THREE POEMS

Your Empty Bowl

1

The doctor makes a curving incision in the left topback of my skull andlifts the cap— “What areaam I here to work on?” But Ijust want to wish his son a Happy Birthday—It had been my aim, the reason I’dwalked right into this Doctor dream—In the morning,—my neighbor reports from his yearof losses: a well dried up and the threat of fire, the offerof haven, now his sister’sstroke— “I feel,” he said, “like a bowlthat God keeps scooping out—”It made me nervous, how emptied he was—how every few monthsa place, a face, that mattered to him,crumbled into gone—My solution was ridiculous, so I extolled it with fervor. I said,“You should meditateon an empty bowl, you should and sitwith an empty bowl —” For weeks,I’d been battering him over the head with hope and will—as ifhope and will—could make magic—And the little man with the bowl in Central Park that spring thirty years agowhen I did not knowhow to change my life—What a strange little man he was, so small and the bowlso enormous—He could barely get each arm around it, as hepicked me out of the throngon the new spring Lawn, I must have lookeddrifty and aimless—“Make a wish,” he said, standing under me, “Ring the bell—Don’t listento the neighbors—”I looked downinto the giant mixing bowl, and in the bowl a bell—And , I’d just,the night before,walked by a man stabbed in the chest—on Second Avenue—Shine-blur of streetlights in the blood soakingPeople three-deep in a wide ring around his breaths—A three foot distance between his bleeding body and everyonewatching him bleed, and no oneextending a hand, no one speaking—no onebreaking through the circle to say “What? What?” thensirens, and I knewsomeone had called. And I stood there,outside a ring of forty living motionless people watching onedying in the middle, and all of us therereally needing some help—I wanted, I thought, to leave—New York—“That’s it!” The little man cried, as I picked up the belland rang it and rang it—While another man, tall and lanky (the two of themmust’ve been a team), into my earwith a hiss and a lean, “Your wishwill never come true,” and the little man shouting, “DON’TLISTENTO THE NEIGHBORS—”And the tall man striding away. And the little manthen offering mea gamble:“You give me a dollar, you get back ten,You give me a ten, you get back a hundred,whatever you give me, you get backten times ten—”So I gave him a ten. And a week later made a surprisehundred bucks showing slidesfor an auctionat Sotheby’s—What story am I trying to tell.The oneof unexpected loss and the oneof unexpected gain, I guess.The story of No, and then the storyof Yes—Was Yes “Thank you Sir may I have another—”