Richard Cole

I think of what I’ve written over the years as a sort of spiritual paper trail, most of which was finished before I believed in God or much of anything else. God was with me all along, of course. Where is He not? When is He not? Creativity is spirited work, and aside from little spurts and bubbles, inspiration can only be encouraged, not engineered. I also think that God signs His work, and we can see that signature throughout creation, including what we make along with and through Him ― books, businesses, software, children, all sorts of things. As Paula D’Arcy says, “God comes to us disguised as our lives.”

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My Wife Believes in Reincarnation

I’ve never thought about money so much
since moving to New York. Brooding in silence,
I watch how the Chinese goldfish follow
their lucky noses back and forth. We need
to build up equity. Each month, half our income
disappears for rent, but with interest rates
and nothing in the bank, what can we do?
My wife reads a book on “spiritual midwifery,”
newborns blinking at the camera, wrinkled, astonished.
The goldfish stare back, mild and brainless,
happy enough in their temperate world.

In the crowded park on summer afternoons, we admire
the children of others: toddlers squatting in the sand
and ignoring the giant, assuming faces above them.
Everything we’ve tried to create together
has failed, except our life together.
Our arms are empty. We must have faith.

My wife believes in reincarnation. In the nature shows
on television, galaxies of bright spores float
through darkness. I kiss her shoulders.
“That’s how I think of our souls,” she tells me.
“Millions ascending, life after life.”
I turn off the set. She adds, “This child
is simply waiting for its own sweet time.”

After love, I leave her sleeping and take
my shower, washing off her lotions and oils,
the fragrances, our sweat. I towel myself dry, feeling
the warm air on my body from the open window.
Ferns tremble in the breeze moving
through the dark apartment. Someone calls
from the street. Tiny souls, the millions streaming
lavishly through space, through time,
simple and perfect, like snow.

This is the first poem from my second book, Success Stories. Like “Pale Fish,” it’s about life in a sort of cave, a period when my wife and I were trying to pull together funding for a movie so we wouldn’t have to really work for a living. In the East Village in the 1980s, that all made sense. We lived on a sense of entitlement. We were artists, and our life was a movie, at least to ourselves.

Waiting for Money

We sleep late through the morning and make
love quietly in the middle of the day.
We’re waiting for the telephone to ring.
Someone somewhere in California is reading
our script. They’ll let us know next week, they say.
My wife says it’s like waiting for your dream
boat to ask you to the prom.

We’re living mainly on credit cards these days.
Each week, I feel the easy trigger
tighten as I sign for cash. We’re optimistic.
In New York, the air is filled with impossible money.
For the first time in years, we have all day
to be with each other. We make a date
for the Museum of Natural History
on Wednesday nights when it’s almost empty.
We study the natural defenses of the sponge,
learn where the dinosaurs went wrong, carefully follow
the moody spells of recorded shamans.

When we get home, the answering machine
sits silent. We’ll watch the late show
like insomniacs, or talk a bit, and I’ll fall asleep
remembering the dark museum, the wolves
racing through the moonlit forest, racing
all night through the deep, blue snow.