Carwash
Henri Cole


I love the iridescent tricolor slime
that squirts all over my Honda in random
yet purposeful patterns as I sit in the semi-
dark of the "touch-free" carwash with you.
Listening to the undercarriage blast, I think,
"Love changes and will not be commanded."
I smile at the long, flesh-colored tentacles waving
at us like passengers waving good-bye.
Water isn't shaped like a river or ocean;
it mists invisibly against metal and glass.
In the corridor of green unnatural lights
recalling the lunatic asylum, how can I
defend myself against what I want?
Lay your head in my lap. Touch me.

Correctives
Don Paterson


The shudder in my son's left hand
he cures with one touch from his right,
two fingertips laid feather-light
to still his pen. He understands

the whole man must be his own brother
for no man is himself alone;
though some of us have never known
the one hand's kindness to the other.

The Circle
Don Paterson


My boy is painting outer space,
and steadies his brush-tip to trace
the comets, planets, moon and sun
and all the circuitry they run

in one great heavenly design.
But when he tries to close the line
he draws around his upturned cup,
his hand shakes, and he screws it up.

The shake's as old as he his, all
(thank god) his body can recall
of that hour when, one inch from home,
we couldn't get the air to him;

and though today he's all the earth
and sky for breathing-space and breath
the whole damn troposphere can't cure
the flutter in his signature.

But Jamie, nothing's what we meant.
The dream is taxed. We all resent
the quarter bled off by the dark
between the bowstring and the mark

and trust to Krishna or to fate
to keep our arrows halfway straight.
But the target also draws our aim —
our will and nature's are the same;

we are its living word, and not
a book it wrote and then forgot,
its fourteen-billion-year-old song
inscribed in both our right and wrong —

so even when you rage and moan
and bring your fist down like a stone
on your spoiled work and useless kit,
you just can't help but broadcast it:

look at the little avatar
of your muddy water-jar
filling with the perfect ring
singing under everything.

Children and Death
Elizabeth Jennings


Not to be spoken of, they will not let
     Us enter rooms where anyone has died,
And they put candles by our beds, a light
     That keeps us watchful and more terrified

Than any dear familiar darkness where
     Our shadows slip away. We dream of death
Sweet and apparent in the freedom there
     And ape a dying by a withheld breath.

Nor do they know our games have room enough
     For death and sickness. We have stretched them out
Further than childhood or parents' love
     And further even than the breath of doubt.