by Jim Tilley

for those who still live, as in Brueghel’s painting
of the farmer plowing his field
and the distant ship sailing onward as Icarus,
too young, plunges into the sea.

It’s what my sister-in-law’s family keeps trying
to convince themselves, especially her husband,
to whom she bequeathed
the bonsai on the living room table,
her memorandum to the surviving
with its signature signs — “thrive” and “inspire” —
rooted as deeply as she could force them
into the pebbles filling the ceramic pot
that houses the tiny tree and the miniature plastic canine
she placed there to remind him of the dogs
she nurtured to the end and whose continuing care
she’s passed along.

Freed from the bondage of her dread disease,
he’s made some changes. The plywood plank
that covered his billiards table, never bare,
always overlaid with a deep-rose linen cloth,
has been removed, interred somewhere in the basement.
That death shroud gone, the dining room
is a living room again, no longer the shrine
where the family took its last meal together
as she lay in bed a shrunken figure,
finally crucified by the cancer that overtook her
lungs and brain and spine as soon as it could solve
the challenge of the miracle drugs
the doctors had hurled at it.

At the end, she listened to her sister give her
permission to let go, then lay in bed waiting for hospice
to pronounce her what everybody, for months,

had plainly seen, and stayed a little longer
for the funeral home to cart her away
and turn her into ash.

The pool table, restored to its sunken surface
of deep-rose felt, is where he now expresses his stirrings
in shots stroked with either a light touch, the way
he caressed her hair after it had grown back,
or, on random cue, an angry poke, firing balls
to ricochet off banks in search of
their own resting places.

Into the backyard terrace, he’s anchored a mesh cage
and grass mat for practicing golf, a game
she attempted half-heartedly, at which she never excelled
and therefore chose not to play.

The rails he had installed along the hall stairway
he’s left in place, only ever needed by her,
yet now used by all, if only
for the short-lived comfort gained by sliding hands
along the wood she clutched, her knuckles white,
while she could still walk.

Her beloved dogs, Cassidy and Sundance,
never his as much as hers,
have nearly become their old selves.
Blind Cassidy still knocks into the same things;
Sundance, suffering from Addison’s disease,
still receives the daily doses of steroids.
Early on, they sensed that she would be leaving
for the shelter of another place.
No longer do they look for her,
nor stand and wait.

by Jim Tilley

A gale-force wind off the western reservoir shakes the house,

sure sign that winter approaches,

too few leaves left to impede the blow.  It passes through

almost-bare branches and slams

the back windows.  Last winter, it lifted the glass from the table

on the deck and tossed it onto

the floorboards, where it shattered into thousands of pellets,

collateral damage lessened

only by the tempered nature of the glass.  But climate change

or not, the temper of the wind

has changed, more outspoken and violent lately, no longer

respecting the sturdy beeches,

pines, and oaks that have stood their ground for decades,

some a hundred years.

We grew tired of weather weathering the deck, of having to

replace boards rotting around

the nails holding them in place, and decided to replace wood

with composite.  We watched

for weeks as, section by section, the workers splintered

the old planks with crowbars,

pried them out and laid down the new.  The replacements

are spaced farther apart

than the old.  This the wind enjoys, playing its resonant song

as it riffles the air in the gaps,

transforming the deck into bassoon.  It begins with flute-

like whines as the mounting gale

catches the underside and the boards experience first

pangs. Then moans become groans,

a longer-lived grumbling roar like the early-morning snores

of a person resisting waking

to another day.  Drafts sift in around the windows; we hold

our comforters close.

We turned the clocks back last Sunday, but only an hour.

Our friends remind us that we

can’t turn farther back, not even a few years, for another run

at this, trying to find a way

to avoid scrapping all the old when little enough, it turns out,

was too rotten to use.

Leaning against the railing as it begins to pour, not much

cover afforded by my windbreaker,

I peer out over the graying hills.  Every day it becomes harder

to miss the metaphor.

by Kevin Sweeney

While others stand in varying configurations about the
room, ponder the ineffable and inexorable struggle to
bring great poetry to the world, Wayne, Peter and I
sit at a table at one end, enjoying wings, nachos and
quesadillas, blessedly free this night at the Review ’s
Xmas party, and discuss matters equally profound.
I pose a question: If God said you could have any
singing voice you want, whose great voice would
you choose? Trying to be gracious and avoid the
tendency of some poets, great or not, to insert
themselves conspicuously into the dialogue, I wait
to hear from Wayne and Peter but am shocked when
each extols the talent of Freddy Mercury and bemoan
his loss to music since I always hated Queen songs and
don’t care who is the champion. While Peter reveres
opera singers I’ve never heard of, Wayne commits to
Freddy as his choice, so I speak up and say for me
it comes down to David Ruffin, Lou Rawls and Frank
Sinatra, but that if God interrupted and said I could
have Marvin Gaye’s voice, I wouldn’t argue with
the Lord. Meanwhile we three head back to the
buffet table for more tapas without appearing to be
obvious binge-eaters since the arbiters of poetic taste
are not eating stuffed potato skins as their conversation,
unlike ours, seems to survive with fewer distractions.

by Kevin Sweeney

I’ve been thinking of Dr. Richard Kimble, not Harrison Ford
in the movies but David Janssen, the old TV Richard, what
he taught me the year I turned l5 as my family began again
in a small town where we’d never be happy, living in an
apartment but soon a new house in a subdivision as my father
tried to help my sister and me go on without our mother,
dead suddenly two years earlier. On a small TV in an extra

bedroom, Monday night at l0, I watched “The Fugitive.”
Fifty years later I think that title worthy of Camus, but in l963
I knew nothing of strangers, rebels, plagues and not enough,
about The Fall. I knew my father had fallen; sometimes
I heard him wailing in the bathroom like a wounded animal.

David Janssen had this mannerism, a twitch of his mouth,
a small concession to anguish, although he was a Stoic who
understood it didn’t matter he hadn’t killed his wife, that
a one-armed man had stolen everything. He would have to
go on without the consolation of irony, take crummy jobs,

be ready to leave if pursuit came close, never tell anyone
he was a doctor, had lived something more than this menial
life, waiting to reclaim his innocence. Meanwhile he was
the stranger upon whose kindness others could depend.

In high school English I learned which Americans had won
the Nobel Prize, not knowing I’d one day turn to Greek
tragedy the way some people inhabit favorite cafés. I only
knew I’d be tired Tuesday morning, facing a long bus ride
and derision from older boys. But watching Richard Kimble

in black and white I began my education with a great mentor,
his mouth twitching, another indignity absorbed. None of
it was fair but Richard Kimble kept facing the day and its
iniquities as Lt. Gerard kept chasing him, never grasping
the magnitude of what had happened to an innocent man.
I kept the vigil those dark nights with Richard Kimble.
And with my father who’d lost his wife too. Sometimes
I’d go into the bathroom and hold him. He’d blow his nose,
wipe clean his glasses then go back into life, too busy
to ponder justice though I suspected he’d feel better
if once in a while his mouth might slightly twitch.