THE ADSUM POEMS
“You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings,
but an open ear.
You do not ask for holocaust and victim.
Instead, here am I.”
Psalm 39 (40); 6-7
ADSUM, I: THE QUEEN OF VESPERS
Adsum: as much as I can say now:
here am I, my eyes and ears open.
I’ll be quiet; I’ve taken a vow
of attention—to look and listen
under the pasture’s kaleidoscope
dome, along the forbidding border
of trees through which I can see in hope
the path will become a corridor
to the court of the Queen of Vespers
who, arms outstretched, sings Magnificat
Anima Mea. She sequesters
herself in a verge, nubile wicca
same as afternoon sunlight beaming
through plane trees bordering Bear Creek’s banks.
Adsum: it’s only nature seeming
something more. Still, sufficient for thanks.
ADSUM, II: THE GUINEAS
Adsum: all I can say now. Guineas,
shrieking like Damned in THE INFERNO,
circle my cabin with no surcease.
Adsum, too: “Here we are!” crescendos
to a derisive chorus, their Bronx
cheer I take personally, harsh jeer
at my tepid position—rude honks
mocking my wish only a soft God hear
me. But the God of the guineas speaks
harshly, like a ceaseless desert wind
sandblasting a face, or the guineas’
mindless stridency on ears, then mind:
one horror among thousands the veil
displays. But I see how beautiful
the birds are: bright black eyes, pearls on pale
gray feathers. Together, sociable.
ADSUM III: THE GRAY COAT
Adsum: here am I—all I can say.
Where has the faith of my father gone?
He wore a gray goose-down parka the day
I last saw him alive—icy dawn
at the airport. “She can’t put a meal
on the table no more”—domestic
heresy, worse for him to reveal,
both unaware of the thoracic
cancer eating her while he waited
for dinner. His aorta ruptured—
broken heart, really. Strangulated,
she followed his lead three months later.
I wear his gray coat against icy
cold and the darkness of them gone, their
faith and schism a last legacy,
like a lost child’s threadbare teddy bear.
ADSUM, IV: FAHEY
All I can say is adsum: here am
I. Fahey, my drunk St. Paul friend, would
call late at night. “Going to goddam
daily Mass,” he’d say. ”Don’t know what good
it does. But I show up. I lace up
my shoes, if Coach Jesus ever wants
me to play. But I just take space up
on the bench.” Fahey’s dread dark night haunts
me. He raged at his impediment:
cleft palate. With a bottle he drove
away his sweet wife, his jobs, each friend,
for grandiose fantasies he wove
into fractured five string banjo reels.
Yet before his mysterious death,
his adsum surfaced, and Fahey steals
into the game with his final breath.
ADSUM, V: MOTHER CHURCH
“You do not ask for holocaust and
victim; instead, here am I.” Adsum!—
the answer given by ordinands
a bishop calls by name to the womb
of Mother Church. They agree to mid-
wife Jesus from the dark he came from
once, again and again, though still hid-
den. But their Mother Church has become
a painted lady servicing her
celibates. Jesus is weary of
holocaust and victim, lip-service,
clergy abuse of mysterium
and men. Enough abuse, Pharisees!
Let justice roll down like a river,
compassion abound for all lost sheep,
even those with miter and crosier.
ADSUM, VI: LISTENING
“You do not ask for sacrifice and
offerings, but an open ear.” My
consciousness is what I hear. I can’t
listen around its register, try
as I do. My whole skin is an ear.
There’s too much noise here in the country:
chainsaws, dogs, roosters, trucks, frogs. I fear
I’ll miss the words silence speaks subtly
under the din outside and in. I fear
silence for what it might say, soli-
tude for the silence it brings. I hear
darkness approaching. The owls call me
almost by name each night. I’m willing
to walk into black woods when they get
it right. Their who-who-whos are spilling
into morning. It’s just me I’ve met.
ADSUM, VII: THE FROZEN PUMP HANDLE
Adsum—here am I—is like standing
before the frozen pump handle at
thirty below with your tongue hanging
out. Lick me, it calls. But I know that
its voice is my own: my old serpent
self fascinated by forbidden
fruit until it tastes it, cemented
fast, my scaled eyes finally open.
Adsum. Here is the pump handle, here
am I. Lick it, I say; it calls me.
It is not what I expect to hear.
It says stick your tongue out; taste and see.
I had hoped for a less arduous
call: a lady love, long afternoons
of twilight loving, some sensuous
gift, not tongue-scalding, iron-cross wounds.
ADSUM, VIII: THE QUANTUM DIMENSION
Adsum means keeping my quantum state
quantum, deciding nothing except
not to decide prematurely, late
in life though I be. I expect
a completely unexpected surprise
worth waiting for. I play the waiting
game in the dark, searching the night skies
for falling stars illuminating
my fixed vision peripherally—
a brief streak of fire at the border
of looking, one possibility
given, gone, before I can corner
it. If I knew what I was looking
for, it would not be worth looking for.
Fire in the darkness keeps me searching
for what remains only possible.
ADSUM, IX: THE CHAMPAGNE CRUISE
Saying adsum is saying enough
if I am a fish in the ocean
I seek, swimming blithely in the stuff
I yearn for, yearning with its motion
inside me. Let it be a champagne
cruise! I am already where I want
to be, I be now the song I aim
for: the holy ocean’s holy descant
sung by my swimming dance. How simple,
to be blessed by being simply what
I am, as if again the single
fish in my mother’s womb, bibelot
under her heart. I love the bubbly
and intoxication, its slow blur
of separation. Incredibly,
I am awash in loving liquor.
ADSUM, X: BEING HOME
Saying adsum is saying enough
if I am a fish in the ocean
I seek, swimming blithely in the stuff
I yearn for, yearning by its motion
within me. I am already home
and have always been, though I’ve journeyed
back and forth, like a dumb palindrome
with me at its center. I just need
to let me go, replace it with be—
the way I am before I become
a man. Ad Deum qui laetifi-
cat juventutem meum. Rhythm
becomes me, drumming on the holy
ground with bare feet, young again. I laugh
without rhyme or reason, my roly-
poly shaking this warm ocean bath.
ADSUM, XI: THE DANCE KING
Adsum—here am I—says the wrought-iron
statuette, fixed in an exultant
high step. My head is a sunburst iron
crown. I feel like a madman of dance.
Where my heart should be, a star-shaped hole,
as if at my core I were powered
by stardust even iron can’t hold,
as you are, if your heart’s joy flowered
within you. You would lift your child high,
as I do, for we are the Dance King
together. She kicks her left leg sky-
ward, exultant too, celebrating
the holy matrix we crystallize
in our iron pose. I am her gift to
her father, who sings, before he dies:
adsum! I will forever lift you.
ADSUM, XII: LOLLYGAGGING
Saying adsum is saying enough
if I am a fish in the ocean
I seek. Being here now is enough.
I’ll do nothing useful; when I’m done,
I’ll do it again. I’ll try hard not
to make something of myself. I’ll doze
for the strength to lollygag, be caught
daydreaming, noodling, diddling. I’ll close
my eyes to big problems. I’ll play piss-
ing at the sun, the beast with two backs,
light flute-flavored stinkfarts. I’ll go miss-
ing daily, sing knick-knack, Paddy-whack,
give the dog a bone. It’s hard to do
nothing well. I’ll do a do-see-do,
doze, sigh, doze, then dance a little two
step and shuffle off to Buffalo.
ADSUM XIII: DOOMSDAY CLOCK
Adsum; here am I as the Doomsday
Clock ticks toward midnight. Let the midnight
special shine its light on me. To play
their harps of gold, upon a midnight
clear it came. In the pines, in the pines—
hickory dickory dock—I shiver
the whole night through. Baby Blue, the times
they are a-changin. It’s all over
now, where the sun never shines. Goodnight,
Irene, goodnight. It caused me to weep,
it caused me to moan. Let the midnight
special shine its light. Little Bo Peep
has lost her sheep. Glorious songs of old,
I’ll see you in my dreams. Irene, all
the good times are past and gone. The whole
night through a hard rain’s gonna fall.
P.S.
Goodnight, ladies. My grandfather’s clock
stopped short, never to run again, when
the mouse ran up the clock, up the clock.
Goodnight, moon. Good night, Irene. Adsum.