Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, horoscope, personal growth, poem, poetry on November 3, 2019| 2 Comments »
This solar year, you will actually become the one you wished for.
—Holiday Mathis, horoscope
And so when Holiday Mathis tells me
that this is the year I will become
the one I wished for, I decide to believe her.
If it’s true, I will become sky, become river,
become aspen. Peace in my actions, truth
in my words, love in my every breath.
And though I’m unsure about horoscopes,
I decide to do everything I can to prove
her right, my thoughts already perhaps
a bit more fluid, a bit more blue.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, cindy wahtola, poem, poetry on February 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Every little thing she does is magic.
—The Police
through sirens, rush hour,
taxis, bright lights, windy streets
walks the Sierra Nevada
*
even in poor soil,
the yarrow thrives, excels
in beauty and biathlon
*
running with the half-wolf—
freedom
has six legs
*
a democrat and a republican
walk into a bar—
just sayin’
*
filling sippy cups
and playing taxi driver
the woman with several masters
*
places for adventure:
beach, mountain, ocean,
on the page
*
herbs on the rooftop
and their gardener both grow better
when sung Annie’s Song
*
two fine medicines—
So You Think You Can Dance,
bottle of wine
*
fixing the internet
and home audio system—
this tropical flower
*
every Wednesday
a democrat and a republican
go on a date
*
next chapter—
unable to read ahead,
she brings a lead rope to the cliff hanger
*
giant sequoia—
the longer she grows,
the more she has to give
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, man, poem, poetry on December 30, 2018| 3 Comments »
for Clint on his 80th birthday
he brings wings to what is earthbound,
brings humility to the sky,
and to all that is, he brings song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, cello, death, music, poem, poetry on November 3, 2017| 4 Comments »
with thanks to Kyra
Minor and slow,
the Russian death song
on the cello
fills the room
with loss and beauty,
the two rubbing
together like notes
side by side on the scale
played at the same time.
I lay on the floor
beneath the great instrument
and feel the waves of it
as if they originate inside me—
play it again, I beg
the cellist, and then,
when it’s done, I beg her
again, play it again,
And she does. And she does,
the warm notes filling
any chill they find.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, cemetery, death, Dia de los Muertos, gratitude, poem, poetry 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.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, love, mother, parenting, poem, son on September 10, 2015| 4 Comments »
The night before he turns eleven
the boy cannot sleep. He is so alive.
He jumps on his bed and makes up songs
and can’t stop telling me how much
he loves me. Every day he becomes
more his own, which is to say less mine.
There was a time I heard every word
that he said. There was a time I could hold
his entire body in a single arm. But I was never
able to make everything okay with a kiss
or a song, no matter how much I wanted to.
What a perfect rehearsal for now when
his heart is already practicing how to break
at the cruelness of boys and the spite of girls
and the burn of wanting something you can’t have.
Still, I hold him, knowing it won’t make things all better,
hold him through the ache when he lets me.
And tonight I delight with him in his jumping
and singing until it is time for quiet.
The boy cannot sleep. He buzzes above his sheets.
His life is somehow too much for his body.
He can’t contain it all, despite that his legs
are so long, his reach so wide. And this love
I have for him, so much bigger now than it was
when he was smaller, how can that be? Walking out
the bedroom door, I feel a surge of love leaping out
of my chest, leaking from my eyes.
I don’t even try to hold it in.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, death, life, poem, poetry on November 3, 2014| 3 Comments »
They know what we do not.
Not that I envy the dead their knowledge.
I am grateful to be one of the ones standing here
amidst the crumble of granite and marble
while the words of Merwin and Yeats and Hafiz
weave into the quiet of the graveyard air.
I am curious, but not eager to slip out of this
human garment. What a blessing
to have a body, to look long into another human’s eyes,
to hold each other as we weep, to laugh
and to kiss and to wander arm in arm through the cemetery
on a day when the sun and rain both have their way.
What a blessing to read poems in the presence
of the dead about what it means to be alive.
Before we leave, we sing a prayer for every being—
and though I stumble on the words and fumble
the tune, and though I do not know who
might grant the prayer, I sing, I sing.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, poem, poetry on August 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »
a b-poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie
I wanted to bring you a banyan tree
with it’s aerial roots reaching down,
but it was too difficult to dig it
out of the Indian ground.
And I wanted to bring you a barnacle—
it looked like a white stone rose—
but it refused to be removed
from the bottom of the boat.
So I thought perhaps a boomerang
that would always return to you,
or a blue- and red-nosed mandrill
once thought to be a baboon …
but the boogeyman told me he wanted them
and threatened to take my ears,
so I let him have them, the bonsai tree, too,
that I’d grown for forty years.
And it was a barracuda
that devoured the banana split
in an act of underwater thievery.
I’m still upset about it.
As for the wild honey beehive,
I was too scared the bees were vicious,
and the bat was so fragile and delicate,
and the bacon was too delicious.
And the red-crested bird of paradise
looked so beautiful under the tree
so I arrive at your door with nothing more
than the gift of stories and me.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged all souls, birthday, cemetery, day of the dead, death, life, poem, poetry on November 3, 2013| 6 Comments »
On a hill
in the sun
at the edge
of the grave
in the grass
let us meet
on the day
when the veils
are thin
between
the worlds—
and perhaps
the Aztec
goddess
will open
her fleshless jaw
so that all
the stars
fall out
as they did
today
so that we
might find them
inside
each other’s words
and speak
of darkness
with syllables
made
of light.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, identity, poem, poetry on July 6, 2013| 1 Comment »
That’s what they do,
he said. They get your birthday
with your name and then
they steal your identity.
Thank god they did not
print my birthday in the paper,
he says, pointing to the long list
of birthdays in the bottom right
corner of the local newspaper. We
are sitting on the bench
in front of Mary’s Store.
There is no one named Mary
who works here anymore.
Now, he says, I don’t have
a PO box, don’t have a driver’s license,
I paid to have them take me
off the voter registration list,
twenty bucks, did you know that,
he says, and now I fell off the radar of the paper.
I want to wish him happy birthday,
but he is too busy telling me
he is no one and how the person
who steals his name will be the one
with a driver’s license and passport
and PO Box to prove it.
He’ll have it all with my name,
he says, his arms waving wildly,
the injustice of it all. He shouts,
They’ll deport me! Not the other guy!
Part of me envies him his disappearance.
Part of me still longs to wish him
a happy birthday once he pauses long enough
for me to speak.
And part of me is already escaping
into the dry air of July, perhaps
laughing at the one who thinks
her life is hers.
