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Archive for November, 2015

One Would-Be Rescue

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 7, 2015| 3 Comments »

wanting to be your lifeboat—

so different from simply

being your lifeboat

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I Guess This Is a Prayer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 6, 2015| 2 Comments »

One by one,

I rip the roots

from dirt and shake

them clean.

Stalk by stalk,

I clear the garden

walk of all

the brittle stems.

And who might come

to pull from me

whatever’s brown

and dead?

My own hands

always find

another task

another garden.

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Still Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 6, 2015| 3 Comments »

No leaves on the trees

beside the ditch,

and the first snow

outlines in white what remains

in their absence.

What remains is

the dark gesture of tree,

thrust and jut and extend.

Just this morning,

Meredith taught me

to see the movement

in what appears to be still—

even a brown jar,

she says, suggests twist

and elongate and turn.

I wonder if I could be still

like that, still enough

that the snow might settle

on me, though I’m reach

and wrestle and brawl.

This is our practice,

to move at the same time

toward quietude, toward swirl;

to be the scaffolding that holds up

the miracle; to be shine and rise and fall.

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Quietly

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 5, 2015| 1 Comment »

There is snow

all around us now

and no tracks leading

from the house

into the wood,

into the white—

Please, I need

to walk in snow

and have beside me

you, there’s something

that the winter

wants to teach us,

I don’t know

what it is, but

it’s not only about

the cold, not only about

the way that some things

seem to disappear.

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Diagnosis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 4, 2015| 1 Comment »

Mom, he says, what’s déjà vu?

The tone of his voice tells me

he’s worried about how I will answer.

I tell him, It’s when you think

you’ve experienced a moment before

when in fact the situation is new.

Oh, he says. Well, my friend

who’s parents are doctors

says he thinks that when

I fell off the top bunk last night

and landed on the concrete floor

I got the déjà vu. And Mom,

he’s going to be a doctor, too.

My son knits his fingers into knots

as he speaks. He looks fragile,

a bird with a broken wing.

I try hard not to laugh,

but not hard enough,

and the laughter spills

between us. You don’t have to worry,

I tell him. He is not convinced.

But Mom, he says, He told me

that was why I could fall on my head,

but it is my leg that hurts. And

he told me that’s why I might do

stupid things even if I’m really smart.

I take my son’s worry to heart. It feels familiar,

like an alley I’ve walked in before,

like a familiar room, like a voice

I have heard, like a remembered door.

My darling, I tell him, you’re fine.

And somewhere, perhaps,

in my rhinal nervous system,

a dysfunctional electric discharge

is sending a message to tell me

I’ve said this to him before.

You’re fine, I say, and unknit his hands.

Are you sure mom? he says,

knots his fingers again.

I think I’m the one with déjà vu,

I tell him. He stares hard at me,

concerned for us all.

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46th Birthday in Lone Tree Cemetery, Dia de los Muertos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 3, 2015| 3 Comments »

Past the grave of the baby girl,

past the grave of the beloved mother—

“we loved her,” it says in italic letters—

and past the grave with my birthday on it,

we find a tombstone greened in moss

with its names and dates long since lost.

The grass has nearly reclaimed the stone,

and we sit here together and talk for hours,

joyful expressions of dust as we laugh

and cry and remember just why

it is so damn sweet to be alive, to practice

what it means to love in the face of our impermanence.

All the leaves have left for the year,

but look at what remains—the chance

for sudden, immeasurable bliss

no matter what the season is.

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For My Sister Across the Ocean

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 1, 2015| 4 Comments »

In the empty kitchen I read

your letter out loud,

try to speak in your tones

as if I might trick my ears,

but there are too many waves

in my voice, I can hardly keep my head

above the water, they are deep

the tides between here and there.

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