ROBERT
KELLY

Alley guard
morning glories vining
up the cinderblock wall
we kept our car
in one of those
profile of Chief Pontiac
facing into the dark.

2.
Enough of memory,
be instead
the child again
you thought you were
instead of now
when you sit and think
what would I do if I were me?

3.
Child be,
grammarless and lost,
one summer morning in the mountains
it was 32 degrees,
the poor rattlesnake
coiled on the big boulder
in sun to keep warm.
That is how we learned
numbers and cross the road
and run away.

4.
The futility of childhood
is proved by what happens next.
Look at your so-called friends–
can you imagine any one of them
as a child? Childish maybe
but an actual kid? Never.
The child you were
is your lost Messiah–
pray for the Second Coming.

5.
Parousia
they call it
where they jive
about such things,

when the real comes back
from all the places you have been.
Don’t blame me
for my messy theology–
I was a child once
and it sticks to my hands.

6.
All this from the empty alley
where Mr. Hoffman walked his collie
and I learned the names
of a few flowers
that lasted ever after,
pussy-willow pansy rose.
An alley was a secret street
the houses hid,
cars came to their garages
left the pavement free.
Tricycles and tin wagons.
Once I saw my Brooklyn alley
in Chicago and suddenly
a heartbeat told me
an alley is the noblest street
because it always leads right here.

7.
To be honest,
memory is a big thick sweater
it’s hard to tug off
so you can feel on your bare skin
the chill of now.
Sunday. Cold. No child in sight.

7 March 2021

I have to talk about
whatever tells.
I knock on your door,
three thuds like a Freemason
and you reveal.

The open door says come in,
I enter the mystery,
the uncanny darkness of
the next words to be said.

Speak, I whisper,
and the hallway mirror
shivers with a little light
as if it could see the sound—

who really knows all
the human senses know,
it’s all whistling in the dark.
Or not so dark now, I see
a light upstairs, dim steps,
shadows I could climb.
What language am I in,
what word is this house?

I rub my palms together
and remember sunshine.
Houses don’t just happen,
somebody must have planned all this,
could it be me?
                                    Be
careful what you say
when you’re alone in the dark.
Anything happens. Walls
windows doors terraces
flowering borders deep wells
stone fences. Distant vista.

Where am I now?
Foot of the stairs I will not climb,
feel the carpet underfoot,
lush, from northern Persia,
I can feel the ochre and the madder,
the curved colors writhing
towards a sudden incalculable peace.
I feel sleepy in this word.
Isn’t anybody here?
Bring me coffee, bright
kitchen somewhere not too far?
Fluorescent sandwiches,
microwave mazurkas, life?

Where is life?
Some words have pets
but no cat here. No children,
that’s stranger. No one but me.
If I could find a bedroom
I would sleep, but most
houses keep that sort of thing
up the very stairs I will not climb.

No, no, no. I’m down here
for a reason. From carpet
to bare wood my feet
find the way, polished floor,
hallway, and it too seems
to have a little light at the end.

But I have traveled long enough this night,
here I am and here must linger,
like music on some radio
you can’t find to turn off.

6 March 2021

Centerbeam
word walk
over the gulf
of nothing said

cantilevered
by sunrays bent
always a little
too much to ignore

so we assemble
the stones
whoever we are

stone stone stone
no book is our law

rejoice!

It all remains to be said,
needle and thread,
bare arm and smile,

simchas the Jews say,
celebrate that.

2.
There is a vegetable garden near,
but not much ripe yet in it,
crisp kale at your service
even in the snow, but still
you can walk there, treading
lightly on the future,
the future,
the thing we dare to call
the dirt beneath our feet.

3.
So often the machine
seems to know
what I am thinking.
Out stream the words,
topple stone on stone
till much has been spoken
but little said–
some things it is not wise to say.

4.
Vaccine at last.
Woman with the needle,
even her mask can’t hide her smile,
right arm or left she asks
I answer and the point
goes painlessly in,
hydrate, hydrate she says
so off I go with my wife
who gave me the whole ocean.

5.
See what I mean about gulfs and silences?
Come dance with me a waltz of guesses,
a czardas of near misses–
we will never get
all the way there
that’s what it means
to dance, to go on.

6.
Polyverse seems just perverse,
look what we’ve done with the one we have…
universe must mean a single verse,
one line of a poem that never ends.
Read your line deeply
then shout it out.
We always need more weather.

7.
Roof I mean,
roof may be root,

build from the roof down,
the crest knows
all that comes below

as from the sky
we maybe came.

5 March 2021

1.
Triple city
of the four-fold heart,
the five fingers
Olson found everywhere,
jawohl, I animate these bones,
animal I am,
inside the three cities inside me.

2.
Now say it in English—
I am the dark that lures such light.

3.
Love Compassion Wisdom
three spires you have to climb
on your own bare feet,
no elevator, nothing to lift you
but the thought of others:
other people, other beings,
ordinary things to love
and care for and understand.
Finally at the very top you see
the whole city where you began.
A simple gospel brought you here
but the swallows do not laugh.

1 March 2021