I cannot remember the stories
I heard as a child at bedtime.
I must have taken them in, laughing softly,
stored them carefully in a room
in memory's house, where
I could find them once again.

I was not thinking of them when I hacked
through jungles of algebra, swayed in
the crow's nest of Magellan's fleet, carved
the water behind Nick Adam's paddle,
or stepped carefully across the stones
of Greek on the river of St. John's Gospel.

Much later, with my son fresh-scrubbed
and nestled in my lap, his blond curls
soft and damp, we found where all
the wild things are, why Peter ate
the parsley, what the two bad ants
got into, and every night
we said goodnight
to the red balloon,
a pair of socks,
the bowl of mush,
and the moon.

I have not found my bedtime stories.
They slipped out through a window,
shinnied down the tree and crossed the yard
into the forest, as quiet as a fox.

All these years they have been free,
living off the land, circled round
the fire each night, waiting for
a distant time to be the gift for
someone else's child.

My umbrella is blue and white,
with spots of rust where the bones
and joints of this ancient pterodactyl
have bled into its skin.

More than once I have gone back
to some coffee shop or restaurant
to rescue my umbrella from under chairs
or from the Lost and Found,

which umbrellas call The Orphanage,
and where on moonlit nights they gather,
whispering of how their People
will return at last to claim them.

They do not talk about the ones
flung off in wrath,
their limbs awry and twisted,
their People stomping them in fury.

On sidewalks and in vestibules or getting into cars,
they are pounded, torn and kicked, jammed
headfirst into trash bins, abandoned in
the gutter — ancient birds brought down at last.

My umbrella rolls around the floor
of the back seat in my old car,
to live its days in comfort there,
stained, arthritic, loved with care.

When I leaf through the poetry book
from the secondhand shop,
the Polaroid photo falls into my hand.

The young man in the foreground has curly
blond hair, a white shirt, and black khakis.
His arm is raised to the camera at his eye.

His gaze is on the young woman,
as dark-haired as he is blond, as olive-skinned
as he is fair, in a white dress gathered to her neck,

her tanned shoulders bare, her hair
draping soft around her face
and down to her shoulder.

She sits side-saddle, long legs crossed
at the ankle, espadrilles braced
against the black cold barrel of a cannon.

It's a summer afternoon, maybe four o'clock,
the light slanting in from the west. Just over
the ramparts, the wide horizon of the river.

He swings her down and they wait
for the Polaroid with his best friend, the one
who took the photo, and the three of them

look for a coffee shop before they drive
back to the City. And she keeps the photo in
the poetry book he gives her for their anniversary.

When she moves out, she drops the book
off at the library sale for homeless vets.
She's forgotten the photo, pressed between the poems,

but she remembers that afternoon, the soft,
creamy light, the stiff cold muscle of the cannon,
and the one who took the Polaroid.

Sundays I slip through
the dozing streets at dawn,
down to the boat house
by the river.

The owner, brisk and abrupt,
not unkind, takes my card.
I, with the skin on my back
warm from the sun, my feet cold

in the slosh of water in the canoe,
watch the jeweled line of drops from
my paddle. The bridge looks closer
than it is; the arches flame in the light.

The piers are smooth with strength,
green under the waterline, the water
purling clean around the base,
and all in red the words,

"Paula, I love you."

Paula, if you're reading this,
I was stroking up the river,
a solitary voyager,
wishing you were there.

I keep coming back to it —
this word "faith" —
like someone trying to finish
the crossword in the Times.

If I throw down the pencil
and walk away, I know
that will end it for good.
So I doodle in the margins,
reluctant to stop,
helpless to go on.

We've worn our faith like a baseball cap,
sifted it like salt upon our hearts of ice,
sandbagged it along our swollen rivers of fear,
talked it comatose.

I declare a moratorium on the word "faith."
Do not use it to seal the deal. Don't
call it "money" by another name.
Please, do not count your miracles by it.
Foolishness cannot be reversed by it:
it is not a vaccine.
It cannot be bought, but it will
cost you everything.

Let us speak of hope,
endurance 'til the end,
joy in all times.
Feet walking, ears open, eyes to see.

And in another place to hear,
"Well done, good and faithful servant."

We don't really want to know what you are feeling
when we say, "How are you?" By the time you answer,
we're already down the hall. That was just a comma
in the sentence we have meted out to you.

"Do you have anything to declare?" asks the
official at the border. "Don't get me started,"
we think. "What I have to declare you don't
want to hear," but we say politely, "No, nothing."

"I'll be honest with you," says the politician,
and we whisper to ourselves, "When did you
stop lying?" but we respond with a smile
and an attentive cocking of the head.

You want to talk about honesty, really?
You want to admit to a slew of wordless crimes,
crimes of thought and passion conceived in silence
and excuted deftly without apparent motion?

We're as honest with each other as gears
which need the oil. Time counts 
more than tenderness; efficient are 
the boundaries drawn clear. 

Humble friendship bumbles artlessly along, 
throws its arms wide in a yes to all of life,
its truth a tree whose roots go deep in every season.

The old man has mastered
the art of parallel living:
he is ten years old in
the droning heat of July 1940,
as he waits under the 'Don't Walk' sign.

He knows all about time travel,
how to portal between
the checkout counter at Walmart
and the fishing boat his father ran
on the coastal waterway.

The tremor you see on his lip
is what's left of the joke he told
his friends on the riverbank
that afternoon in '48.

They were bronzed from the summer's days,
butting each other like goats, hard of muscle,
careless in their daring. They looked no farther
than tomorrow, could not imagine a day when
kneeling to tie a shoe required some planning.

The hands that clutch the wheelchair's rims
are calloused, blue-veined and brown.
The eyes squint against the long, slow sun.
'Don't Walk' says the sign.

I am at the Post Office
with my little package, a book
I am sending to a friend.

The postal clerk begins her chant:
Do you have any flammable materials,
any toxic chemicals, any weapons,
any lithium batteries, any communicable diseases,
any unresolved disputes with your neighbor,
any lies you have told your partner,
any library books unreturned,
any coins in your pockets, or any regrets?

Yes, I say, I do have some regrets.
And she freezes, her stamp in mid-air.

I regret not listening to my friends who
told me not to jump off the roof. I regret
bailing out of art class on the second day.
I regret going out with Linda and not
dating Jennifer. I regret buying that Ford.
I regret not saying anything when they
told their jokes, not marching
when they killed my neighbor, not voting
when I had the chance, not believing we
could make a difference, not knowing
how good we had it until it was gone.

Friend, I regret to say I cannot send the book.
Regulations will not permit it, given that
I will not retract my regrets. Friend, I await
your reply without regret. 

Tell me your stories, the ones that you remember.
Tell me, please, the ones that you have changed.
Tell me again, those that really happened.
Tell me, then, the ones you wished were true.
Tell me why you changed them
and what happened
when you did.

And tell me — when you're ready —
all the ones not happening — yet.

All day I had my doubts.
Carried them in my hand
like coins from a far country
brought back and kept
to be spent again
when I returned there.

They are the currency of
nights measured in city blocks,
lips parted in limosines,
laughter behind doors in
a language guttural and cold,
a bottle rolling and spinning.

The coins of doubt are warm
to the touch in Faith's pocket.
Faith limps along penniless,
shoe-worn, and tired. It carries them,
bright and smooth, lest it forget
where it is going, where it has been.