Selective Vision
by Angela Patten
The road to your new apartment
over a barn at the end of a dirt road
is a quagmire now in early Spring.
Two decades since the road was graded,
and the ruts are a foot deep.
We park the car, hike the last mile in.
Water everywhere, more rain predicted.
Woods are burgeoning, birds singing,
small buds exploding like grenades.
All this interminable greenery,
perfect breeding-ground for blackflies,
ticks, the horrors of Lyme disease.
Even the pond is alive,
tadpoles wiggling their tails
like eager spermatozoa.
You talk about hollyhocks, roses,
sweet peas, runner beans.
Thrust your hands into the soil.
Goodbye condominium —
you’re growing things again.
So busy thinking about art and beauty
you’ll forget to eat. And after a while
you won’t even notice the hillside
full of rusting cars that leads
to your new digs. You’re imagining
a house, a pond, a future together.
I’m busy setting my heart against you,
eyeing the path that leads out
of the woods, plotting my escape.
Still your red beard reminds me
of a fox’s brush and I like the way
your eyes turn color in the changing light.
I even like your hare-brained visions,
your preference for plants over people.
Maybe I’ll stick around through Mud Season
just to see how it all works out.
The Best Advice
by Angela Pattern
When we asked my American in-laws
about how to raise a child —
meaning of course their future grandson
though we had not thought to consult them
about their wishes in the matter —
they said that they had made
every mistake in the book
and surely we could do no worse.
Given the fact that their son,
my husband and the father of the fetus,
was deep in psychoanalysis at the time —
spending hours on the couch
reviewing his disastrous toilet-training
or the time his mother threw away
his Ted Williams baseball card
with which proceeds we might have put
the prospective child through college —
we knew their words had the ring of truth.
And so we sallied forth, all earnestness
and ignorance, like a pair of missionaries
going door-to-door to save the world.
Species-ism
by Angela Patten
A gang of noisy grackles at the feeder
bullies the small birds away.
Fierce as Vikings, they dive bomb
each other, Prussian blue heads
shimmering in the light.
Next the starlings, black feathers
cool as leather jackets
of The Jets from West Side Story,
sporting vicious yellow beaks
like dangling cigarettes.
We who profess to love birds
abhor the grackles, starlings, jays,
those raucous squawkers
scrounging peanut-studded suet,
black oil sunflower and thistle seed.
No sense of decorum, restraint
or the fitness of things.
We prefer small brown flycatchers
and finches garbed in olive-grey
that daintily select a single seed,
then fly away to crack it open
on a private branch.
Polite, well-behaved birds
that know their proper place
as we observe our own invisible fences,
nod guarded greetings to those neighbors
who maintain the flowerbeds
but keep their distance.
Portrait of an Ordinary God
by Michael Mark
Maybe Jesus never wiped the sweat
from his brow with his forearm
in the dusty shade of an olive grove
or loosened the knot on his robe
for comfort. And consequently such moments
are not memorialized in museums
on our Grand Mediterranean Vacation.
More likely, everyday acts
of a deity, between
giving sight to the blind and feeding
the masses with two fish pulled from the sand,
are not the stuff of masterpieces. But
wouldn’t it be refreshing to see
a Tintoretto of the Son of Man stretching out
those lithe arms, not to embrace
all humankind, but just to ease
some cramped muscles after a night
washing lepers’ sores?
Call me a cranky peasant, but every painting
in every village church or Pope-blessed
basilica shows the same two poses:
suffering and forgiving. After three countries
in five days, I get it. All I want
is one portrait of the King of the Jews,
sandals slung over his shoulder, cooling
his feet in the Galilee, one Renaissance tapestry
of Him on his back,
looking at clouds, daydreaming. Jesus
may never have skimmed stones
on the water’s surface while pondering
original sin, but couldn’t you see him
give a thumbs up to his flock, letting them know
it’s not only going to work out in the end,
it’s going to be awesome, dude!
I’d buy that 15 Euro poster, tack it up
over the couch in the den, so when the wife says
the gutters need cleaning,
I’d execute that gesture with practiced perfection.
Maybe even release a pained, saintly sigh
before I lift and shoulder the ladder.