Thirty Years Later

In memory of the Kent State dead and wounded; written in May, 2000

I walked the campus,
touring with my best man
on a day, Kentish clear and crispy,
like the last day for the four,
the day that ended our youth.

I could have, might have, but didn't.
Southern Comfort guided my destiny.
My ride left for Kent that weekend
without me or the couch on which I overslept
at the home of a rum-pouring stranger.

My father and I argued politics
for the first time
in the hurtful days that followed.
He tried to be a construction patriot;
I fancied myself a torn-jean revolutionary.
We were miscast in the roles.
Our conflict was about being father and son,
not about Uncle Sam and Mao.

It could have been me, I told him.
Then it should have been you, he told me.

We didn't mean it. But it hurt us both.
Him for speaking. Me for hearing.
At that fraction of time's seconds,
who would guess how much we loved each other
or how often we would share it
years later, in words and touches.


My friend, my guide showed me the bullet holes
in the strange abstract metal,
sculptured for another purpose
and completed by young brothers with guns.


They fired on the nation's children.
That's what we commemorate:
The day when we went too far.
And when the tear gas cleared,
we looked with horror at the blood on the ground,
the big girl in a bizarre gesture
resembling a desperate, beseeching proposal
and the horror of all women of all time
at the wounded warriors.

Allison, Jeffrey, Sandra and William ---
you were all of us. We remember you today,
a wailing wall of four names to touch,
separate from the granite slab
commemorating your companions
whom you tried to save from empty memorial.

The Greatest Generation sent us to kill ourselves that day,
to recreate their victory over the enemy of their youth.
Their horror at our horror ---
Mother, Father, it's me! And him! And her! ---
came to late for Kent, too late for Saigon,
but perhaps soon enough forever and the future.

We stop at the markers, the spots where the blood congealed.
My friend, who was there, recalls trying to reach his wife,
a nursing student who helped save the wounded.
Survivors who grew up, like the rest of us,
became fathers with love and aches and pains.
The nasty laugh of arthritis punching them
where the bullets hit.

My path crosses with one of the wounded,
both of us neater, trimmer, serving our country
in our peaceful ways for several years.
Our eyes, new to each other, saw familiarity.
"Were you there?" he asked, the words nearly strangled.
"I was not," I said. "I missed my ride."
He looked down. His ride was permanent.
A protester? A bystander? Or simply on his way to class?


A Frisbee flew by my friend and I, interrupting my thoughts.
"I remember every day," my friend said. "It could have been me."

I thought again of the life imprisoned by paralysis.
"I wasn't there. But you have been with me ever since."

I remember every day. I wasn't there, but my generation was.
We all died some at the Battle of Kent,
in the big war our fathers gave us.

We remember, we remember, we remember.
With tears of love and sorrow, we remember.

Pandora's Mirror

She did not release
Loathing upon the world
By opening a jeweled box.
She sat at her vanity dresser,
Gazing upon a reflection
With a frown
That twisted the hearts of humans nearby
And those across the seas.
Their vision of themselves
Became warped and all
Began to see the tiny flaws,
The bends and curves of
Their reflections and countenances, their lives.
Each distinctive bend of a nose,
Every laugh line around the eyes,
Every rounded apple cheek
Became a reason for self-hatred,
A quest to conform to some undefined
Sculpture of perfection.
Each body became too fat, too thin,
Too long, too poorly toned, too flawed.
Pandora's scowl became our own.

She glanced at her servants behind her,
Their faces reversed in her looking glass.
She saw their differences, from each other, from herself.
And began to hate them all.
For being uglier, prettier, more special, more ordinary.

Different
From herself.

Their flaws enhanced her beauty
Their beauty called attention to her plainness.

She smashed the mirror,
No longer content to hate herself,
And turned to the others.

"Bring me the box," she said.
"I am ready to turn the key."

Dancing Princesses

"Stand still," I shout, against my will,
as the rambling rose in her cotton clothes
walks down Main Street,
freshly gowned in a new clinging frock,
her body refusing the still, pastel prison,
moving with ripples of flesh
and heat beneath the thin fabric.
The wind which caresses the material against her skin
calls out to old men like me in our passing cars,
our front steps, our cigarettes
burning to for-a-moment forgotten ashes
as we watch this dance
pour down the street
in streams of strolling rhythms all her own.
"Do you like my dress?" she says,
without words, knowing the answer:
"Oh, yes! We love it all!"


Women shimmer
in spring and summer dresses,
their exposed natural shoulders most beautiful
when reflecting, in the moist size-14 fleshiness,
sweaty shadows of delight
in the collar bones underneath spaghetti straps,
in their breath, in their wide smiling mouths
uplifted to catch the possibility
of humidity in the air suddenly, hopefully
becoming thunderous rain.


Grown women --- Janes and Marilyns ---
in sun dresses of flowing light,
laughing like unformed twiggy school girls
pretending to be mature,
Like the treasured waifs flat-walking on their runways
in the latest lightweight fashions
hanging limp on human coat hangers,
doing a dance without life.


No, the treasures are the women,
the soft, rounded children of substance
who know best how to dance in the spring.
Their free exposure of just enough of their scenic routes,
their blossom-bursting child-like souls,
spinning, flowing, sending sauce over their shoulders,
soft self-love that invites us all
to shiver at their loveliness,
to marvel at their thick completeness,
that astounds the observer
at the beauty which dances
in the first week of spring.