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Archive for December, 2012

Contrary

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 31, 2012| 6 Comments »

So easily the world
makes itself new.
Like today, how all
the footprints and tracks
of yesterday are buried.
The cars are buried. The drive.
The pinecones. The birdseed.
Of course they’re not gone.
We all know the snow melts
and the world will be
the same as it was, only
it won’t be. We know
that, too. I have dreamed,
perhaps, of the snow that
could cover me, make
me new, erase all the
scars and pains. But I don’t want
to start over again. I bow
to all those thoughts, all
those pains, all those scars,
that brought me here
to this snowy windowsill
on this last day of the year
when the world looks new
and I am so grateful to be
this woman growing old.

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Eating the Soup without Salt

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 30, 2012| 5 Comments »

Something is missing.
At least that is what

the palate says. Though
so much is here. Nudge

of onion. Wink of cumin.
The lentil’s warm shrug.

It is like, perhaps,
a person who, feeling

a certain emptiness
longs to fill it with

a voice. Though all
around him, voices,

not hers.
The soup is warm,

but not there the spark,
the sharp song, the crystalline chime.

It is easy to taste
mostly absence. We are

hard wired to want it,
to crave it, adore it.

We’ve evolved
alongside of our need.

No one wants to hear
they can’t have what

they want. We cannot
untaste what we’ve tasted.

They say we are mostly
made of emptiness.

Sometimes I understand.

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Chant for the New Good Neighbor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 29, 2012| 3 Comments »

Picket and vinyl,
wattle, wire,
hedgerow, concrete,
electric, iron,

post and rail,
chain link, stockade
zig zag, spear top,
palisade,

barbed wire, round pole,
dry-stone wall,
see them fall,
see them fall,

see them fall.

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And I Said, No Thank You, But

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 29, 2012| 4 Comments »

All these years
I have coveted
her egg poacher,
yolks perfect every time,
the one we first used
in the small kitchen
with the black and white
tiles and then in the bigger
kitchen with oak floors
and over thirty years later
in a kitchen
only an hour away
from my kitchen,
but today when
she offered me
that Oster egg poacher
as we packed
her other things
into boxes going with her
a thousand miles away,
I knew all
I really wanted
was for her to be the woman
poaching the eggs
those yolks
spilling gold
in a kitchen close enough
we might eat
our breakfast
together.

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Chance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 27, 2012| 2 Comments »

First I thought
it a piece of cliff
tumbled
onto the highway,
but then became
visible four short legs,
then the horns,
the dark wool. But
it did not move,
not one inch,
as I passed it
going west,
passed it wishing
I were not so quick
in my travels,
wishing I could
stand on the road
and forget it was
a road.

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The End

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 27, 2012| 2 Comments »

Dusting the heads
of dead animals,
I think of how much
my father cherishes
this antelope, this duck,
this winged thing I cannot name,
and I understand that it is not
the thing itself that still
thrills him and makes
him want to keep it on the wall,
but the memory of the thing,
how alive it was, how alive
he was in the killing of it.

*

Over tempura, Pam tells me
of the time that she went
to a man’s home, and there
on the couch was his rich wife,
stuffed, her hand stretched out
in eternal greeting. It had been
in her will, the taxidermic clause
stating that he would lose everything
if he buried her. I sip my sake
and laugh, perhaps because
it is funny, perhaps because
I do not know what to say.

*

Though it is snowing
the room is filled with slant sunshine
and the light does what light does,
it seeks out the darkness.
I feel how what I think I know
has become something dead,
though once it greeted me
with open hands. Though once
I was ripe with it.

*

If we’re made of dust
what is doing the breathing?

*

Not that I want
an answer to that.
Only to be a vehicle
for asking.

*

In the parking lot,
the sound of geese.
No one could say
it is beautiful,
the strangled song
slicing the cold, clear air.
But they’re singing,
my god, they are singing.

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Five Reframes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

on the wall
those shadows so much larger
than our problems

*

in the frost
on the window she writes
her name

*

recalling all those
prayers
I never learned

*

like a worm in kale,
something nibbling
all night on her dreams

*

air, snow, shadow, wind
she loses any names
she has been given

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Two for Christmas Eve

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 24, 2012| 2 Comments »

so open sometimes
this heart’s windows, a blackbird
flies through

*

not believing
and writing anyway this
letter to Santa

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Helping My Parents Move Haiku

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 24, 2012| 2 Comments »

pretending not
to cry, I throw out the herbs
she dried, she grew

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Down by the Riverside Haiku

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 22, 2012| 3 Comments »

so cold I could al-
most forget about your hands—
not quite.

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