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Archive for July, 2014

I like the idea of going there together,
and by there, I mean anywhere you are—
even shivering in an igloo as the Inuit do,

or gaping at the iguanas on a beach in Mexico.
We could chase the Isis moths in distant Indonesia
or race with the impalas across savannas in Mozambique.

If you want to plant an iris that will grow up indigo,
I will help you dig the hole in the dirt outside our door.
If you want to go get ice cream—perhaps a triple scoop—

I will take you to the ice cream store and share my cone
with you. Let’s play swords in the back yard with December’s icicles,
or let’s travel miraculously to the Earth’s iron core.

Or let’s just disappear to some island in the sky,
a place that no one else has ever been before.
Some mornings, I go traveling in the iris of your eyes—

and always I arrive in one of my favorite places to be. It’s here,
with you, wherever you are in this astonishing world
of wings, horns, snow, bloom, reptiles, ibis, trees.

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for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie, a V poem

If you forget why it’s good to be patient,
consider the Venus fly trap.
And ask the velociraptor
if you forget why it pays to run fast.

If you ever forget death’s a blessing,
ask the vulture who sits on the wire.
And if you forget how fast things change
ask volcanoes what they know of fire.

And vanilla, it will give you a taste
if you forget it’s a gift to be plain.
The viper can help you remember
to respect anything that has fangs.

If you forget aging is sweet,
ask the vineyard about harvest time.
If you forget aging is painful,
the Victrola can tell you sometime.

If you forget that every touch matters,
ask the violin how it makes sound.
If you forget how to love the darkness
ask the vole why he lives underground.

There is no shame in forgetting.
It’s a matter of gracious surrender
and learning to ask the world to help us
(even if we don’t want to) remember.

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While

saying the words
I knew you did not
want to hear I tried
to shape my voice
like the flowers
we know will
eventually
come in more fully
only after the stem
has been
broken.

I forced myself
to keep my eyes
open.

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But the Hot Summer Air Felt Just the Same

We went back to the old road
with the four-way stop and
the old white church, and the memory
of how to proceed unfolded block

by block and not a moment sooner,
but both of us knew that as much
as we had found our way back
past the golf course, past

the sagging homes with their eternal
garage sales and roses in dusky bloom,
past the drive in and the market
where we used to buy roasted chilies in fall,

though we were right where
we set out to be we can never
really go back, not even driving
as carefully, as slowly as we can.

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So Eve said to the snake,
I don’t really like fruit,
and the snake said to Eve
that the story would sound
much better down the line
with an apple instead
of a forbidden parsnip.
No one craves parsnips anyway,
he hissed. No one would believe
in the centuries to come
that a woman would risk everything
for a root. He was the kind
of snake that knew
what a difference
the right symbol can make.
Nope, said Eve, I’m just
not into apples. So
the snake did what any
snake would do, he
offered her what she
wanted, a parsnip,
with cream-colored flesh
and cream-colored skin,
and she bit
as he knew she would do,
but then he lied about it all,
said she’d eaten the apple.
It was better this way,
this lie so small, just one
tiny seed inside a much
greater garden.

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Whatever It Is

Any firecracker
could tell you
it is not meant
to last. A squeal,
a whistle, a smear
of light, shimmer
and bang and pop.
And then it is over.
It’s one of those things
we don’t want
to talk about. Rather
to believe it goes
on and on, that our
children will always
be happy and young
and we will be happy
and young-ish, too,
and perpetually falling
in love. Yes, of course,
I will hush. We do not
need to speak of these
things—not now while
the band is playing
that song we like to hum,
not now while we can still
write our names
on the night with sparklers
and for a moment the letters
hang in the air, their patterns
imprinted on our eyes
long after we close them.

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Today you told me
about how if you watch
an evening primrose

for twenty minutes in the evening,
you can watch it go
from closed to open.

Too slow to notice
if you don’t take your eyes
off the flower, you said, but

fast enough to be remarkable.
We were walking up, up
above tree line, moving

our bodies through the stiffness
of morning into the day’s
warmth, and I noticed how

as the miles went on
the chattier you got,
too slow to notice from moment

to moment, but by the end
of the day, there was nothing
we couldn’t say.

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For all the history of grief
an empty doorway and a maple leaf.
—Archibald MacLeish

I wanted to start this story
at the end, but couldn’t think
of any stories I believe are truly over.

Certainly not the one about you
and me and our lilies, the way they
bloomed beyond their time, how

even long after they dropped their petals
they still manage to plant themselves
in my thoughts every week. And bloom again.

The end. Well, there’s just nothing
more to say after those two words,
and nothing else to listen to.

I don’t know about you, but I love
a cliffhanger in every story except my own,
love the way my stomach

turns inside out while I wonder what
happens next. Will he forgive her?
Will her body open again like day lilies,

over and over? Our books are written
in unreadable ink. And oh, this longing
for completion, this longing to know.

Any garden could tell you that even after
the flowers die there’s the long slow plot of rotting,
the unhurried scenes of worms and grubs,

and even if the flowers are later replaced
by weeds, well the story itself doesn’t care
where it goes. Only the hero wants to know

that everything will be okay. But the story
it just keeps rising from the loam
of any old once upon a time.

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