Rocket Man

1. Anticipation

As we head back to earth we jettison
the facts that we have worn, late fat and muscle,
until the weight that's borne is skin on bone,
arthritic, maybe, weakened so a turn
or move made wrong can screw us to the floor.
A broken hip is fatal. What a sound
so final in the say. We look around
for friends no longer there or think to trace
the profile of a face that once we knew.

Somehow it's all familiar, how we, too,
conducted aunts and parents to a home.
Retirement, they called it, where a crew
of faces tied in wheelchairs lined the room
and paid us no attention (also drooled),
each piece of clothing labeled, Velcro fused.
We tell each other stories, sing the songs
we learned when we were children, play a few
redundant childish games, hold on to dolls.

You'd think we'd be more formal. Come to that,
you'd think we would remember wives and sons
and daughters and their children, once our pride.
Unwilled, our minds meander, wander back
to houses where we lived, trees, rabbits, toys,
to parents, girlfriends, boys we learned to love
or didn't or, perhaps, learned not to love.
We needed what we needed and now don't.
It's home we sorely miss, but can't or won't.

2. The Prodigals

We're careless now and casual, now that pride
is excess like the sex we've put aside.
Our bodies like old walls bow out and sag.
It's gravity that does it and the weight
of what we call experience: love and hate
and anger, guilt and shame. All take their toll.
We pay our way with taxes.

                                                That's the truth
we struggle with each day: a body failed
or worn, if not yet broken; hold at bay
the howling wolves of spirit, watch as joys
turn into noise and burdens, make complaints
at what no longer works, the need to strain
because of lack of strength at simple tasks.

And yearn, yes yearn for beauty: perfect skin
extravagance of hair, eyes that are clear
and mouths that smile white-toothed and are as fair
as any mouth we kissed or swore we'd kiss
and didn't try for fear.

                                                Now ramps, not stairs,
are standard and we walk with what we call
our walkers, more a frame like treads on tanks
or sidewalks that we aim, lift up and plant
on tile instead of carpet, lift and plant,
move each foot one step forward, pause and breathe,
or, winded, stop to talk, in this way ease
our way down halls to lunch, there hook our canes
on chair backs close at hand and, when it rains,
watch rain wash windows as we stain our clothes.

3. Mind Over Matter

And yet we would run naked at the chance,
if only prance we could, take off our clothes
and glory in the muscle, skin and bone
that once were so lubricious and could slide
with sweat upon another, causing moans.

Our hands are crabbed like trees, the fingers bent,
and yet would press young breasts, edge legs aside
and slip like slippery elm or eel inside
and move there, feeling gloss.

                                                What we have lost
is not imagination, not the will,
but simple body strength when even books,
a selfish counter measure, now are dim,
both hard to read and hold.

                                                It's not the vim,
but vigor we have lost.  Like wasps in fall,
we sip the weakened venom of recall,
test fruit now dropped and rotting, wasted sweets,
some mashed by feet, their sugars turned to wine
and soured, air acidic with the smell.
We simmer, steeped in darkness, seek the sun
where others seek the shade, the strong and young
who trust to inner fire.

                                               Lacking teeth
and crippled, we retreat to parodies,
cartoons of what we are and so are judged
by children, wives and friends; and are discussed
like debt at family councils, nor attend
the meetings that affect us, not an end
we wanted or expected.

4. Projected Mission

                                               Like balloons
we levitate to darkness, then sink back
again to tiles and carpets, wrinkled sacks
of gas no longer buoyant, to a room
in which there is no spark, no crack of light;
no hope, no fear, just darkness
                                                and we hear
no late night voices talking, cries or shouts
to wake us or to stir us, feel no dread
for morning, what we must or mustn't do;
and so preserve the silence, knowing, too,
we need no more remember, need construct
the truth we once experienced, then forgot
and now try to recover;
                                             not a dream
to wake from wet with sweat or rise to roam
the dark rooms of a house, and no regret
for anything we've done or haven't yet;
just darkness, only darkness, like the womb
before the seed is planted and the blood
and cells begin dividing;
                                              to awake
the next stage of explosion, sudden light,
white rubber gloves on buttocks and the suck
of mucous from our lungs that lets us breathe
and forces first cries out, surprise and pain,
complaint at such intrusion;
                                              or be drained
of hope and shared experience like the oil
we empty from a crankcase raised on blocks.
We talk about forgetting, but it's not
forgetting that upsets the pot or boils.

5. Flight

To have and still to want is our bequest,
avidity that organizes stars
and keeps inertia going, suns in place
and all the heavenly bodies that have braced
our dome of sky.
                                            We orbit in ellipses,
circle back at all those crucial points
that govern lives and, thus, restrain our motion,
draw us in when speed would drive us far
or slow our spin.
                                             We thrive on raw experience,
thrill at sun, test hell, find it familiar,
and begin with faith our climb to heaven:
unlined skin, breasts rising to the touch,
the outs and ins of sex before a launch;
the tests and tides, the smells of bleach and beach,
the sting of sweat, the hips and nipples raised
and lips pulled back in grimace pending launch,
and hesitate:
                                           to question what comes next
and if the text of consciousness springs free,
adheres to sense like Mail Pouch to the barn,
or is the fence we hang the carcass on:
the coyote we have shot, the fox still warm.

The contrail that we leave unravels, blends
like mist into confusion.  Where we have been
and things we've acted out—the fact of greed,
the honesty of sex, the need to know—
become the hopes we hope will be passed on
and not out cold to vacuum, heaven's void.

6. Adjustments

Not children, not the children who we make
imperfect in our image, not our friends
nor anyone we know, sells time or lends.

The finitude of space, we're told, is round
and still goes on expanding, always new,
and is reviewed, recorded by the light
that comes to us in years. What news is old,
unfolding from what's folded, like the bloom
of rockets and explosions where the sound
we wait for takes much longer.
                                                   We belong
to separate events as life is told:
what's seen or heard, what's known and understood.
Our history is broken. We repair
those parts we can for launching as we tear
each petal from the stem to finally wear
a skeletal corsage. The dance, we hear,
to which we've been invited is macabre.

And so we catalogue each minute spark,
the second lost in stars, the speck of need
and growth that we experience, water, weed.
Unearth at first the seed leaves, then the stem
and, strengthened ring by ring, a trunk to stand
with ripening of fruit and winter's rest.

The hope or lack of hope comes shining back:
a glass to bend the light, a stone or wheel
to sharpen hoe or sickle, flint and steel
to start again the match strike.

7. Black Out

                                                Now it's dark
and has been time, long since, to place the charts
and histories behind us; set aside
the storehouse we have built, the hopes we brought
and effort, always effort, didn't shirk
our self-appointed duties, wore the shirt
of service or command; now yield our tasks
to others, palm upraised, and so relate
by hearing, touch and taste, the thrill of smell,
to that which we intend: a presence felt
in tree and grass and stone we sometimes bent
the knee before or danced; and come to stand,
petitioners again, caught out in space.

Our needs are left unstated.

                                               One by one
we set aside divides, become like fish
one aspect of the ocean, so arrive
where we are free to give and so receive
the longing that achieves the test of time:
a faith that is acceptance, also love,
a love so full of lust we cannot breathe
and also avaricious:
                                              know we come
to total loss, indebted for the sum
of all we ever wanted, still a sum
that promises redemption, pockets filled
to full and overflowing with such need
that deepest satisfaction comes where failed
and also where succeeding.
                                             Lacking sales,
we keep our cash drawer open for that comes.

8.  Re-entry

What comes is more containment.  Now the tail
for certain wags the dog. We put on sail
without a rag of breeze and still we sneeze
at ragweed not yet killed by autumn's frost.

We numerate on fingers, one by one:
our checkbook to a daughter, car to son,
the dog that licked our hand by hand disposed
to neighbor or to pound. (And there are those
who would prefer like dogs to put us down.
"To sleep" is what they call it.)

                                                    We regret
the worry we instill.  Still sky is blue,
dessert can still taste sweet, and in the night
we still can wake erect.  Each day is new
for ease or inconvenience, rain or sun,
a windy day or calm, announcer's guess.

We hope for something different, hail or snow,
a dust storm or tornado, something strong
to interrupt the tedium, fill with news
the girl who trims our nails and cuts our hair
and shaves us with her talk.
                                                  It's not just cant
that few who listen, heed.  We do not ask
for answer or reward, not even peace,
but mercy that finds worthy our regard
beyond the irritation and the task
and sees that what we fear is need itself:
the day when like our friends, confined to bed,
we're diapered like a child and changed and fed.

9.  Landing

And yet the morning comes, the morning star
a trinket cut from glass, the morning sky
as pale as thin skimmed milk and slightly blue.
There's not a cloud in sight.    
                                                It was a night
of seeking and containment.  Bright as flames
our questions flew to stars and tumbled back
like platforms to the ocean with the names
of almost everything we thought or knew.
We lean back on our senses, feeling brave
and safe enough to question why we failed
to have appreciation for what comes
as naturally to body as the sum
of numbers to addition, lines to page,
remainders to subtraction and like sun,
a multiplying force that each day pumps
new life into what's dead.
                                               We drink hot tea,
eat toast and swallow pills. The juice we sip
is fresh and full of pulp. The wall clock drips
its tickings. Still, we stall. To sit is sweet.
We know ripe apples fall, but still the leaves
are green. There is no rush.
                                              Instead, tonight
we'll dress the men we were in coats and ties.
We'll wipe our shoes on trousers and take up
our belts to new cut notches, comb our hair,
and tap our foot to music, maybe put
a hand out, touch a friend, and rock our chairs
in time to tunes we danced to way back when.