Michael Salcman

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ONE ASLEEP, ONE NOT

With each breath
a curlicue of hair
slowly descends
around your ear
and bends to reach my palm;
half-asleep,
I enter your dream
taking care
not to watch the seam
between our bodies
too intently.

 

 

 

MYSELF

Metropolitan, urban
but not the grandee of an eastern church

I write at the end of history
of what has gone to earth

of what is hidden like a bomb
in the subway, of afterbirth.

 

 

 

 

PARENTS DAY AT CAMP

Opposite the front lawns of neighborhood houses
headstones decorate the road,
spilling into sight like a garden of severed thumbs.

In Maine’s green water,
I watch my daughter do her first backstroke
launching into life like a newly caulked boat.

Her smile bobs up and down,
bright as a tin butterfly enameled on a barn
we passed today.

And hay bails rolled into cylinders
on New England farms
left scattered like spent cartridges on the ground

and the bronze statue of a Union soldier
standing in Bethel with his back to the North
as if still settling an ancient score.

Beneath this wide sky, the first frost hangs invisible
and good neighbors, I hear, keep their powder dry.

 

 

 

 

NEARSIGHTEDNESS

Thirty summers ago
time moved more slowly,
my son was young,
my station neither lowly

nor exalted.
Each year after, a trace
of nearsightedness grew in me,
small ambition versus grace.

Today I barely see the rime
corner my eyes,
the changes rung by time,
the stubble that escapes my razor.

Perhaps it’s time’s gift going blind
slowly, thinking the soft web of lines
in your face, if not brushstrokes and paint
the lineaments of a saint.