by Carl Dennis

You’re free to imagine many lives
Though only one’s allowed your body,
The body you didn’t choose,
Small-boned and thin like Grampa Wheelock’s.
Among the songs your elders sang
You were free to pick the one you preferred
And sing it with your own inflections
To the baby sister you were asked to watch.
It was your decision to save half your summer pay
For the teachers college your uncle went to,
To see its closeness as an advantage.
You were free to walk home on the route you fancied
From Ferguson Elementary to the woman you chose,
The sweetheart with your sister’s long hair
And the dark eyes of Miss Gorse,
Your Latin teacher in high school,
Who told you you’d go far
If you learned to trust your feelings.
Nobody forced you to buy a house
Near the sycamore trees you climbed as a boy.
Its features pleased you most
Just as you’re pleased this sunny Sunday
To climb the ladder and clean the roof drains,
Scooping out mud and sycamore leaves.
And now you choose to pause in your work
And look out over the valley town.
There’s the Dalys’ slate roof
And the Hendersons’ shingles.
There’s the smokestack of the bottle plant
And the blue patch of the water tower.
This must be one of the vistas held out to you
Before you were born, one of the many
You were free to choose from.
And now you’re free to guess what spirit
Guided your pointing hand that day.
You’re free to wonder who whispered in your ear
As clearly as your daughters are calling now,
“Come down, Dad.  Come down.”
They want to show you the flowers they found
Streaked like the ones you picked for them last fall
Behind the school you sent them to.

by Carl Dennis

An immortal soul, that’s something for me to wish for,
To be off on a long trek after my body’s buried
And my friends have driven away from the graveyard.

Where am I headed?  Not downward, if I’m permitted
To judge by the rules of fairness as I conceive them,
For nothing I’ve done seems ripe for eternal punishment.

Not upward, for nothing merits eternal bliss.
Odds are I’ll stay where I am, forever earthbound,
And face the problem of filling the endless return

Of earthly summers and autumns, winters and springs.
It won’t be easy for a being retired from action,
A shadow too weak to even hold open a door

When a friend among the living, bearing a tea tray,
Comes to join her guests on the verandah.
The conversation should hold my interest all evening

Even if I can’t participate, my voice too small.
But later, when strangers fill the familiar rooms,
I’ll seem to be listening to a script that’s conventional,

To acting forced and wooden, and slip outside.
What then?  Do I keep my distance from the other ghosts
Or join them in sharing stories about the old days

In cricket whispers?  Either way, I’ll wonder about the joy
I imagined coming my way with death behind me,
Not looming ahead, and leisure, so scarce before,

Suddenly limitless.  Not much solace is likely
When I compare the vague ghosts of my friends
With the living originals, whose particular lusters

Can’t be divorced from their life-long gloom on
birthdays,
Their protests against their mirrors, their witty admissions
In listing the enemies that creased their foreheads

And slowed their pace to a hobble, and made them
forgetful,
Though they remembered their promises well enough
And tried to keep many before death released them.

But how can ghosts swear loyalty to the end
If there is no end for them, only a boundless ocean;
Or does a truth I haven’t a map to now

Wait in my ghostly existence to be discovered?  If not,
It won’t surprise me if I find myself on my knees
Cupping my hand with others at the river’s edge

To sip forgetfulness.  No surprise if I’m ferried back,
Oblivious, to be born again in the flesh
Among strangers it will take me years to recognize.

by Carl Dennis

However busy you are, you should still reserve
One evening a year for thinking about your double,
The man who took the curve on Conway Road
Too fast, given the icy patches that night,
But no faster than you did; the man whose car
When it slid through the shoulder
Happened to strike a girl walking alone
From a neighbor’s party to her parents’ farm,
While your car struck nothing more notable
Than a snowbank.

One evening for recalling how soon you transformed
Your accident into a comic tale
Told first at a body shop, for comparing
That hour of pleasure with his hour of pain
At the house of the stricken parents, and his many
Long afternoons at the Lutheran graveyard.

It’s only human of you to assume your luck
Has something to do with your character.
Just don’t be surprised if he considers
The misfortune he’s suffered somehow deserved,
A portion of grief justly imposed.

Lucky you, whose personal faith has widened
To include an angel assigned to protect you
From the usual outcome of heedless moments.
But this evening consider the angel he lives with,
The stern enforcer who drives the sinners
Out of the Garden with a flaming sword
And locks the gate.

by Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week —
Three fine houses sold to deserving families —
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction.  And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance?  The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months.  Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.