept

my call, pass me to you without
a word—a silent blessing—
but sometimes she wouldn’t
and there I would be,
on a Saturday night:

Hello
Hello
Hello?

No, now I remember—the special
was meatloaf and buttered peas.
There must have been a potato, surely,
but I remember the peas, how we
chased them with our forks and one
rolled under the counter and we
laughed and laughed. You took my
hand, then, in both of yours, said how
sweet it was, and small, and dear.

A lie—

by then, Father had died and my hands were
crabbed by sewing and laundering. You can’t
wear thimbles on each of your fingers, or
gloves every minute of every long day.
Some things can’t be prevented, protected,

but

of all the lies anyone ever told me,
I always loved yours best.

This little buckaroo’s turning 8!
Come to the party—don’t be LATE!

Henry Thompson
5428 Cedarwood Lane
Saturday, November 7, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
OX3-6499

Susan I am sorry for everything
breaking your crayons and eating
all your paste at librarry time
I hope you will come to my party
and if you do that will be keen
we will have hot dogs and cake

HENRY T.

If I could learn to throw my voice,
I could be as secret as

a grave full of pebbles,

tell you things without telling you
anything, as we walk

over that same leaf

in the street until it falls apart.
I could be as quiet as

the streetlight, only humming
a little to myself,

an air.