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Tina
Tina Kelley is a reporter for The New York Times
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ON THE COLLECTION OF 70 PAIRS OF SHOES FILLED WITH BUTTER
FOUND BY HUNTERS IN JAEMTLAND ON OCTOBER 5, 2003

"And now," Max cried, "Let the wild rumpus start!"
--Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

Perhaps it commemorates the churn of cloud bank,
the opposite of melt, lard's own liturgy, the holiness of bale.
Left over from the equinox, it must have something to do with Laplanders.

Or dairy voodoo. Musk ox adulation, a summoning of northern lights.
Early gift
for bad Santa, to balance out the cookies and milk. An annually-answered,
secret last wish of a medieval cobbler dried up from hunger.

Perhaps this explains the sudden appearance of the green-circle GO signs.
And why the encyclopedia salesman decided to dial 911 on a sales call,
and the girl who was deathly afraid of laces when she was four.

I would like to know if these were slides or mules or tap shoes, all belonging
to the same person, the object of the roommates' impractical joke,
like when my fellow lifeguards soaked my underwear in the pool,

froze it and ran it up the flagpole before the biggest date in July,
less like Mike's roommate who rigged a Blue Hubbard squash
to fall on him when he walked in, causing a concussion and hospital visit.

Maybe they were discards, too ugly to sell at the mission. Was the
butter fresh
or rancid? Salty or sweet? Seventy pounds, at $4 a pound, plus the
cost of shoes?
What size were they? Were they in pairs? Who got to clean it all up?
Does butter burn?

I like to picture the perps, giggling to themselves, their shoulders
shaking, always
about to be caught by the teacher as they swirled the knife at the
end of each stuffing,
smoothing the surface to serrated elegance, just to but not over the
rim of the upper.

There must have been a soundtrack, and perhaps mead or Madeira or egg creams.
A waltz by Strauss or Iron Maiden, a collection of children's songs,
hokey pokey,
rumpelstiltskin and blind mice. Chicken fights, three-legged races,
swinging from birches.

Was the moon visible, a half full sky smile? Did they sleep there,
or in their nearby kayaks, to admire their work. Perhaps, finished,
they swung from a tire into a fjord. Waited for the hunters. Lit farts.

Is this a serial crime? Is there a psychological diagnosis
available? No manifesto'd
performance artist, or people for the advancement of butter cows,
some joyless such.
Not with waste or spite, but out of fun, by chilly, bushed and
bushwacking Swedes

wanting to make it, eventually, to the Associated Press, the Daily News.
Were charges filed or fines levied? Or better, awards given,
for stepping out of the iron agreement of sense and act?

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EACH OF US

By the time it is done growing there are about a billion billion water molecules in a typical snowflake, Dr. Libbrecht says. And on average, he calculates, each of us on Earth has contributed by exhalation and evaporation about 1,000 of the molecules in each snowflake.

-- The New York Times, December 23, 2003.

I see the pictures of faces morphing from each person to her closest
look-a-like,
and so on, through all the universe of faces, til all are done.

We are all here, all of us, in these eyelashes of flakes zinging at
our faces over
and over, our loves requited and not, the people who love us
requitedly or not,

and Trisha, who said, "I fell in love with a Japanese woman who was
making teeth,"
and the man who tried to record all the shapes of all the clouds
from all angles,

and the man who felt sentenced to life, accused of sexually abusing a child,
wanting to kill himself, unable to, because that would appear as an
admission of guilt.

Here's the woman who wrote the slogan "Cat bathing made easy!"
and the nurse who said of newborns, "They're all cartilage."

I see Joy, like a carousel horse, impaled on her fear, lurching forward a bit,
inevitably retreating, and how I want to see her break free of
whatever darkness constrains her.

I see the drunk woman who called 911 three times demanding to talk
to her father in Tennessee.
And here's the former owner of a diamond lost on the sidewalk on Broadway.

Here's the dad who says "Smile and say pumpernickel" before taking a picture,
and here is the man whose eyes were so dark, no one could see his pupils.

There is the child who, from a few months' old, would hold on to his
mother's earlobe
whenever he got tired. And newlyweds who fit together like notes and measures.

I notice a few molecules from the man who bought his late wife's
favorite perfume
to spray it on his pillow before he went to bed, the only way he could sleep.

And the guy who wanted to write a poem starring the moon, without
the word moon in it.
And Em's friend composing a song, "Sorry for the Things I did to You
in Your Dream."

Here's a man who wanted his ashes put in a figurehead of a ship, thinking
the bowsprit's the best place for traveling the ocean for the rest of time.

Look here's the actor who went on the talk show to dispel the rumors,
to tell everyone he wasn't dead. Who answered his phone, "I'm not dead."

And the 98-year-old woman who was born with wrinkled hands, and the doctor
said she must've had all her troubles in a previous life, and
looking back, she agreed.

Thousands of thousands of molecules melt on me, maybe including
saints and my late
grandmother, so I look up, mouth open, taking them in, a cold wet eucharist.
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Writing Portraits of Grief
September 5, 2003

Since November 2001, I have helped write Portraits of Grief, the short stories about victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. I have written 121 of them at last count. During a shift that starts in the early evening and goes until about 2 a.m., I call survivors, write e-mails to friends of victims and look on the Internet for obituaries . . .
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Tina Kelley is the author of "The Gospel of Galore," Word Press, 2002, which includes nearly all of the following poems:
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Instructions From the Choir Director

"The voice isn't an instrument that has buttons or keys to press, but you can control it with images. If you raise your hand at the end of a note, that in itself keeps the note from going flat."

— Composer and music director Fred West, November 1996

We start together by inhaling together, picturing, quickly,
how cherry trees hold their petals suspended above the ground.

And we start together, aiming together, six ball in the corner pocket,
using the cue of his agile downbeat.

When we sing slowly, we think of the spread of mosses and liverworts
over the rocks from lakes, up the hills, andante across the continents.

When we sing sforzando, we imagine a sun so bright and sudden
it makes ours cast a shadow.

We learn deep breaths for the long whole notes
and lie back and think of England.

For pianissimo he tells us of his beloved,
who breathes so quietly at night you can't hear her.

During the old hymns we picture fireworks,
but fireworks without the grand finale.

As for the solo vibrato, he reminds me with his left hand
of poplars in the still air, the embodiment of applause.

I think of Julie Andrews thinking of chocolate mousse,
Paul Simon contemplating the smooth grind of earth on its axis,
Billie Holiday awash in returned letters.

Perhaps those high baroque tenors ponder frying on a spit,
and overblown sopranos memorize the garish, decrepit
tulip the day before the petals drop.

For intonation there's the Cheshire cat, how it feels itself folded
into harmony with the air, just before evaporating.

For elegant polish, he tells us the story of singing "Gloria"
up at Lake Serene, at sunrise on the longest day of the year.

Do not think of the dull thud of the cracked plate placed on the table.

Avoid, he tells us, any glance to the flowers on the altar,
the unfortunate dissonance
of the daisy's stale smell.

And for the amen, think of cinching the last loop
in signing a marriage certificate, think of the unity implied
on the tombstone that reads, "Children,
come look, the mountain is out."

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Towards a Theology Based on Labrador Retrievers

I am arguing in the affirmative: that the Creator moves among us today
in Brooklyn, in the form of a black dog named Addie. Her benevolence is deeper
than the farthest foxhole, her gentleness thick as husky fur. Were she human,
she would sort and fold strangers' clothing at the laundromat. Were she only a dog,

she would not fetch without being asked. There is abundance in her, like the butterfly
laying its eggs midair. Bountiful and democratic is her spirit: she licks my hand
like a spa treatment, she sleeps, calm back flat by my flank, breathing like a separate sea.
She dreams of the squirrel's flicking, scolding tail, its visible neener neener neener.

Her vengeance is quick and awful. Yet love of fellowship runs in her blood,
her song like the bird's that is only heard among other birds. She has taught me
the help given to the soul by the mile-wide lawn dotted with trees, by the tossed scrap.
I believe in her greetings, in the wide-maple way she roams from one scent to another.

Bury me in this part of the park where the dogs run without leashes, mix my ashes
with hers. Shield us in our joy, o protector, o collar. Let her true heart be contagious.

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Battering Robin Syndrome

He has split his beak on my view.
He has left his selfprint, almost art.
My window is torturing him.
My hubcaps incense him.

The robin wants my spring yard
to himself. Each reflection's
a rival and must be fought full force.
Each reflection is harder than his skull.

He slides down, hobbles, tries again.
What business do I have holding mirrors
up to nature? It revolts. It suicides.
My love of flat, clear and shining

surfaces, flatter, clearer, shinier than lakes,
than anything in nature, is unnatural,
antinatural. And if nature held mirrors to me,
showed me someone I thought would steal

my truelove, or showed me how I'm doing,
what would I do, would I learn,
or beat my head against her skull,
or try to smash myself against the news?

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I Love a Man Who Gave Blood Thirty Times

And everywhere I go I think Do you have a pint of him, honey?
Does the sweet health and consideration running through him
run through you, too?
Do you find yourself more apt to fight for justice, sir,
or leer like a satyr?
Is your wife surprised"
Doesn't she like it?
And is his vigor here among us, as we sit waiting?

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Self Portrait as a Kite

I am a yellow, green and turquoise Cellular Star,
daughter of Fluted Sled and Hexagonal Roller,
sister to a Rhombic Box, mother of a Mini Phantom.
I am in love with a man-lifting train.

We come in the colors of kindergarten.
My cousins drag lures for Polynesian fisherwomen,
my aunt releases souls of Nepalese peasants into the heavens.
I am the first item you put in your new home.

I am a six-winged cirrus asterisk within a star of David
within a star of David, within a star of David; hear my prayer.
I record batsong a mile high, pass notes
to the sky, carry spinnakers of intercession.

When I was younger I wanted to cover my faces in sheet music,
in snapshots, in newsprint and lists of things to do.
In my lolling I kaleidoscope, changing shape from solid star
to lacy snowflake, from wall of color to backlit tracery.

I have flown for three days at a stretch, and go out to greet
the smallest sliver moon, relieved at its return.
In aurora borealis I sing a lovesong to my skeleton,
in bright cumulus I learn active verb, alleluia.

When the moon one night is brighter than full I wonder
what tiny incarnation, what speck of a should ever merited
the tremendous gift of living and seeing,
and fit in the seed of myself? What was it?

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Having Evolved From Trees

We are hazel-eyed.
Some things we are certain of:
Sun in the forest adds extra rooms.

We hide inner twisting under our skin.
A beehive within is a blessing.
Never play with matches. Ever.

We teach: to bloom, to fruit, to peel,
to heal in a swirling burl,
to suffer pruning silently.

We remember the itch of chickadees,
blue air of twilight like a shawl,
the liquor it resembles. We taste with whole selves.

Our women are never too stocky, don't diet.
Our day — dressing, bedding down — is a year.
At weddings we wear wrensong tatting in our hair.

We converse in the pulses of rained-on leaves.
Our god is wind. We need no heartbeat.
We worship by swaying, masts in a marina.

Our low song, too low, withers and flaps.
We sanctify the privilege of embrace,
of running, the afterlife of dance.

The sun pulls life through us,
up and flaring, a yellow scarf
from a magic tube, higher, wider.

We die with loved ones, rot in their presence,
nourish their offspring and watch
the continuance, ever, exulting.

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A Prayer for Birds Dying in Darkness and in Light

from The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds

These words are sacred to the memory of one
rail bird, flying full throttle, tracing the prairie's throat
up a slight rise, over the cornflowers, into barbed wire.

And also to the memory of one golden eagle, age two,
caught in a leg trap in the Willamette marsh, and seven
semi-palmated plovers killed in seven nights' migration,
striking the shuttered lighthouse in Newport.

For the osprey who dove and locked his talons too deep
in the side of a king salmon, for the salmon who swam down
away from the horrifying sky, for the drowning of the osprey,
the dying of the salmon, hear our prayer.

For the airborne weasel who bit the redtail who carried it
aloft, or the captured rattlesnake who bit the redtail who bit it first;
for the two dead redtails, a moment of silence.

(See Stoddard and Norris [1967] for a list of 29,400 birds
killed in migration at a Florida TV tower. See Crawford [1974]
for reports of an additional 5,550 birds killed at the same tower.)

Deliver the migrating owl from the piercing antenna,
the darting swallow from the lethal golfball, the rose-breasted
grosbeak from the picture windows, no lifeprint sliding
down the glass.

Consider the ravens of the air, and how they are fed,
and how they are fed strychnine. The common crossbill loves
the salt spread on highways to melt the ice. The red crossbill,
the evening grosbeak too. Bright corpses cover the median strips.

Bless the robins and waxwings drunk on chinaberries,
fluttering on their backs, the fluid from fermented fruit
running from their mouths.

Rest in peace, ring-necked pheasant killed or worse
by the mowing machine. (One male survived with both feet cut
off and was in good health when shot by a hunter.)

Ask intercessions for the northern gannet who choked
on the spiny gurnard, the dorsal fin too cruel for the throat.
The next island over, an old eider starved when the mussel
closed its shell on his tongue.

Heroic, the flock of common loons that landed
on the destroyer's deck, wings encased in ice. Ill-fated,
the yellow-throated warbler flying through the cypress lagoon,
entangled in the golden web of the Carolina silk spider,
looking back and forth to the seven nearest leaves, dying.

An hour of silence for the five million Lapland longspurs,
dead in a snowstorm, March 13 and 14, 1904, landing in quiet
throes over Indiana stubblefields.

Beware, tiny ones, of flying too low into high flipping
waves, of alighting at noon on hot asphalt roofs. The fuzz of
your feathers, the color of bathtub rings, soddens down to
damp dirt. Creatures who weigh nothing die, rot, soak up rain,
become heavy.

Blessed be the ruby-throated hummingbird, impaled
on purple flowers of pasture thistle, or caught by dragonflies,
snatched by frogs, caught by praying mantises.

Remember the robin who returned to the same Maine
yard two summers in a row, a twig sticking out of her back.
Consider one robin in the trap in New York, the large thorn
in its throat.

For American kestrels, the leading causes of death
include mobs of bluejays, cats, lightning, windows, cars, and
locomotives. And lest we forget, the barred owl iced in her
hole, slowly dying as the snow fell beyond her final window,
fast and wide, like champagne bubbles, only downwards.

Prayers rise, like smoke, like birds. Heaven, deliver
them. Life, show them mercy. Circumstance, be kindly. May
they die in their sleep, warm in their nests, or folded in the sea.

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