Noël Valis, Yale University

In a Waiting Room I Write a Letter to Neruda

Look at all these pinched nerves
walking around, Pablo,
these congested minds
these dislocated spirits
bodies that do not line up
with ground or sky.
Chronic cases of lost life jackets,
stuttering tics douloureux
twisted spinal subluxations
where on earth is there a cure.
God, tell us how to straighten out
the stammering human heart.
God has nothing to do with it.
I told you that before.
Yeah, you warned me, Pablo,
but I won't listen.
I'm still looking
for that chiropractor's clinic
of patient souls waiting
treatment on the table.
Hoping to make their residence
on earth
smooth
as buttered bones.
See that country woman,
my arms, she moans, can't reach
to fix my hair, it's a rat's nest,
and drags a shiny steel walker,
she ain't just shuffling Dixie.
How old's the baby, she asks.
The mom, who's young and black,
flashes fire and shoots back:
Three month,
and shuts up tight,
with pain sealed like a freezer bag
its contents
red and orange plastic chairs,
an outsourced ficus made in China,
and flip flops armed with pink toenails.
And there's a cop without a pension
who sighs and shifts
his weight. And there's the receptionist
who slings gum. Oh boredom,
boredom.
We might as well be here
as somewhere else.
Pablo, how long should I wait?
Until you live. Hasta que vivas.

               ¤ ¤ ¤

Time of the Bay Leaf

I pull the bay leaf from thick,
white chowder
what an immersion experience
and the creamy soup gasps,
Massachusetts-style.
In no time at all a friend and I
are cooking it up at Logan Airport.

Was it
any different on the boat,
on the boat coming over?

I dip once more into that blue and red
Mccormick box, that crackling
bay leaf.
Into the immigrant scent,
soaked in the past tense of other meals,
other friends.
What stand up, thriving,
full of enthusiasm time this is,
and yes!, what smashing of labels: seconds, minutes,
hours, years, centuries,
countries, races.
Why throw out herbs
just because they expired!
My past ran out
over there.
My present's no longer my past.
These leaves
are renewal: this much poured out,
this much stirred in
is time.
And when I've shaken out
the last bits of leaf
it is my skin remembering,
as I sit in the plane
blue and red on the sides,
that took off and soared
with and without me.