To My Beard

What can I say but I am sorry,
I apologize for what I do to you,
my daily ruthlessness and cruelty.
What can I do but ask for your forgiveness
and your patience. For someday,
I promise you, someday I swear
on the beards of the prophets
and on the beard of the poet Whitman and
on the beard of the president Lincoln,
I will not stop you any longer,
I will let you go free, I will take down
the fence around you made of sharp blades.
For someday, I promise you, I will let
you run wild through the valleys
of my face like a stallion, I will let you
wander over the desert of my face
like a holy man in his vision of heaven
and hell, I will let you grow, blossom
and flourish, and I will stroke you
and comb you and keep you orderly
and free of knots and tangles,
and you in turn will make me look
distinguished, a wise old man as I stroke
you looking serious, looking as though
I were thinking deep thoughts about
life and death. But I will be thinking
only about you, my beard, my second face,
and this will be our secret.

As red traffic lights flash green
and headlights shimmer off of
slick streets amidst a storm of
angry car horns,
I cringe, panic stricken,
until I notice the sidewalk.
The sidewalk peers
up at me through a flood
of hydrated workers fleeing
from their nine to five inconveniences,
protecting their weathered brows,
from tiny wet spears with
headlines from the New York Times.
As quickly as it started
the flood dissipates into
calm silence and I observe
the sidewalk, cracked and bruised
from a stampede of Gucci heels
and Oxford soles, and then
for a split second I can relate.

I know an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-
box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be
hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard
pair of fists.
He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two
hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the
Hotel Morrison.
He remembers when the union was organized he broke
the noses of two scabs and loosened the nuts so the
wheels came off six different wagons one morning,
and he came around and watched the ice melt in the
street.
All he was sorry for was one of the scabs bit him on the
knuckles of the right hand so they bled when he
came around to the saloon to tell the boys about it.

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
free-throated rhythms,
Even the moon remembers them
And is kind to me.

When country fiddlers held a convention in
Danville, the big money went to a barn dance
artist who played Turkey in the Straw, with
variations.
They asked him the name of the piece calling
it a humdinger and he answered, "I call it
'Hell on the Wabash.'"
The two next best were The Speckled Hen, and
Sweet Potatoes Grow in Sandy Land, with
variations.

There are places I go when I am strong.
One is a marsh pool where I used to go
with a long-ear hound-dog.
One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there
a moonlight night with a girl.
The dog is gone; the girl is gone; I go to these
places when there is no other place to go.

Wedding Poems