Michael Lauchlan

Beams

Rereading a poet who adopted at last
an even more sardonic persona
driven by grief or maybe wanting
an angle unclouded by desire—

I recall sliding out from under a truck
in a bleak warehouse in actual
despair of making it run again

and being struck, even as I cursed,
by the brute grace of roof trusses.

Do we just muddle on, looking for angles?

In one photo of the poet,
he wears sideburns and a floral shirt,

which only at that moment in history
could have seemed like a good idea

and even so he was beautiful.
His voice strolls through the poems
like a large unhurried dog. That night

cold seeped from the concrete and merged
with an ache in my shoulders while
my eyes traced shadowy steel.

Passing

An old man walked out of the sleet
and approached the frosted window
of my truck. I’d stopped to eat
after a morning of fighting
weather and shingling his roof.
It doesn’t make sense
but it’s true. I was young,
tired, hungry, and pretty sure
he wanted a favor.
See these houses.
He pointed, waiting.
I laid all those bricks
back in the 40s.
He couldn’t have bought one.
The west side was white then
and deeds came with—such
a fine word—covenants.
He brought me into his living room
and his wife poured coffee.
In spring, when she called me
to do another job–a door,
some plaster—her voice was weak.
He’s gone, she said.

Summons

For about thirty seconds one evening
I apprehended death. The sun
was throwing a 12 foot shadow
from a 6 foot wall that is meant
I guess to block a view of trucks
and forklifts and a warehouse.
The news sifted through
from my dinner reading and I
thought of sitting in tenth grade
imagining Pliny the Elder’s mind
as ash and rocks pelted his boat.
The green was starting to pop
in the grass and between spells
of ecstatic sniffing the dog
walked easily by my side
and for just that long I knew
something of a coming expansion.
I talked to my very tall friend
and several short old friends.
I read Komunyakaa and the Russians
and I listened to A Love Supreme–
trying to summon back that blue
momentary clarity. I’ve walked
one path and another in all
varieties of shadow and I’m still
awaiting a return a caesura
that sweet unspooling breath.