Carrying a Raccoon

This is an old poem, from 2008. But I figured it should be here. It's always been one of my favorites. And yes, it is based on a dream.



I am walking through a subway tunnel,
going to the opera,
carrying a raccoon.

The tunnel is slabs of concrete,
like an overpass, a parking structure.
People are walking here. Daylight leaks
through bolted junctions.

And the raccoon is small as a plush toy,
bright-eyed, infinitely precious.
I carry it through the concrete tunnel,
going to the opera.

Except when I arrive at the opera,
I have lost my ticket. I persuade
the ushers to let me in
to search for it.

It is not on the ground floor
under the tonguelike balcony,
nor in the climbing tiers
of balconies like bracket fungus.
I climb the switchback ramps,
searching, pleading,
carrying a raccoon.

Without a ticket, I cannot see the opera --
"La Traviata," sung in Russian. The first act
has begun. The doors are closed.
I carry my raccoon down the ramps,
and into the casino

which is also a lunch counter
where shabby men eat hot dogs
with bland yellow mustard.
I buy two: one for me,
one for the raccoon.

The opera rolls over us, mingling
with the jangle of slot machines.
It echoes off the concrete slabs,
the overpass pillars.
Violetta dies in Russian.
"Lyubov moya!" "My love!" I weep,
sitting on cracked vinyl, eating a hot dog,
holding my raccoon.

An Elaboration of Roses

Since our writers' conference, I've been working on some experiments. One is finding ways to "make the familiar strange" by taking one idea and pushing it in various directions, like ripples expanding from a pebble dropped into a pond. This poem is one of the results.

A rose of beaten gold; a rose of brutal anthracite.
A rose in granite on the wall of a cathedral;
Another in stained glass, on the robe of the Virgin.

A rose traced in frost-feathers on my winter window:
A rose remembered from the memory of its scent.
A rose created from the memory of a rose.

A rose so tiny, ants carry it through tunnels;
Another so vast its petals blanket moutains.
An emphemeral rose appears and vanishes in a summer cloud;
Another grows in crystal beneath the earth. Each petal takes a millennium.
A rose is crushed by the foot of a mammoth.
The last rose blooms beneath a dying sun.

A blind beggar grasps a rose, scattering its petals.
A thief has hidden a ruby in the heart of another.
A rose droops forgotten by the bed of the princess with her lover;
Its stem bears the bite-marks of a slave-girl
Who danced beneath mosaic roses at sunset.

A rose in Java blooms in an old Dutch garden;
It blooms again in interstellar space, from data
Salvaged from the frozen planet of a long-dead star.
Heraldic copper roses whirl on the gears of a military airship.
The red silk rose on a Mayan blouse echoes the glory of the Blessed Virgin.

A rose is traced through star-points, to form a constellation.
A rose with teeth nips at the hand that plucks it.
Roses wither in a glass dome as the air is pumped away.
A rose tattooed on the breast of a murdered woman
Echoes the one left on the doorstep of the wrong house.
When it is not returned, there will be a drowning.

I remember a rose I once smelled in a garden.
The bushes sleep now. Snow is falling
Beyond the window, where the steam of rose-hip tea
Freezes on the glass, in feathered roses.

In April

In April, the giraffe
Is covered with red roses.
Roses bloom in her map of splotches,
Her net of pale square rivers,

As April browses, big-bellied, among acacias --
Aflame, rose-covered, infinitely gravid.
The lions sleep: a peaceable kingdom.


Easter pales the horizon. The world is once again
Reborn. All creatures now
Bring forth their hopeful young,
Their singing dreams of freedom.

O, ecstasy, to see such dawning!
The roses cast their petals down
In April, the giraffe.