Two
poems from Molly Fisk's The More Difficult Beauty
followed
by a note on the author
Kindness
Half-way
through our nap the rain begins, hits the window,
plashes through the double-needled
pines, and splurts down
onto
the mules ears and rein orchids, the clustered blue-faced
penstemons, sinking
without a trace into the granite soil.
I
roll gently out from under his arm and watch him sleeping the sleep
of the
sunburned, of the good son, the wall-primer and painter,
the
sleep of a man who is truly tired and knows someone
loves him, since I unaccountably
began to cry about it over lunch
and
couldn't stop, watching him eat was suddenly
too much for me, thinking how
easily he could have died
in
that fall, how he wandered lonely in the wilderness of his own mind,
never
mind that people cared for him, for so long, twenty years,
long
enough for me to get my second wind, to begin again
to grow up, so that I
recognized true love when I saw it, looked
beyond
the gnarled teeth and broken nose, the central, longitudinal scar
that runs
his length from trachea to pubis, beyond the lost names
and
repeated stories into kindness, so that when he began the steep
climb out
of his brainpan's maze into stronger light, how lucky
I
was there at the top of the stairs, passing by.
for Tad
.
.
Prayer
for Joe's Taco Lounge, Mill Valley
Fig-sized
red and orange all-year Christmas bulbs
splash their holy light on the plastic-coated
tablecloths
and glint against the bottled throats of every brand
of
hot sauce - El Yucateco, Tapatio, Doña Maria's
Mole, singing their
fiery songs on a shelf that lines the room,
nestled among a hundred ceramic
Madonnas –
Tamazula,
Cholula and Crystal beside the beatific
faces of the Mother of us all –
and still lives of hard
plastic fruit not invented in this country, not even
in
the '40s, and so many crosses, empty and occupied,
paintings of Jesus and
the Lord. O, Bufalo,
Valentina, Tabasco, Habañero, guard the bas-relief
bull's
head glowering out of its red velvet frame, bless
the photograph of somebody's
mother, and the bluefin
tuna leaping on the wall, river of traffic flowing
past
the plate glass, sanctify each hot tortilla,
each yellow plastic basket lined
with greasy paper,
watch over the customers tonight as they bend
their
heads to quesadillas and burritos, Del Fuerte,
if you are listening, carry
us safely into tomorrow,
we will praise you by the artificial light of every
electrified
tabletop candle, O gods of the spoon-shaped,
the smooth-skinned, searing chiles,
comfort us –
keep us warm.
©
California
poet Molly Fisk is the author of the poetry collection Listening to Winter
and two CDs of radio commentary: "Blow-Drying a Chicken," and "Using
Your Turn Signal Promotes World Peace." She's a commentator for NPR and the
Northern Sierra community station KVMR. Molly created the Internet workshops Poetry
Boot Camp (poetrybootcamp.com) and A Voice of Your Own (voiceofyourown.com), and
teaches writing to cancer patients. She's a National Endowment for the Arts fellow.
"Kindness"
was first published in Zone 3, and appeared in the PBS documentary, The
Loss of Nameless Things, directed by Bill Rose, 2005; "Prayer for Joe's
Taco Lounge, Mill Valley" first appeared in 88: A Journal of Contemporary
American Poetry.
