The distress signal. There wasn’t one.
Suddenly it was gone. Just gone.
The plane, of course, but also our sense
of what’s possible. How could we lose a plane?
The sky today somehow too big, the ocean
too vast for comfort. It would take only a scrap
of metal wing or a wail of a recorded scream
to set us more at ease—some hint of blame to rest on,
some floating debris to trace. Nothing worse than this nothing.
Nothing. Did a door fail? A meteor hit? Did
the pilot get distracted just enough? Failure
of power? A hijacker plot? It doesn’t help
that the path is unclear. Though it almost always is.
So we do what we know how to do. Make grids.
Analyze. Hypothesize. Offer rewards. Criticize.
Wonder, conjecture and doubt. And resist making peace
with nothing. There must be an answer.
There’s always an answer. 239 people know.
For the rest of us, the sky now too big. And the ocean
too vast. And our questions insatiable, starved
for a slick, for a bit, for a fragment of flight, for
anything, anything, that isn’t this terrible nothing.
Archive for March, 2014
What We Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flight 370, knowing, nothing, poem, poetry on March 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
What Was the Question?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chosen, inquiry, knowing, poem, poetry, unknowing on March 11, 2014| 2 Comments »
in the sweets shop
standing in front of the shelves
unable to choose—
realizing that I am the one
who wants to be chosen
*
unable to see
the mountain at the end
of the clouded valley—
never once doubting
it is still there
*
choose me, choose me,
choose me, I say to the world,
but of course I mean
choose me
the way I want to be chosen
*
outside, of course,
preferably in the sun, far
away from all
other eyes, an inchworm takes
all day to measure one lily
*
all day asking
myself, what would be lighter,
and even lighter
than this, all day I land
more softly
*
who is the one
who thinks she wants to be chosen?
leaning into the
infinite whatever it is
that notices her wanting
Wild Rose Chooses a Tail
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alter ego, poem, poetry, tail on March 10, 2014| 4 Comments »
She has had enough of this tight-assed skinny hipped nonsense,
walking down the street like a rail, like a pole, like a wall.
Wild Rose swings her hips while she saunters.
She moves in curves. She is more swank, more sway everyday.
And she wants some tail. Not a fluffy little scut. Not a prehensile
appendage always grabbing at stuff. She wants a long and slinky
swirl of tail that swings when she walks, and you bet
she will swing it for the pure feline fun of swinging.
She wants to swish it and flick it with the wiggle of her gait.
She’s got fanny and flair and a swagger in her ramble,
and a tail, well she’s been looking for another way to tease
anyone who thinks a girl should play it straight. It rocks it
on her coccyx, and the way she’s feelin’, the road can’t be long enough.
*For those of you who have not met Wild Rose before, she is my alter ego, and does all the things I am too afraid or embarrassed to do.
Seven Parallels
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged disillusion, elephant, illusion, poem, poetry on March 9, 2014| 3 Comments »
that elephant over there?
oh, yeah, I like to tell myself
it can fit in my pocket
*
don’t yell at me
I yell at him—
dead sunflower in the vase
*
do you think
this elephant in my pocket
makes me look fat?
*
too hot for my fingers
this piece of steamed carrot so I throw
it in my mouth
*
just before the snooze
alarm goes off again, a whole
dream in three minutes
*
I don’t know
if truth becomes visible but
elephants do
*
that scar, I pick
it even as I say out loud
stop picking it
One Portrait
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged housework, mother, poem, poetry on March 9, 2014| 1 Comment »
for the mothers
Her arms are never empty.
There is perhaps a silence
that holds the space for all this hum,
but she knows it more by faith
than by experience. Sometimes
she sees herself in the window
at night as she moves about the kitchen,
stacking dry dishes and setting out bottles
for morning. She is older now. Less
herself and more something else,
something she cannot name,
though she has stopped believing
in the power of names to contain things.
Sometimes she wonders when she
will disappear from the window.
Already she sees it, how she’s become blur,
as if tears fell on a watercolor, and all
is smudgy and hazy and vague. But
who would want to paint this scene, the making
of sandwiches, the watering of the jade.
It will come, the vanishing. For now,
the armfuls of shirts and socks. For now
the low drone of the dryer as it tumbles,
the occasional clashing of a zipper or buckle.
For now, the milk to put away.
There is Nothing Here for You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, nothing, poem, poetry on March 8, 2014| 2 Comments »
Nothing, how I love you.
Nothing in my hands and nothing
in my thoughts. Nothing between
my everything to do.
You are not mountain nor desert, not wild
nor tame. You are equally not juicy, not dry.
There is no anger in you, no sorrow.
There is no hunger, no longing, no need.
And still you are more yes than no.
You are entirely, uncompromisingly
Nothing. The nothing that holds up
the everything else.
Nothing, I have visited you. Felt
the ever expanding reach of you,
felt myself as nothing, infinite
and everywhere and I did not want to return.
Until there was the tiniest thought of me
that pulled me back into this world
of pomegranates and rivers and lavender
and loss. Nothing, I love you. You are everything I am not.
Possibility
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged directions, home, poem, poetry on March 6, 2014| 2 Comments »
There are no direct flights
from anywhere to here.
Say you make it to Denver.
Say there is a car. Then the long road
though it’s only four turns.
First at the edge where the orchards
meet the layers of desolation, barren, striated and high.
Next at the intersection of depression
and loneliness, where an old
wooden sign with faded red paint announces
that there were once Friday night drag races here.
Turn right at the stoplight of indecision
where it looks uphill no matter which way you go.
It is. If it is summer, there will be lupine,
purple, and golden mules ears in the alpine meadows,
though the peaks will still be secluded in snow.
And if it is winter, there will be tracks
from the elk herds trailing whitely into the spruce.
Pass the turn off toward distraction.
Pass the cliff that was formed around the same time
the dinosaurs went extinct, and then turn left at the drive
just past the ponderosa, how much taller that tree
must be now. There will still be a river waiting for you,
perhaps even a lifetime.
Winter Mundane
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged glove, poem, poetry, story on March 5, 2014| 3 Comments »
A glove in the road,
there it was, so misshapen
and flattened that at first I mistook it
for a dead bird, black,
run over by countless tires
until its feathers were
as unrecognizable
and useless as an old single
glove lost on the road.
There was some Once
Upon a Time in it, enough
that I read a whole life story
into the trampled threads.
I imagined how another someone
might peel up the remnants
of that old glove, take it home,
stretch it onto a canvas
and paint it, reclaim it as art.
But I was more filled with the part
of the story in which I walk past The End,
past the black glove, changed who knows how
by this simple trodden thing, finding myself
on the cliff of tears and strangely unable
to stop one foot from moving
in front of the other.
Well, Something Like That
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, release on March 5, 2014| 1 Comment »
When the red hydrant bursts,
all my life I have wanted to be
there at that moment, with the water
shooting into the street and all the kids
and me splashing and barefoot and laughing.
It is always sunny in this fantasy,
and I am not carrying a laptop
or hurrying to a job interview.
My hands are remarkably free
and I am ready to play as long
as the water erupts. Is it any wonder
I long for this kind of explosion
in you—a wild release. A giant mess
as it all comes out and you hold
nothing, nothing back, and me,
in this fantasy, I don’t take
it personally. I just roll up my pants,
take off my shoes, throw away anything
that resembles a plug and say Darling,
let’s dance.
In the Black
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, poem, poetry, sonnet, taxes on March 3, 2014| 3 Comments »
Someday they’ll learn to levy tax on love.
At least fifteen percent, but likely more.
Say thirty-five percent. With guarantors
in case we can’t pay up. Of course the gov
would want its due. There’s never quite enough
of anything. For years they thought that war
could be the country’s answer, how it pours
in money, power, makes the people tough.
And then there’s love. In fact they’ll wonder why
it took them centuries to think of it.
For unlike currency, there is no end
to love. It’s infinite. So they’ll apply
a love tax, hug tax, wooing tax. Remit
away, my friend. Preserve the country: Spend.
Your Presence Is Requested
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, body image, poem, poetry, self love on March 2, 2014| 2 Comments »
Again the invitation
to love the body
this very moment.
Not the way it was once,
all limber and lean,
all smooth and able.
Not the way it might
be someday in the future
if only, if only. The invitation
to love it now. No
exceptions. No rain date.
No directions how to get there.
No box for maybe.
The invitation arrives
as it always does,
without an envelope.
Without a return address.
No RSVP. No name on it
but your own. No trumpets.
No angels singing about
how all flesh is holy. No
clowns telling jokes.
No balloons.
It arrives so quiet,
but so sincere, right beside
the impulse to crumple
it up. Now what to do.
The rising urge to run.
The rising urge to bow.
After Reading of the Goddess Akhilandeshvari, Today Makes a Little More Sense
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Akhilandeshvari, brokenness, love, poem, poetry on March 1, 2014| 3 Comments »
Today there are dozens
of signposts leading me
toward you—the color
of the clouds at the top
of the divide, a song
on the radio, clean scent
of rain—but I do not follow
any of them, do not
make a bouquet of their beautiful
promises. Instead I stay
in this broken place,
crocodiles swim by
and carry on their backs
the countless scattered
shards of who I thought
I was and how I thought
it was supposed to be,
and I love you
from right here.
Seven Hidden Blessings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry on March 1, 2014| 1 Comment »
so there, I tell
the empty stool, the empty room
the woman in the window
*
if I am
the test you are
the multiple choice
*
my yes bumped into
my I can’t do this anymore
they fell down laughing
*
I’d never seen it
that line you crossed—
who painted it there?
*
if I am
the gravedigger you are
the preacher at the edge
*
it’s always worked
before this path
of failure
*
feeling lost
I notice there’s more
to lose