Poems by Tim Fitzmaurice

War is coming home
 
And will always be coming home
and wanting his dinner.
 
 but haven’t we had these years
the comfort of his mansion,
 the run of the place?
 
We cannot hide now
in our deeply sellers
and our darkly libraries.
 
And we can’t say
I don’t recognize this.
He could never be the father who feeds us.
 
Or say I’m sorry. I don’t know that criminal!
He is someone else’s nightmare!
So
 
when will he be walking
into our living rooms and shouting:
the war is home and I want my dinner?
 
And we know he commands our very skin.
He makes the roses tremble
and the sun squint through the windows.
 
And how do you expect me
to work so hard every day
while you sit here doing nothing?
 
He is a good provider,
and doesn’t take any backtalk
or any of that other crap!
 
 
 
Coming into the clearing
            For Stephen who is a veteran
 
We want someone to teach us
the names of all the trees and the
biography of the least
flower that sits, lost in a crowd
of purple eyes alongside
the path, surrounded by the lace
of spiders.
 
We want someone
to tell us which rock is pointing
toward the trail leading home
through these thick trees.
and which rock might
be fooling us.
 
We want to have a footstep
which is larger than ours
and into which
our foot might fit.
 
It’s simple:
Enough of the time
we are watching those clouds
and thinking: This can’t be good!
 
And we want someone to whisper:
It’s good. It’s all good.
 
There is someone who will take us
into the clearing                  into the clearing.
 
No suitable name can be wrapped
around this, no paper, even the most
extravagant, no ribbon, even the most
electric, can be wrapped around this.
 
When I was silent
you took me into the clearing.
And when I was charmed
you took me.
And when I was sorry
you took me
into the clearing.
And when I was certainly blind,
you took me
and you took me
into the clearing.
 
The teaching is simply telling us
that everywhere is nearly home
and that everyone is almost sister
and that everyone should be brother.
 
And that
when the thickness
of living and the heaviness
of our feet might be appalling,
there is someone who will take us
into the clearing                 into the clearing.
 

Tim Fitzmaurice was once the mayor of his home town and now teaches creative writing in a maximum security prison and technology and ethics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  He is married and has two grandchildren.

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