Glasses

All day they've ridden me
along the trails
of the city, down one gully

and up another, digging
their heels
into the sides of my nose,

patting my plodding
head and whispering encouragement
into my ears.

Now, dismounted onto
the nightstand,
folded back into their old

lotus position, they've let
the moonlight pass through them
its two pools of silver,

while I graze nearby,
unsaddled
in the fuzzy tumbleweed.

They know
I will not wander far.

---

The Day I Found I Could Count Forever

I was standing on the bed.
My mother
was pulling up my underpants.

She must have been weary
of my parade
of what-comes-next questions.

At each stop - A Hundred! A Thousand! -
a white door
would magically appear

just as the room was darkening
with nines,
those great elephants.

As the last one clomped into place,
the door would open
into a fresh room, empty and golden,

incomparably bigger, which my mind
began to fill
until it too brimmed with nines.

Then I understood:
There must be another, even bigger room beyond.
But then . . . But then . . . Oh . . . Oh . . .

O . . .

---

The Incredible Shrinking Man

For The Incredible Shrinking Man
every particle of dust was a monument
to his insignificance, an article
not of faith, but reverse magnificence.

First the phone handle dwarfed
his face. Then his belt ran out of holes.
Inside a month he morphed into such
as the finest whisker could not tickle.

What could it betoken that the kitten
was a monster out to kill
him? The spider was no joke either,
hairy and humongous, daintily

tiptoeing across the broad veldt
of the basement. Even as he drove
the sword of a pin intrepidly
through its innards, he knew

it was the close-up of the pincers,
and the maw, moist behind them,
that would stick with him. In the end
he got religion. Striding through

the screen whose once fine mesh
now formed portals several times
his height, he saw God saw all,
no matter how small. A lame conclusion


to a great premise. What happened next
the movie never said. Did he fall
through the floor of the ground?
Ride gigantic gossamers above?

How could he breathe when
an atom of oxygen outweighed
him? What would he see
when he grew tinier than light?

Civilizations an angstrom wide
where he might pause to fall
in love before he fell through
them, too? I like to think he finally

resolved himself to falling,
to make a life of falling
down through the sweet infinite
divisibility of oblivion.

---

Intimations of Mortality

As a boy I imagined Karloff's Mummy
set off from Egypt, plodding dunes,
arms ever out in the usual Mummy way,
on his mission to Detroit, and me.

Now and again I plot him across the years,
stilting in black and white along the long
Atlantic floor. No character development here,
yet each . . . dumb . . . effortful . . . step: a progression.

Rarely as a rule do I dwell on the horror.
Cursed and carefree as any archeologist,
I bustle about, running errands, playing ball;
me so nimble, and him so far.

How slow the director had him project
his shadow . . . across . . . the screen.
Only my buddy's wisecrack cut
the fear, helped me make it through to the end:

Anybody who gets caught by The Mummy
deserves to die!

---

Creature from the Black Lagoon

In the poster he carries the fainted
heroine, bridegroom style in his scaly arms,
like so much pliant linen, back into
the swamp, into the murk, into his lair.
Her arms are splayed, her neck slung back in lush
surrender, her breasts ascendant. He slogs
with flippered walk, goggle eyes swiveling
over the smorgasbord of her torso,
the bobbing calves, the hanging hair, all that
tainted helplessness. Later she will wake,
confused at first, then bring the back of her
hand to her open mouth to milk for us
the stark, unspeakable eternity
between the realization and the scream.