Untitled

The sky is slanted
the sky is soft

it has the patience for us. I am
driving and you are driving and

I have the sweet and sharp taste
of a clementine on my tongue just as you

are towelling off or
threading your belt
through its loops.

The sky is different
every evening
and infinitely patient

for the evening
when you drive
to the house
a small house, an unusual house
a house for after
a house for
what is the story of who lives there
on the river
in the reeds
on the banks
a house of another time
and nothing to do
with anything else
sparsely furnished
and me
already there
to meet you

a light is on. it is evening. you've come
a long way. you pull in.
I don't know
if I'm there or not. I imagine
I am.

I never expect it. I
am not waiting. I simply

make note of
the evening skies.

Documentary

My pushpin goes here on
the map of your death
to this point, to what I want to
remember of it
the wind, the breeze, the

hazy sunlight and the feeling
in my temples of looking out into the woods
sitting beside you
you, going out, coming in, coming back
you, reaching across the sheet for my hand
which I did not expect
you, with your surprisingly cold hand

you, saying, I'm ready
and nothing more

all the brown and heavy oak leaves
more than falling, more than raining down
blown down, made to come down
from so high
from so much another place to here
the journey so fast, so quickly done
some skittering dry and light through the wide and
open door
there isn't any word
for how they sailed, slid, and sounded, so light!
from the trees out there
to the room, in here
where you were and weren't

it was Halloween
it was unusually warm, and humid
like spring, in fall

and the high voices of your children
and my children
finding and excited
out walking in the woods and
unmindful of us, or this moment

like the outside
breeze and leaves
carrying to us.

As Told By

After I tore
my life down
and ended up with
nothing but a

smooth river
without wind and with
brown and gold reflections
of a bare and dry and
sad November

I moved
into a raftered loft
in an old hat factory
on that same river
sliding by my floor-to-ceiling windows all day

and one day
in a different November
I sat up
in my bed and
you were in my bed and
I was not the prettiest or best
woman you ever knew

but the one you wanted
and we wrapped
ourselves in sheets
and opened the french doors
and let the flurries in
so cold
so fresh
without prologue
without epilogue

only that morning.

The Funeral Was Friday

Two red
hurricane flags
one above the other

bend the pole
snap the wind

mark the surge

landfall is
already made

when I slide
legs up and
body down

into a hot bath soak
of fragrant Japanese flowers
at two in the afternoon

I rinse my hair underwater
I have not done that since I was a child

love is enough to choose
we love enough
we love
not enough
to be a choice

white is my color of
mourning

again we snap the car doors shut
plane doors shut
everything, shut
everything, boarded up
then rushing,
then gone

again I cross
I make the arc of
a red lacquered bridge

I make an arc
I cross the red bridge

I come back to you.

Process Comment

When its particularly intense times, good or bad, I don't have any urge to write about it. What I want, at those times, is to be present. Fully. Completely. All there, and nowhere else. That is the satisfaction. Expressing myself in any other way other than living it well doesn't appeal. It is different than being too busy, too tired, too overwhelmed, too anything to write, or take a picture, or whatever. Reflection is incompatible with being there for me. While D. was sick these past 7 weeks, and when he died, and the days after, I did not want to say anything about it in this way. I just wanted to be there. And I was.

I don't know how to evaluate that. I suppose in my own opinion it cements me as a hobbyist and not a Writer, or Artist, or Poet. People I know whom I would term those things I think would not be able to live the experience fully without also and more simultaneously expressing it in their chosen forms.

I usually err on the side of saying every goddamn thing. But not at those times, good times or bad times. There I like the quiet of living, only.

Bad poet. Bad bad poet.

Untitled

All roads
connect and all
colors make black and

godless angels are what
follows me

I will hate those
paniculata blooms when they
are old
and dried
and dusty
in a green glass vase
in a dim corner
of your dining room

but on their woody stems
out in the yard
they lush over
dark pink and
symmetrical to either side
an arresting October funeral pyre

die on the vine then
connected
when December begins
at last

to furiously blow.

Untitled

I think its
untrue and worse when you
say things like

there are no second chances and

I tell you
I have to tell you
I don't bother to tell you

that you're wrong

I say things like

everything is better
on the ground
I love the ground

my feet were on the ground
on the sidewalk
in the round-bulb light at night
outside that old theater
one foot back
the other leaning forward
to kiss your lip
which was salty from popcorn
and mine sweet
from pink lemonade
I put one arm
around your neck
when I kissed you
which is funny for a girl to do

later and only once
you turned me towards you
when we were lying
on the ground
by placing a palm
at the smooth of my hip
and pulling
and I turned

the ground was a chance
I love the ground

I love the two chances
that happened on the ground

I will bury you in the ground
I will sprinkle you
on the ground
I will predecease you
and turn into the ground

that was your second chance
to stop saying things
about second chances
anymore.

Untitled

I couldn't speak of it until now. I wanted to. I did not want to. I felt quiet on the matter.

On a Monday, a family. Two parents and three children and one parent coming on service, battle over. The wife. The mother. Relief. And grief. No one is surprised. The girls will be surprised. The girls do not know.

Should we tell them? I don't give advice. I facilitate. Find your answer. I give advice: yes. We rehearse. The father makes a sound like a wounded animal. I am firm. I am steady. We make a plan. Friday. I give them books to read. How to do it.

Monday again. The girls do not know. They did not do it. They could not do it. How could they?

I go over. She's in bed, she's sleeping. She's not sleeping. She's dying. I call the nurse. She's dying? The nurse thinks so too. She's dying. I call the father. She's dying. Soon. I give advice. I give a direction: you have to tell them. His wife can't help tell them anymore. I can help tell them. I leave. I come back. They are there. He tells them. I tell them. It goes as well as a thing like that can go.

Tuesday. I'm not at work, I'm not working. I'm at home. Work calls. She's dead. Its too much. Its too sad. Its too awful. The girls want me. The dad wants me.

I have terrific boundaries. I help, and I am not responsible. I am empathetic. I know the difference between empathy and sympathy.

I'm supposed to be there. It is different, with children. This is this story. I can give in to the way the story is supposed to go. I leave my children. I go there.

The kitchen is full of people, and food, and paper plates, and wine. Upstairs. I take off my shoes. I take off my lanyard. I don't automatically hug, ever. They reach. I hug, I hold.

Then, this: me, three girls, the dog, the dad, the dead mother. All in the bed together. Its quiet, its intimate. Its so relaxed. Its an 80'sish color on the wall but it really works for this. Its creamy and warm and cool at the same time. Its nice. Some tears here and there. They all lean and sprawl on each other, on dad, on her. They ask questions, I answer them. The curiosity of children. We feel her cooling hands. Feel here, and then here. See that? Cool, warm, cooler. One daughter, will they break, her fingers break, when they get stiff? I don't think so. We'll be careful, they'll be careful, they won't break her. We remark on her color changing as it changes. Its science class. Remember when we talked about waxy? This is waxy. Will her hair grow when she's in the coffin? It won't.

One of the daughters is the prettiest. She has lovely fine features, she is sweet by nature. Her hair shines. She smiles a smile at me. She has taken a shine to me. I have a shine to her. We would have a shine even if these weren't the circumstances. I wish I could keep knowing her.

I come one more time. All coming down. Normal conflict, normal stuff. Dad and his girls. It will be hard and they will do fine. I leave them. It was 10 days.

I can't know what they'll remember when they're 20, 30, 40, 80, dying. What they'll remember or not of me, what we said, what we did, what difference it will make or not make at any point in their lives.

I won't ever know that.

Revisited

my love
is a stripe. I laid down
the tape and then I
painted over it. Over everything.
I waited. Then I
pulled the tape up. It made
a stripe.

my love is a stripe. I
fell asleep
while you were driving
on a cloudy day. I imagined
you were looking at me.
I imagine you were looking at me.
It made a stripe
on my cheek.

my love is a stripe. red and blue
striped socks
with a pirate. stripes on the curtains. striped lampshade.
striped shower curtain. the Eastland. the hotel.

my love is a stripe. You
had a striped sweater. Now I need this
you said
That was a stripe. my love
was a stripe.

I drew a red pen
through your words
and ideas
I made stripes. But I loved you. That
was my love. That was a stripe.

I saw a fish underwater. I was underwater.
The fish was green. The fish was yellow. The fish
was a stripe.

The stripe is
I love you.
The stripe is
more than a year. The stripe is
the last of
the love poems.

I Feel I Owe Some Kind of Explanation

editing and helping. that's what I'm doing these days. not so much writing.

Us

How It Feels

I Love You Too/Its Like This, All the Time

What You Are To Me

Two

Elyria

What It Was

It was not quite
an unloved plastic toy
left in the humpy grass
through snows, and ice, and sun, and rain
thinning and brittling
to a faded dreary orange, dreary blue

It was a little bit like
touching your lips
to a full bottom lip
a high cheekbone
a temple
a sweep of soft and delicious hair
but not really. Not really.

It was more like
a photograph of
a pretty braid
echoing a hairline
right past the curve of a truly delicate
pretty ear
and just the suggestion
of a smile, all contained, all veiled

so trite. just a detail.

It was more like the fallacy
of a yellow scarf
worn to cover a head
or wrap a neck
on a misting day. No one
actually likes a yellow scarf. No one
falls for it
anymore.

It was the salt sea air
that comes in
in the evening
and surprises you. That air
has a body
and a mass
and a movement of its own. It visits you. Then
it leaves.

It was a long slug of gin
and then laying down on the sidewalk

why get up? why get up at all?

It was understanding
exactly
about one of sixteen vessel virgins
leaving for the coast
and stars falling
all along the injured coast
and everything
having to do with coasts.

It was telling a few small lies.

It was skipping a beat.

It was the inscrutable goodbye touch
of two pads
of two fingers
to a warm third eye.

Still
peck peck
and an outie of a tripod appears
then a hole
then the whole thing comes apart
from will alone. A long and thin
neck weakly rises
but rises
and seeks
and opens

bright yellow
rimming with orange
blind-eyed
and naked

entirely patient
worse than hopeful
simply expectant

of what good will come.

Millerton

Untitled

The Words in Your Mouth

When she
thinks hard
she looks down
and hides her mouth against
her index finger

what she
scents there
lavender and
garlic and

my wavy hair
that's the only way
I know the smell of
my own hair

her in her white shower
in the morning
her in her red kitchen
at noon

her in her happy picnic place
in the afternoon
with my head in her lap
and her fingers through my hair

and me holding her
small hand
to my lips

her on me on her.

The Day Ted Kennedy Died

I.
Ted Kennedy died today

my husband calls up the stairs
as I am
ironing my skirt
standing in a slip
with my coffee on the dresser
and the light from the lamp
waxing and waning with my motions

what is wrong with this outlet

II.
I catch mosquitos
in one hand
parked on a hill
with the windows down
listening on my phone
while she tells me why she quit
and I'm tired of it
until I think to say

just because they're moving their mouth
doesn't mean you have to listen to it

these mosquitos are huge
and almost striped
and I accidentally
honk the horn
while achieving the last killing

III.
Tell me what's wrong/
with having a little faith/
In what you're feeling/
in your heart

she sings
and my heart
feels something
at the way she sings
heart
and I want to be moving fast
when she sings that like that
and I want to tell someone something

continuing down the highway
I am unprotected

it is not a day for bullshit

IV.
Wide open.

I pull up a chair
next to Charlie in bed
and hold his hand
and watch the reconstructed
roof of his mouth
and his lovely white hair
and we talk about this:

his dying
inevitably
and he is useless
except to those
who love him
and have him
this one more day.

I have Charlie one more day.

I kiss Charlie.

He is a good man. Charlie, I love.

That is the truth in my heart
that I don't beat back.

V.
I tell someone
the truth.

I can't not do it. I can't do
anything else
but this.

VI.
I have seven patients
in this facility
I am
quick and light
in a skirt. I have nothing
to be anything
other than seeing everyone

and seeing them
and touching them
and their hands
and my hands
and their brows
and my lips
to their temples
and my hands in
the hands of their daughters
and husband
and my head to
their heads
and their tears
streaming

and I have nothing but the truth tonight

and I bought myself
hours of
documentation

I could not stop.

VII.
I come home. My
little boy
lost his first tooth
hours ago.

I put my face
into my husbands shirt.

Too much hospice
is the best I can say it
though its not
it.

VIII.
When I came home
there was a big black cloud
overhead and it was
humid and warm and
there were crickets

and when I looked west
there was
a hard line
with an orangey pale sky beyond
and I wanted to
drive towards it
and see it better
a dark summer night here
the last day of summer
here
and autumn
and coolness
over there.

I turned east.
I came on home.

Beads

Small epiphany on the drive home this evening. I'm making fimo beads. Those little ones where you make a long sushi-like roll with different colors and then slice: the cross-sections show a miniature image. I can almost see mine. Red mushroom with white spots, maybe even a tiny spotted fawn if I'm getting really good at this. At THIS. You see them and you think oh my god, that's really amazing! that's so cool! and you buy some and put them on black strings and give them to your friends.

But who wants to wear fimo beads long-term? You don't. I don't. It wears off.

I want to make a giant canvas with oil paints that isn't technically perfect or anything but gives you a feeling you're in someplace lit up with golds and earthy greens and that it might be breezy and that there might be a storm coming in about an hour and a half. A little blurry with motion.

Hang it right over the little table where you eat breakfast in the kitchen. Its not that precious or anything. Its not a big deal if the milk splashes off the corn puffs onto it. Its just nice to have around.

Not there yet but a stronger feel what I want to make next.

Not so many fimo beads. Or origami animals.

Untitled

its not
the sun and the moon
like everybody thinks

marry the moon
you'll be happy together
you will never get to the point

where you take off your shoes
and line them up
with the double yellow
lines
and lay down
in the middle
of the street
perpendicular
to the lines
to be funny
or tragic
no one can tell

marry the moon
and all the love songs
are for you

the sun knows better
what he wants
steady to warm then
steady move
the air
into a wind

wild affair
of sun and
his unlikely love

winding through pines
a dust devil
a darkening on the water
and the expectancy
of it coming to you
breezing your face
and the bareness of your forearms

sun
and wind

but all the art we make
is wedding photographs

my sun and moon mobile
my sun and moon earrings
my sun and moon
garden decorations

no one can draw the
wind anyway.

Back

An exceptionally good week. It really was.

Vaca

Going off the grid. Quiet time. I'll come back with something else, I think.

Untitled

He steps up
with his small height
and too-large bony face
and prominent teeth
and legs poking at odd angles
at the fabric of his black dress pants

He makes the wedding toast
to his sister
who is pretty
and older

and you wait to see him walk
yes
something off there

stop right there
and don't discount him
for love, and sex, and marriage

less likely perhaps
but what do you know?

I know this
that you were perfect

and that
you were perfect
when you beat a dog
you were paid to walk
when you were twelve

and when you beat a dog
you were housesitting for
that kept shitting on the living room rug
when you were twenty-one

and when you beat your own dog
once
and then never beat a dog again

or anything else
for that matter

you were perfect
each of the mornings we
woke up together
there is me
there is your arm over me

which is less likely now
you and your
arm over me

or us in a watery grave
with waves moving us
and you no longer looking at me

me just passing
in and out of your
field of vision

here at the boundary layer
between Pacific and sand and

the little crabs
carrying the small pieces of us
away, away, away.

Untitled

I don't know
what takes so long
it is so hard
to say it.

I don't want to say it.
I do
want to say it.

You
broke my heart
and broke it
worst of all
so far
because I have
a lot of heartbreaks
and no terminal
diagnosis so
maybe by the
end of this year
you can get off your
dubious podium
hang your medal off
your bedpost
and dry the laurel
out in the shed
until its dusty
and faded
and covered in old spiderwebs.

You'll take up
something new
after that
I don't know what.

As for me
you
breaking my heart
is a pair of
blue underpants
of indeterminate size
dirty
and flattened
up by the curb
on a street
in my
residential neighborhood
that you
walk by
every day
and think about picking up
and throwing away
but never do
instead you see them
every time you
step over them
with mild distaste
and they
don't degrade
very fast
in these conditions
it will take years
of rain
and cars
and snow and salt
and a plow
and the baking sun

I'm not
casting aspersions
I don't
pick them up either
I step over them too

thinking about how long it takes
and how long lost they are
and the asphalt under them
made of real small rocks
and something else
and the substrate asphalt
under that
that they strip down to
for resurfacing
and the medium gravel
under that
and the big gravel
under that
and the hard packed and tamped dirt
under that

and then the relief
of just plain old rocks
and plain old dirt
under that

nothing special at all.

Yankee Homecoming

I suddenly
realize that now is the
time that I'm
going to do this and

when he starts to
play the piano from
his ear he doesn't
know how to read the
music that's open in front of him I
sit down on the
bricks by the
green pot-bellied stove and I listen and

a couple of other people
at the party
sit down and listen too and I am

right next to the table
covered in still-covered
desserts and I am

hoping for a
lemon square later

and the music is rushing
music and it isn't really the
music its him playing its him
being right there and making it
under his fingers and I think he is
so beautiful in his
blue tshirt with orange words some
jokey tshirt and

everyone is sitting with their
drink in one hand and their
face in their other hand and
leaning forward and
listening

and what is better the
music happening or the
listening or the

burgeoning table of
sweet and
home-made and

waiting to be shared.

Untitled

The aphids
will drink dry
your pretty porch plants
and turn them brown
before August
or the vacation
with the forgetful neighbors
in charge of your living things
while you are
what are you?
away
get the chance.

Are you
pretty inside? are you
lovely are you
in love with a
humid night and a
hand in your hand saying

you'd better let me
lead you down it
can be a
little tricky here?

I'm not talking about if
your glass is
half empty
of half full

only if you are thirsty.

The 50 Year Anniversary

Doris "DD" Geoffrey
married Phil Derrico
in 1958.

You can't know
your seagoing ways
you can't
you can't know them at all.

I put in
at a likely spot
with a mossy mouth opening to
dark water and brown-edged
blossoms dripping from the
overhanging trees moving and
proving
there's some current here

how can I know
which tributary I chose if I will
come finally
to a delta
the opening
the shiny sea
of which
I know we know
we dream

or instead
narrow and
dwindle and dry up
in a sandy plain
with no trace
that I was here at all?

I cannot live
without water
without swells
without lapping
can you
did Doris
did Phil?

have to leave
this wooden old canoe
in a swampy
and then just muddy woods
with the twigs snapping
and biting
and hurting
our bare feet

and live as pure
land mammals

and live like
the damned.

What You Should Do

You know
what it is and
how it is
between us

You know
what you're
afraid of
the most

it is not
death
or impotence
or being contacted
by the
New Yorker
to publish

those are nice and
thrilling fantasies I have a
number of nice fantasies too

you know
how we're
always hugging + kissing

how we're
touching the back
of each other's necks

and its comfortable

how we're
making this much
eye contact

how its
cake and wine

how its always
no no no no no

and then

yes yes yes yes yes.

Cape Cod

The worst boyfriend I ever had
dumped me
in a sad little
beachside bar
at 2:30am
on the fourth
of July

before that
he drew funny little pictures
on my palms

and let me
cut his hair
with my keychain scissors
one afternoon picnic

and I remember
in particular
the feel of the powdery
and nearly purple
sand I rubbed
between my feet
leaning back
with my elbows up
on old driftwood
his tongue so
warm and sweet
in my mouth

and then of course the
stick of his leaving steps
on the beer-tacky
concrete floor

and from the door
his shape
against one last firework

before anything was complicated
before anything was lost

before worst was

times like these.

The Greatest Show on Earth

my god

do you recall when
we went to the circus and
what the pole looked like with
the two strongmen
holding either end of it

the bright light on it
lighting it up
beige and backlit
like skin under a
medical lamp

and the dust sloughing off in
little puffs as she
in bare feet
goes bounce and bounce and

once
twice
three times

that's my pole and
you're on it and I am barefoot and
jumping and maybe you
are crouching and
holding on for
dear life and I am
leaping
bouncing

higher higher higher

and right up
and over you

my god

up I go.

Untitled

Something is coming
for both of us and

I know there will be a blue
night with a disc moon and
an undulating glittering ground come
January or come

sooner than that and I know that
the grass will go long and matted and be
full of asters and wet with
just a little bit of rot and the
smell alone of it will

make you know everything
you ever needed to know and

the restraint it takes to
accept the ice
and the asters

without going into a panic of
digging and digging with my hands a
hole in the sand that
fills and fills and fills
with waves and waves and waves

and caves in on itself

the will it takes
to know what I know

and to do nothing more than

wave hello
and remember your birthday
a little late

what excruciates me
about having anything to do

with you.

On the Day That You Were Born

I promise
that I will not
ask you for
the honey

I just want you
to sing me that song
so sweet and high and
dry that I know you
know that I know you
wrote and sang one
hundred times in your
mind and played out on
your pretty
little guitar

the universe
didn't want
either one of us
and no one was
all that glad when
we were born

the rejoicing of
the animals
and the birds
and the people
and the sun, the moon, the stars
in a big circle

is just a fancy way of
obscuring that a bunch of
space dust
became you
became me

that is the
cold hard facts

but can't you see
what your hands would
look like if you
pressed them to
my shirtless back and you
leaned in close and
with your face found
my ear through my straw
hair and you sang me
that song that I know you
know and sang it
high and dry and I would
of course I would

love you too.

The Surgeons

I do not know
who covered me
in sutures
while I slept. Did I
look so in need of
repair as to earn a
body now embroidered in
stitch after stitch of
coarse black thread?

All I can do now is
deal with it
what's done is done
I move gingerly
from bed to bathroom
and back
trying not to pull, or
strain, or pop I
cannot bathe
this warm washcloth will
have to do for
my sore
and raw
and punctured flesh.

I sit on the
edge of the unmade bed and
close my eyes
this is where I go

1945 and those
black and white
photographs of field hospitals with
rows and rows and
rows of beds and men and
the surgeons
moving down them quick and sure and
slicing skin with scalpels and
cracking chests and breastplates and
plunging hands in
fingers fanned and reaching
over and over and
over again
for the heart
for their hearts
the copper salt smell of
hot blood and the
firm and pulsing meat
in their grabbing hands just to know
just to know
just to know

that its there
that its there and
that it is

alive
alive
alive.

Kilter

I am on
the wrong road
or trail
or path
or whatever works for you
for days and days. I sit
down at the counter and
eat bad egg salad
on rye
with too many chips
and a coke I couldn't
really feel for.

Its all too much.

So I turn over
stones and look for
salamanders or
is it newts or
maybe its rotty logs I
want to be turning here to
feel twelve again
concentrated and
light.

None of it will do.

Then I am
aimless on a walk
but not
in a good way
I'm on main roads
when the dusky backstreets
rife with cats
are called for and I'm
stopping at
all the wrong stores and
buying a coffee
I don't want
coffee only soothes
and joyfuls
in the morning.

You know what it is
to not be
in your body

the thick and dark and
bubbling clouds

without rain.

Idiot

I cannot hold onto images and some really good lines and phrases that come to me for more than about 3 seconds lately. I keep a notebook with me most of the time and I can't even retain it all until I have time to flip open the notebook. Is it the unending rain? Vitamin D deficiency? Until recently I could hold onto a good thought, turn of phrase and image all day until evening and then make it into something when I have time for this, generally around 10 pm. The past week? All poof. All gone. Zero retention.

Me, idiot-like.

Untitled

She descends
the long path and downsteps
to her door and
what else I cannot
say except that the
second floor windows are
glowing yellow as
if someone is
awake and
waiting and
listening

for her and this is
the mystery of all the
small signs such as her
license plate that
spells vie
for life
and that she never
knew that until now and

I have to ask you
because you might
know do you know how
many of her there are

walking down paths and
downsteps to
what with
vie and life and

hearts waiting to be
stroked open like a
morning water lily or like an
opening rose or

that fat bud peony
given over to
wanton glory
and scent
and half-blown vie
full-blown life.

At the Terminal

While I am waiting for you in
a hollow tunnel of
dust and light with the
wind and grit trying to
get at my eyes I think about how you
no and I
yes and I

can now only find
meaning and
solace in
these three things

an iron and glass lantern
unlit and hung in a
front yard
maple tree and the

vast span of an old
Vermont barn at
windy sunset with swifts swallows and
arcing old trees and a

minion of tiny minnows just under
the lily pads and millfoil and all the
other vegetation that shelters and
chokes us

you and me
these three
and the long wait for

yes and no.

Untitled

Here is an act
of love for you
the way I pile my hair all up
and bend down
when I sit beside you
and gently feel your
ankles for
what might be going on
here and
here and here

oh turn your shoulder when
I place my small hand there and
always turn towards me the

sweet bone of your high cheek
as you come about

it can rain for
days and days and we do
more than endure it we
open
we go loose

and I love to pull this
shirt up and over my head and
stretch and you
remember now how it becomes the
moment when you were told or
got to say

you can kiss me if you want to

your trouble, your worry
your tiny gems

I'm gone and here

you love
you fool
you, coming down.

Reckoning

Do you know
how many times
you were thrown away?

I think
you don't and
like how many drinks
a day
you underestimate the full count.

You got tossed
and chucked
and worse than that. You only
pocket and roll the
ones you
believe belong there

for once
I'm not going to
recount the particulars
draw you a map
with cartoony graphics
of the major sights

is that me tossing you too?

we won't waste
anymore time with this
one go and look
at all the places you
go back to and
look at

again and
again and
again.

Untitled

Early this afternoon I went in to visit with M. I haven't seen her in a few weeks. We're short a social worker, and I'm not getting as soon or as long to a lot of patients as I would like. I both accept it for what it is, and also feel regret, frustration and a tremendous unmet responsibility.

R., one of the nurses, was there too. We're the same age and have a lot of life circumstances in common. At the same time, we're very different people. Yet I feel an uncommon connection to her, and I think she feels it with me too. Some kind of certain and rare energy, and its a very good and shining energy, but fleeting too. M. was in bed, as she always is. Her mind is intact entirely, though her processing goes very slow. Wait for it, and she will find her way to exactly what she means. Her body is of no use or function anymore, and hasn't been, for 30 years.

She says she is ready to die, and has said so for some time. R. sat in a chair on one side of her, and me in a chair on the other. M. was a little snippy, with a low grade fever, a long visit with a complicated family relationship, achy feet, from the rain she said. We drew her out; R. and I have a teasing routine we do that is both affectionate and brutal; the patients love it. M. joined in, and for a while they both piled on me. It was one of those genuine, funny, present moments. Each of us so fully there. A spontaneous and perfect synergy. It just was. When was the last time you were part of a group of people, where everyone really was having a great time, and being seen, and laughing a true laugh? I wish it weren't so, but I don't think it actually happens that much.

It was one of the most enjoyable moments I've had in months. It was just a pleasure. There is something in both R. and M. that I truly love, and I think for them the same in me, and each other. It was in the room just then, and we got to feast on it.

There was a moment in particular when we were all laughing in surprise and delight at something fairly off-color that R. had said about me that I could feel something else shared and unsaid enter the room. It didn't break the moment, or change it much, but there it was: dress rehearsal. We will be here again, R. on one side of M. and me on the other, and we will be talking, and maybe teasing, and maybe laughing, but M. will busy with her dying. We will sit around and talk over her body, just like this. Today was a promise we'll be here again, and not so long from now.

It didn't sober me or make me reflective or sorry or sad. It was the drinking and the songs and the dirty jokes around the campfire the night before the battle. You don't waste that night worrying over tomorrow. You have a good time. You're more here because you know tomorrow is there. You don't name it or say it to your mates. You all know you all know what will come to pass. That is enough.

It was a good campfire today. It really was.

Photos, One Time Only

I took these three this weekend, and I can't say why, but I wanted them here. No statement or anything. I just like them.

Untitled

I no longer find
you anywhere but
here

A far field
and the last elm tree
we loved the elms
they unlike
any other
showed us up
into their heights
their secret world
of leaves
you were leaving

a thick warm fog comes
and I meet you there
the elm tree
a witness tree
under its branches
I lay you down
on my old soft quilts my
picnic basket
filled with a hundred
old glass jars
of salves, and pastes, and
tinctures you sleep
and I don't know
if you know
we're here

you sleep
and I touch you and
gently put
and rub
and soothe
onto you
these ointments

this one dark with clove and
fennel and red clay
in a circle
on the skin
over your heart

and this one
light and clear with
lavender and mint and
crushed marigold
to your temples

and this one
geranium and
cardamon and
sweet chamomile
in an avocado oil
I touch it
to your lips

I don't know if
you know we're here and
if you wanted me to
love you this way and
when the sun turns the
fog light and then
gone and warms and
melts all these
preparations onto you and
into you and you wake
warm and awake and
under a tree
the last elm tree
I am gone
just a memory
of the smells in your skin and

every string on my
old guitar is broken
save one
and I play it
the sound still good
still true

I love what I love
I can't find you
anywhere

and I love you just the same
where you are and aren't
what you wished
what you don't

when you woke
and how you sleep

a warm fog
and the elm tree
and the red clove clay drying
and dusting
onto your sheets.

Untitled

I go to sleep
smelling of cypress and
basil oils

these are good for your bones
so you say
as you drip them
and then rub them
on the skin of my back
and my neck

when I sleep I
dream of you running six fine long
pins through my
shoulders, hips, and ankles
I'm still living, and you pierce me like a
butterfly for display
on foam core
in a glass and wood box

I understand what it doesn't mean

I am not ruined
for flying
only stilled
and encouraged to be seen
in some detail

and remembered
in the remnant scent on my pillowcase
and the collar of my shirt
left on the floor

and then pressed to your face.

He's Sick, and Maybe Dying

We make a ring around
her and for
awhile I think we think

this is working

this is transcendence. The
children, the beach, the black
ducks diving through the high waves

and sun on all of us
limbs running, flashing, swinging through the air.

The park and the ice cream truck. Our
friend the folk singer
one night only
in an old New England church
we have tea
and watch her
and each other's faces listening
shine, shine, shine.

We see it
life goes on
and we touch our foreheads together
its so hard
and yet joy. Small joy.

Except it doesn't. This is
this part
not the way it is. Scans and results
and the ring cannot hold. Now she is
the point
and we come in to her and
go away and
come in to her again
what kind of a shape is that?

I will tell you:

The shape of a woman
at midnight
lying in her bed
with the wrench of
terrible and airless sobs

and no one there to hear them.

Not Until After

I let some things go and
become wildly
overgrown

my hair
the pile of mail and keys and un-pocketed things
on the radiator, by the door
the lilacs and forsythia
in the small backyard
once a friendly spot
now close, advancing
and shadowy

it isn't like me to neglect

I experiment
in letting it go so far
and then whacking it back
suddenly and

monitoring
for cathartic change
like the widow who cuts off her braid
am I now free?

free of what

and it takes me most of a year
to answer that to you
and to me

and this is my judgment on the topic
from the before
and after
that I got from my
haircut, and
putting away, and pruning:

not until after
can I say what
or whom

these remain the
only keywords for
searching for now

untended and
misplaced and
left and
broken and

the shape of a mouth
making a small hole
and from it
always the terrible sound of

why why why why why.

Untitled

I drove in the dark
cut the headlights
and slept in the car
and I don't know where I am exactly
in these hills
in this desert.

I wake up
across the front seat of
this old late 70's car
that I love with
the push-button radio
landboat for sure

one door wide open
and here I am
with the sun coming up and
turning the hills gold and
the clouds gray, then blue, then rose
then pink
and then all gone. There is not one damn thing
out here

except for these
shallow graves
I scratched out with
my own hands

a neat row of them
patiently there
and I can't remember
for the life of me
who I put in there

does it matter
that I don't
or can't
or won't
know anymore

this day is here and
the only thing left to do is
to walk on out
follow the downgrade
to find the river
or walk the straight line
to intersect a road, and rescue
or top that far hill
to see the way out

none of those
one step back
and we're back to back
all I want is
to walk
with you
however we go and
I won't talk too much
or be bothersome
or ask you

just our steps in time
the peripheral and constant
sight of you
along with me.

A Week's Vacation to the Country in June

It is not a voyage
of self-discovery or a keen
time of reflection or an escape
from a noisy world
to simple things
and truths.

you wake up again
and that is all. This is
what you find

on Monday
a field of fireflies
just as you dreamed it
in February. Now you can say

I had a dream come true.

on Tuesday
you turn on the radio
and at the end of the day
after all day

you remember how or
for the first time

you listen
to the radio.

on Wednesday
tea and rain and
it is enough.

sweet Wednesday.

on Thursday
life's details. A scoop of pondwater
its own small universe. Dragonflies
drying new wings
next to their former selves
molted, discarded.

You see it. You do not miss the point.

Friday comes
with a walk back home. Since Monday
every blackberry bough
is a wedding cascade of white flowers and you
are drenched
in their singular perfume
you are maddened with it
it knows this
and evolved its thorns
to keep the naked and singing
epicureans at bay. Cavort
somewhere else.

But this is Friday
you have come this far

you do not wait to wake up again. You
just go
in the moonlight
to Monday's field
in the blackberry perfume
and a hundred fireflies
are now a thousand
and you can hear
the creek this time and
two bullfrogs
going back and forth and
just as you begin to leave
to go home
from the nearest hill
coyotes
wild with singing

you smile
at no one
your heart
is happy
you know

its not special
or a miracle
or a reward
or a gift
for you

its just itself

and you had the good sense
to come to it.

Seattle

I worked for about a year at Children's Hospital in Seattle early in my career. I worked mostly on the pulmonary service, but floated to other departments and services to get a more diverse array of experiences, since I was there mostly still to learn.

I went in on a Saturday evening, unwillingly. I was still uncertain and inexperienced and spent most of my working time feeling a little uncomfortable. I didn't feel like feeling uncomfortable and uncertain; I wanted my weekend of feeling like myself and not an incompetent. I came in, they were short-staffed, they knew me well enough at that point, and asked if I could float to the ER. Should be slow. Just be back up. I agreed. You're new, and a learner: you don't want to say no, or be unwilling, or balk.

I walked into the ER from the hospital-side doors just as a woman came running in with a small boy in her arms from the outside-side doors. It was a straight shot, no one and nothing inbetween us. She stared at me for just a moment, then dropped to her knees, put her head back and screamed, but not a scream, more of a howl, that faded into almost nothing at the end. Nurses, doctors, everyone then to her, and the small boy. Guerney, monitors, packets of things being ripped open. The attending asking her questions as he works, and her answering, her hands pressed to her mouth. Jake, six years old, rafting on the river, was wearing a life jacket, got tangled in some rope and fell off the back, somehow rope catching in such a way as to hold him face down in the water, how long she could not be sure, she was tending to her other son, two, out in the car now.

The attending glances at me, I understand. I go to the white Bronco pulled up at the ER doors, two year old boy with curly blond hair in the back. I tell him my name through the open window, say I'm a friend, that his mom wants me to babysit him. I open the door, and he's not buckled. There would not have been time. I pick him up and am relieved he comes without protest. I walk in, but keep him facing back over my shoulder. Not to see. I say loudly, I have him, and go into an open bay.

Its relatively quiet. The ventilation system makes a soft whooshing sound, a little bit of a soundscreen. He says mama a few times and points, and it makes me nervous when he does. I have no good answer for that. I distract him with a cup of water, tongue depressors, cotton balls. He is content. He likes the cotton balls and pulls bits of fluff over and over, gets heavy-eyed, falls asleep. Its late, I think we've been in here an hour, or two. He's so heavy in my arms, melted on me. I've never had a kid fall asleep on me before.

The outer curtain opens, then inner. Guerney comes in. Jake, and Jake is dead. A nurse that I like, and Jake's mother. She looks at me and this son whose name I still don't know, looks away. Shock. This is what the nurse does.

She takes Jake's mother by the hand and says, would you like to wash him, and hold him. She doesn't speak or move. The nurse begins to work. She softly narrates herself as she does. Now I am taking his shirt off, I am cutting it off. Now I am taking out the tube in his throat. Now I am taking out the needle in his hand. This does not hurt him. The mother takes a step towards Jake, touches his hand, begins to cry, crawls up on the table with him, wraps her arms around him. The nurse strokes her hair and is quiet. This, for so long. Then Jake's mother gets off the table. She looks at the nurse. I think she sees her now.

The nurse beigns to talk to her as they both clean him. Jake's mother looks like a mother now. She is tidying and readying him with familiarity, ease, and habit. The nurse asks her questions. Where does he go to school. Does he like school. What are his interests, can he write his name yet. She never uses the past tense. Is that right or wrong? I don't know. Jake's mother answers, and smiles a little in the way that people do when they are enjoying talking about their kids.

Eventually Jake's mother comes and takes the two year old from me. He stays asleep, she looks at me and says thank you. She's calm now. I touch her hand, and say you're welcome. Of course. The nurse looks at me and I get it. Go. I leave, they have it from here.

I go dictate my note. I work two more times, pulmonary service, before starting a new job at a different clinic. I mean to pull the chart, to learn more, know more. What happened before, and after. I'm busy tying up loose ends. I never do.

I have kids fall asleep on me all the time now, and I know so intimately that feel. My kids, other people's kids. Every now and then someone's kid, or my own, feels exactly like that kid. Jake's little brother. It isn't because they're two, or blond and curly-haired, or on my left shoulder. Its just their body-feel. My body remembers it. Just that particular weight, tension, softness, heavyness.

Your body remembers anything imprinted on it in that way, I think. Your little lap-dog that you had for eight years. Old lovers. Your wife or husband's arm over your waist, deep under blankets, on the coldest nights in January, light snow just beginning to fall outside, through the streetlights.

Quartet

I am drenched
in seawater it
drips from the ends of
my hair onto your
guitar and onto the worn wood
of the stage and you keep
playing and then she and I are
singing into the old microphone and she
spreads her hands and as
she does he begins in with the
drums and his hair grows wild with
swirly vines and
sweet jasmine flowers and her
palms start pouring out a
stigmata of polished
river stones and you
play and we sing the stones
clatter the stage and he
drums and I'm just
wringing wet and

I am nobody's daughter and I am
singing for once and I am
bending the branches into a
great arch and I am whipping my shins with
the ones that fly free and I am
walking down a long dirt road at
five o'clock wearing that old
dress and meeting you in the
ruins by the two pear trees and
you just play and sing to bring away the
seawater from me

always enough of it to
flood any space that remains and to cool and
numb and antiseptically treat
all that remains
all that calls you

and all that keeps you
here with him
and with her
and with me.

Goodnight

Rain comes
the gutters thunder
I remember
what you said
and what you didn't

rain came then too
and kept us
willing hostage

a Stockholm syndrome
you were so warm

a small rain and
rain again

to love that captor
and a temporary home.

Drinking, Part I

I just knocked a small bottle of pepcid off the medicine cabinet shelf at the exact moment the toilet was in the vigorous part of its flush. Gone, pepcid, gone. More flushing alternated with plungering. No result. I hear the damn thing way down in there.

Who can write after a tragedy like this? You know what's going to happen the first time someone has a #2 in there tomorrow? Did you know this is a one-bathroom house?

Who can write Drinking Part I after a complete apocalyptic disaster like this? This is the kind of shit that derails me. You want to die with my hand in your hand? Fine. I'll write about some June flowers covered in fireflies right afterwards. You want to jam some pepcid in the most essential piece of plumbing in my life?

I'm a well run dry.

Wednesday

This evening I got to a facility late to squeeze in an admission before going home. Tired, hungry, earache. I didn't think I could get an earache anymore. It hurt a surprising amount all day. I go in, review the chart, write a few notes, check in with the nurse. The patient is new there, arrived from the hospital yesterday, a transfer from another nursing home. She was in the hospital just long enough that the other home couldn't keep her bed open. She's 102, and lived at the other place for the past 10 years. Court-appointed guardian signs the DNR and authorizes hospice. So I'm here. Now she's here and an unknown.

Dying. Jaundiced. A double room made a single for her. Busy outside in the hall: dinnertime. No food in here. She hasn't had anything to eat in 2 weeks. No liquids for a couple of days. I see the urine in the catheter bag is tea-colored and scant. Won't be long. Unresponsive. I am so tired. My ear hurts. Her breathing is nice and even, shallow, skin yellowy and smooth, face relaxed. Its very quiet in the room. Window looks out over a field, grey and misty outside, grass is tall, red barn. I crack the window.

She's outlived everyone she knows. One son, predeceased her. Both grandkids too, her siblings, their kids, their grandkids. Everyone. I read the chart, I know. I go bother the nurse for a folding chair, sit next to the bed. Reach under the thin white coverlet and find her hand. Cool. I take a peek: a little bluish I think, hard to see in the fading light and that far under the coverlet. I hold her hand gently layered inbetween both of mine. I look at my watch. If I leave in 8 minutes I'll make it home for O.'s bedtime. I look at her face. So smooth and unblemished and lovely for 102. I close my eyes. I say this, "I know this is not where you are used to, but this is a safe place. Everyone here cares for you and will help you and this is a safe place. My name is Betsy and I'm a friend. I'm holding your hand. Your family loves you. You're safe here. I'm right here with you and its a beautiful evening, cool and misty. Its OK to go when you're ready. I'm so glad to be sitting here with you. I love the feel of your hand in my hand. We're in no hurry, you and me. We can take our time and go when we're ready. Its so peaceful here together. I'm so glad to be here with you." I think for a minute if this is the right thing to say to her. I decide its the truth, and the best I can do.

I mean what I'm saying even though its still true that I am tired, and hungry, and have a crappy earache, and want to go home, and want to make it for O.'s bedtime. Both are true. I close my eyes and put my head, just for a second, against the metal siderails of the bed. It feels good. Then, she dies. I open my eyes, look at my watch, start timing. No respirations. I stand up, still holding her hand, put my ear close to her mouth. No air. I turn my face and look at her. I say this, "Goodbye, ______. Thank you. I wish you love. I wish you peace". I put my hand on her forehead and rest it there for awhile. I go get the nurse and she does the pronouncement. I call and leave a message on the guardian's voicemail at their law office so they know. I leave a message on our report line for the staff. I call and notify the funeral home. It always makes the nursing home staff happy when you do that so they don't have to.

I drive home and can't find anything on the radio that seems right. I try the Decemberists disc focusing on #8 and #14 as recommended by the friend who gave it to me. #8 works, I turn it up loud. #14 I'm still not feeling. I drive too fast on the highway to make up some time. Far left lane the whole way. I wonder if I get pulled over by a cop if they'll cut me some slack because of the hospice badge and lanyard. Would I lie and say I was on the way to an emergency sad situation? I play this out in a few versions the rest of the way home. I get home past bedtime, but O.'s still up. He caught a catnap in the car on an errand with Dad, has a little reserve, I do bedtime and we have a snuggle and its nice. I think about posting on Facebook, BSD is spent, weary and earache, but don't. I tell M. I'm spent, weary and have an earache. He makes me dinner, brings it to me, cleans my plate up. My chest feels full and I can't get it out. We watch a little Cold Mountain, and parts of it are really sad, and I cry a little at the sad parts, and that helps.

I say goodbye, out loud, to her full name as I'm brushing my teeth. I close my eyes for a minute when I say it and stop brushing, water still running. I say it one more time. Goodbye, _____. I feel better. I take ibuprofen and tylenol both for the earache and hope it works, and hope it isn't too terrible for my liver.


Then I do this.


Goodbye, ______.

Untitled

We'll do this and we'll do it together. Peter in third grade: sits in the third row, fourth seat. Has a few dork friends and sits at the lunch table playing D&D with them. Knows if he didn't do that he'd be sitting alone. Has a crush on Carly Pontchartrain, who has long black hair and looks pretty from most angles, until you see her from straight on and realize she isn't. She's a little dumb and a little mean and will always be. You root for her to leave that shit behind, outgrow it, and she won't. He'll want her all through school and she'll torture him and use his pathetic attentions to feed her mean-girl groove. In 15 years they'll meet again at a party in someone's all-white mod college apartment and they'll have sex out in the backseat of her Bronco, which she drives to look tomboy and cool. He'll realize right then looking at her orgasming face in the yellow streetlight that she isn't pretty, and he'll also realize that she is mean and a surprisingly bad lay and wasn't worth any of it. But it will take our guy all the 15 years to get there. Too bad for Peter.

Now we're in eigth grade and we see the beginning of it. Peter figures out he's a little bit funny. He hones the sarcasm and gets in with the cooler kids. He's a survivor. Dorks over there, our guy over here. Gets high B's instead of A's on purpose. Becomes besties with all the girls, hugs them, listens to them, gives them footrubs, attends their sleepovers, never once crosses the line. Totally sluts himself up for them. Professional eunuch. They eat it up. Cool guys use him as a mule to make their contacts with cool girls, now he's got real social capital. Purpose, utility. Does he pay? Yes he does. He falls in love with all those girls, then serves them right up to all these guys who are assholes and makes himself want to puke, and die. Writes bad tortured heartbreak longing poetry that he submits to the school lit magazine under a female pseudonym. See? Still dork.

Still we're not too bad yet. Still garden-variety shit, high school survival shit. Boring shit. College is where we snap to a little more attention. Peter junior year, still doing the same old same old, knows how to help foil in highlights, huge emotional vocabulary, can do empathy in his sleep. Girls still fucking love it. Has gone to fat a little, hygiene a little poor, eunuched all the way. No threat here. Could wear a goddamn maxipad just about. Still funny, girls falling asleep in his lap with him giving headrubs the whole time, hides the boners with baggy I'm-your-brother pants. Total master of the craft.

But uh-oh. There she is. Hi there, Jenny McPhee. She does his whole act, but in reverse. You knew it, right? You've seen this movie. Not a cool girl, not a dork. Kinda pretty, kinda smart, not into the whole stupid thing. They're going to be friends, Jenny and our Peter. He's going to see her and she's going to see him. There's going to be a firestorm of unbelieveable mind-bending authentic interesting powerful energy between them. It is going to be all for real and not one bit stupid, trite, immature, misfired or drippy. She's going to be a little bit ahead of him and after a good year of solid citizen friendship with many ups and a few downs growingly and learningly and strengtheningly resolved he's going to get his chance with Jenny McPhee.

Its not going to be under a big oak tree on a picnic. Its not going to be late at night in her off-campus apartment with the opposite-gender roomies away and bossa nova playing. Its not going to be side-by-side looking at old bootleg Hendrix and Dylan and Guthrie recordings in the independet hard-core record store, and its not going to be on the footbridge having coffees in the chilly air of a completely sparkling golden morning in October after a hard rain the night before.

Its going to be a soft opening. She's going to do and say all the same things except there's going to be a little allowing going on, and he's going to feel it, and know it, and its going to be there inbetween them all the time. Its going to distract the fuck out of both of them. There's our boy, and that's the girl. Not the forever girl, my god, get over that right now. We're not talking about wedding-house-kids, this is not preschool story-time at the local library with Ms. Yvonne. Spit your binkie out and pay attention. This is our Jenny and an allowing and our Peter and if he can do it, if he can unlearn survival and figure out how to put his fucking heart on a stake, how to throw himself completely off the bridge and do the 18 months of rehab to be able to say complicated words like marshmallow again, if he can see that he's going to shed all this who-I-am in a year or two anyway when the larger world fucking schools him and if he can have the presence of mind and shred of courage to do it right fucking now, he's going to make the jump to warp speed and have the first geniune integrated moment of his life, and a fucking great map to follow for the 61 years he's got left to live.

You want to know how it all ends? Of course you do, you whore. He's going to kiss her. He's going to rise mid-way and that's as far as he's going to make it. He's going to bat a dribbling double that is only a double because its takes a hop off the infield and the second base guy can't get his glove up in time. Peter is going to kiss her on the front seat of the car as he's dropping her off and he's going to think that he's thrilling her and that he has time. He has no time. He's going to look a little into her eyes and give one stroke to her hair and announce his intentions: lets do this. He doesn't just do it. Acting on a stage, my friend. Our Jenny is going to feel a profound sadness and sense of loss and is also going to be pissed and let down and angry and hurt and she's going to let it go on for a couple of weeks and then she's going to dump his dumb inauthentic ass and move on completely to the grad student from Prague and have an incredible life. Peter is going to do just fine, but we don't want to read anymore about him either, do we? Girls mature faster than boys, don't you know that?

Oh I'm sorry. Are you disappointed? Want to pick the other ending? Is this not as much fun as you thought it would be? Do you wish you picked something else to read before you turned your light off and went to bed? Its not the best or the worst thing. Why do you always want to root for the poor underdog? Why is it always the evolving, the blooming, the becoming, the fucking personal growth? That's your shit. Your agenda. Go take care of the stink in your own house. Leave our guy alone.

What I Did

I cut
with my kitchen scissors
my neighbor's roses
and peonies
on a cool June night
in the full moon dark. An old
tshirt and no
bra or underwear. Barefoot
stepping carefully
so as not to crunch the
gravel
in the dark. I'm
not caught.

It was only a few. I slept
with them
by my bed and
in the morning I
undressed
unbraided
my hair
and passed by their
long stems so they touched
and brushed
my back
my belly
my hips

I bring them to my
lips and breathe
so heady
so drunk
and loose

was I getting
ready for work
or something I
don't know
or care

my good god.

Process-y Question

or poll, maybe.

I can't predict for sure, but whatever this is I've been digging out for the past year is coming loose. There's a big hole all around it, dirt piled high, and now I'm scooping with my hands around the sides to get in closer and deeper. Past the thick middle part, narrowing now. It starts to give a little in the earth if I give it a good hard shake. I think by the fall I might have it dug out. Maybe.

I have the feeling that I'd like to pull the best parts of the digging thus far together in a small skinny book later this year. How to choose? A vote for the favorites by the readership, all five of you (but treasured five, of course) for a first cut, with final say from me? Make my own initial cut and then put the choices out for comment on inclusion/exclusion to the readership? Go it entirely without input? And since every single thing here is total first and often rough draft, reworking/editing/polishing or leave all as is?

The Boating Party

We leave the shore
in one rowboat and
one canoe

to see the sunset and
take our evening pasttime
something kingly and queenly
Elizabethan
in our outing

we're arrayed in our boats
backs to faces
we come close and then
pass by
a lazy and pretty dance
on this smooth pond
and the sky going to lavenders
and pinks

when from the graying depths
an enormous snapping turtle rises by
our stopped and dripping oar
he considers
what he sees
without breaking surface

his brief pause
allowing us each
a small and variable registration
of his details
of his algae covered back
sharp fanned claws
his long curving neck and
small watchful eye

before his dismissive circling
and then withdrawal
a meted disappearance
to the world below

leaving us with only each other
and a darkening sky
the coming night

and our individual knowings
of what was seen.

Believe It

Make your hands
into a cup around
an invisible
something light and
something round like a
whiffleball its just the
shape we're after here and

now that you have it
just so do what must be done and
rotate
upwards
let the whiffleball go from your mind you
don't need it
from here on out this is
when water starts to pour
through your hands
in just this shape
filling your rounded palms and
streaming through your fingers

your hands
like this and the water
pouring through

this is the shape of love

what's the source and the
vessel of all this water is it
vase or tank or
river without end
you cannot know

but when it pours when it
cascades down your response is
autonomic
your body knows and your
wise hands rise and you
make the shape
to catch it
and the water comes running through

this is why
you so love
my cheek to your cheek with
my breath in your ear and
the soft press of my palms gently and slowly and
the dreaming trace of my fingers
to your face
that I love

I am streaming and
you reach and
make the shape and

I am pouring through.

Too Soon To Call It

Months after you put a
spoonful of cold
sherbet in your mouth was it
raspberry or peach or
both softly together

you're sitting on the rougher
grains of the
sand at the beach where the
ebb tide line of seashells
collect and you pick up one
fistful of them and look
in your hand

there are hundreds of them so
tiny a whole universe in and of
themselves and they are
delicate and
mysterious and
everything the sand and the
sun and time is so
hot and slow and

you remember

that was wonderful

and you are free.

Thursday

This afternoon I went to the three-year-old birthday party of a good friend's son with the kids. It was in a park that meanders through an old pine forest, at the top of a steep embankment leading down to the Merrimack River. The pines are so tall there, and there is no undergrowth, just a rusty coating of old needles, and well-worn knobby roots. An unexpected openness in a hidden and private-feeling place. The late afternoon light was coming down through the tops of the trees. It was so golden, with a warm breeze, every dust mote and gnat lit up and visible.

I don't understand why things become stuck, and what releases them. What is the nature of the small rock in your heart, that rises up into your throat, that you carry deep in your meaty places, so much so that careful palpitation of any sort by another may not even find it? You feel it in yourself. You see it in your friends. You hear it in songs, and see it in images, and dream it, sometimes. It is not your childhood, it is not old griefs. Its a taproot. Don't bother with the three years of therapy to know what your parents did wrong. They did wrong. That was inevitable. What is that goddamn taproot? What is it drinking from, and what is it leafing into?

It was such a nice group of kids there. My own two, and a dozen others. I know all those kids. They're a good group and after the cake the sun dipped low enough that they were all magically backlit for awhile. Every stray hair on every head caught and glowing. And I am standing there among them, occasionally giving someone a push on a swing, helping find a lost daisy ring, picking up and dusting off the knees and behinds of those who met up with one of those knobby roots.

It is a kind and unkind life. I am thinking of good things and things that have made me sad and pained and sometimes they are the same things. Taproot, and small rock. Stuckness. And then, from the woods, amongst all these ordinary kids at a birthday party on a Thursday afternoon with pizza, and cake, and all the usual things, a Buddhist monk walks out in saffron robes. Barefoot and shaven head and the whole thing. It is not a sign. It probably has a straightforward and unmagical explanation. We pass by each other. I smile and say hello, and he returns the greeting. He wanders a little, stops and watches. His expression is unreadable. He leaves. I do not see how he goes.

Hours later and I think of his robes and the way they were almost the same color as the forest floor. The openness and light and intimacy of the place. The way we all stood and watched each other.

I think of my friends and my siblings and how I hope they know how I love them. How I hope they feel how I love them. I feel broken, although only a little. I feel like I want to be forgiven, although I don't know what for, or by whom. I feel like I know who I am and I am alright with that. I feel unworried and untroubled. I feel happy and I also feel like crying as if my heart were broken, although it isn't, and I don't. I feel like I know something that is the truth, although I cannot articulate it in words, even to myself. I feel like so many things are really absurd, and really and truly funny, although I don't think everyone understands it that way. I feel a sense of vastness and emptiness that is not disturbing, but comforting. I feel like there is something that happens when you close your eyes while awake and when you touch another person's hand that is essential. I feel like there is something just out of reach, but coming.

Release.

Different Day

still goddamn it.

seriously.

honest to god.

Goddamn

Goddamn it all to hell.

Pffffffffffft.

Untitled

for DS


I'm so perfectly happy
and heartbroken
all the time. I didn't come here to
love the words. I don't love them. I took
a flat blade and neatly swiped the
oily blue
right off the canvas and then
took off my shirt. I love
snaps more than
buttons now. It is off now.
I bisected
myself
with one long blue line from
forehead to
you know. Lips and belly
were the best. I don't have
any questions
anymore. I think I know a
secret or at least
the thing that makes me
holler out
that is what I'm talking about
when I drive past a
woodchuck
sitting up
alert to danger
in the newly mown median. That is
what I am talking about. Not the words
that I don't love. Put it all away. I
ate a handful of blackberries
this morning and my hair is
darker than I thought
or will ever think. I know
you know. I know
you do. Why else
are we talking to
each other
why else
are you hearing music
all the time why else
do you stop thinking about
anything but the
qualities of
a long blue line?

I Just Can't

I just can't right now. Want to. Can't.

Riding it out.

Untitled

I'm next to you
sitting at the bar in this
locals-only place having
driven all day
in the desert
in summer
and it is so
hot in here and I am
so beer-drunk and
I know from all the signs the
way you love and
hate me
what was it this time
when I put my hand on the
back of your neck when you were
complaining of
sunburn or was it when I told you the
little story about the
drama of the
friends you dislike or was it even
the way I
smelled my beer and
yours too
before drinking and I know now
it isn't magical and I know now it
isn't the satisfaction of your
need and your
yearning and your
forgetting of the feel of
what it is to lust and when I get
off my barstool and go into the
bathroom I know you are
not watching me go and I lean my
head spinning against the
wooden stall door and the five o'clock
light lights up
the water in the
bowl and its so pretty and like a heaven that
I have to say out loud the
divine truth

what I have
what we have

so that when we are back
in the car and I am
still drunk and you are
quiet and driving I will see that
light still and see what it shows

the truth and the
love and hate our own

watermark
ghosting through.

What's to Come

There is no time
just this
a coming night
I looked up
and then showed you
and you looked up
at the fast moving clouds
blue and black and wild
and a star or planet
flashing through
just the once
so thick
layers and pilings
holes rent open
substrates and strata
so huge
such force
sun gone down
its so fast up there
makes me gasp and
sigh and

and here we are
you so slowly
your hand then
on my back
warm and
relaxed and
slides down to rest on
my smallish hip
I can't keep up with
or make sense of
this slow and
that fast and
I am
tipped up and
standing here and
you are here and

my god it
all moves so.

Forgiveness

It has been
so long since
I talked to you about the
stars I was
asleep
or something
and I woke up in the cold
and bright sunshine it was
almost noon in
November and the furniture was
covered in shroud sheets and the
fridge was propped open and
there was antifreeze in
all the toilets you all packed up and
put away and left and somehow
I missed it but
what I wanted to tell you about was
the tight feeling around my
heart walking through the
empty rooms hearing the wind
outside and the feeling that I
shouldn't be there and what
I wanted to tell you what I
wanted to say is that I
opened the door and it was
June out there it was night and June and
there were stars and they all
started sliding out of the
sky and into my hair and I could see
them in the reflection of the
pond my dark face and
wavy hair and
starry crown
they soaked in and I think that
what I wanted to tell you was
what I wanted to say was
when I came out
and sat with you
at breakfast
in the orange morning light
with water lilies
in a guppy bowl
opened

that you could see them.

Untitled

This is what it was like when
you got
to be happy
again

you were walking across the
soccer fields with
your friends at
night in a
rare snowfall there was
snow in your hair and
the sky was
soft and pink
from all the city lights

you were watching the rain out
the window making the new
leaves shake and everything was
so lush and glowing and
raining petals and
it filled your eyes and
made them wider and
you just knew
all the people you loved
loved you

you were sitting on an
old wood floor with your
back on the wall and the
sun was stretched out across it and that
song came on and there was the
distant noise of
people outside and
you were inside by
yourself you were not
expecting anyone anytime soon you
were on wood in the sun
with that song and
doing nothing

what was
that prayer about
all manner of things
will be well.

Offer

Listen, when we are
old and tired of traveling
lets do this
lets come down out of the
mountains and
leave the snows
and the passes
the slippery
ups and downs

for this little adobe house where
you will paint
the bathroom brightest blue and
I will hang a string
of small bare bulbs
across the tiny kitchen

we will pot some herbs
for our sills
together working
in silence
the smell of rosemary and
sages crushed
under our hands
the courtyard
the warm stones
the sunshine
the one bird that
neither of us knows
singing

and your breathing
and my breathing

I am not looking at you.

Unusual

This morning we met and talked about the events of late last week, and the weekend. Standard fare for Monday morning meeting. Two of the nurses took care of a patient late last week who died by bleeding out. I had not heard it described before. Blood, they said, poured out of his superpubic tube, and out his rectum; blood also filled his colostomy bag. There was no way to stop it, even when they knew what was going to happen: no way to stop him from dying this way. The family was distraught. There was an enormous pool of blood on the carpet. The smell, they said, was the worst of it: M. said, there is no worse smell than a gastric bleed. The two nurses washed his body in shaving cream, and scrubbed the spot, and somehow this worked to mask the smell, and the family was able to be with the patient and see him, and not his human body letting go of all its blood from every orifice, from everyplace blood shouldn't be.

The patient had had a number of affairs, apparently, and his wife chose to allow him to die at home, and take care of him. She slept next to his bed with her hand in his hand. She allowed his mistress to come and say goodbye as he was dying.

I went into the bathroom after the meeting to wash my hands. I wash my hands a number of extra times a day lately. I am hoping to avoid swine flu, in addition to the usual things I'm trying to avoid. I cried a little when I washed my hands. No sound or rolling tears, just a fullness in my eyes and throat. It was done by the time I dried my hands.

Why people do what they do. Such mercy.

Untitled

You lay it down
on a little nest of
old sweaty towels
here
on the floor of
the gym and
all the gyms
you've flickered in and
out of all these years. You
make it a nest as
if it were your
own baby bird
naked and blind. This is
where and when
you set it down this
is when you laid it down this
is when you at long last put
it to rest
tucked it in
let it be. You could no more have
predicted this than you
can predict when you will be
in a parking lot
getting into your newish car
at the bottom of a slope
looking through a few trees
at an old mill pond
with a few ducks
in springtime
not knowing
you are running out of time
to look at those ducks
because you'll be
dead in three days. This
is the end
of all that you
resist. Your resistance. This is
the moment in
your string of days
some of them
in gyms and one of them
with ducks
that you understand what to
love and what to
let go.

For You

I was eight
or seven
or six
I was at the airport
in a red plastic seat
next to my grandmother
with an awkward haircut
for a girl
and a white wool cardigan
I hated
and my cheap little
orange suitcase
closed with a yellow
twist tie
waiting to be
returned home
I don't need to tell you
about what was going wrong
back at home
and why I was with
my grandmother
you know that already
from the haircut
and the sweater
and the twist tie

my grandmother began
to stroke my arm
gently she
pushed my sleeve up and
did that
her large warm hand
on my skinny little arm
it doesn't matter
when she stopped
or what happens next

and I was no one
of course
all of us in those
red plastic seats
at the same time
all of us
all at once
awaiting
repatriation
another chance for
peace in the homeland

I recognize you now
when I see you
thirty eight
or seven
or six
your remember your suitcase
pillowcase
plastic bags

you still love
the accidental touch too
the friend you have who
sometimes touches your face when
she hugs
the hairdresser who
pulls the ends of your hair
gently
to see if everything is even
when your get the nurse practitioner
instead of the doctor
and she bows her head in close
to your heart and
places her hand
on your bare back
when she listens to your chest

phantoms of the love you got
in the airport
before being sent back

only in my 30's
did I come to like orange again.

Tell Me About Your Suffering

I participated in a Buddhist exercise at the end of last year. In the exercise I sat across from a woman I didn't know, both of us wearing name tags. I said to her, Tell me about your suffering. And I listened without saying a single thing until she stopped speaking. And then I repeated the statement. Tell me about your suffering. More speaking, trailing off, eventually, into quiet. Repeat. It was a long time until she was done. We reversed roles, and it was a long time until I was done, even though if you'd asked me if I had much suffering to discuss, I would have said, and in many ways still think, Hell no.

Today I was with a patient who is 94 and declining and very depressed and who has been waiting to die since her husband died 28 years ago. She sat there in front of her lunch tray, untouched, head down, eyes down, hands in her lap, abandoned by her adult children, who said their goodbyes a year ago and will come no more. I call them after I visit her and they speak to me; they do not mind hearing about her, or how she is. But she is gone to them. They cannot wait anymore for her to die, so she is somehow dead to them already. She has a colostomy, she is in pain, she refuses pain medication, she wants to be dead, and cannot get it accomplished.

I am here to be present with her suffering. To see it fully. To somehow hear all of it, until there is no more to say, even if she does not speak. I sit next to her and talk to her a little bit. She likes strawberry ice cream. Does she want some now? I can get some for you. No response. She used to love the beach: I tell her about the record-breaking heat yesterday, and everyone so unseasoned and pale in their bathing suits trying to swim in the 45 degree Atlantic yesterday. Summer and not summer. No response. How can I get there? How can I get to where she is, to be present with her, to be witness and in that way share her experience? How can I know her suffering? That is the only real comfort I can offer.

I stop talking and sit and its a very long time. I stop trying to think of things which is not easy for me: I'm always thinking of a lot of things, and hatching plans. For whatever reason, I am compelled to lean towards her. I do. Then I feel like leaning a little further, and I do. Eventually, in this manner, my forehead is touching her forehead, and we both have our eyes closed. Very light. I say her name out loud, just once. We keep touching foreheads. We sit like that for a long time. I have moments where I feel weird about it. Mostly it feels right. I am not totally sure what I'm doing.

She breaks contact and I look up and she is looking at me. I look back and I feel like I can see an enormous amount in her eyes, and expression. I think I can see some of what her suffering is. Her own suffering. She says, thank you. I smile, I put my hand on her hand, I don't say anything. She closes her eyes and says, I want to go to bed. I get the aide, and he puts her to bed.

I get up and go to write my note. I have a moment on my way to the nurses' station where I cannot fathom how I got to this moment. Its just me. Internally I think I'm more or less the same person I've been since I was 16. Its just me in here. I'm not walking around thinking I'm a healer or having a calling or earning a halo or being better than you and you and you or doing God's work or being of service or anything. I'm just trying to essentially to be honest and keep it a little real, and somehow adapting that to whatever the situation presents. I'm just trying to be myself. My best self. This was the situation: is this how you be honest, is this how you keep it real, keep it straight and true?

I do not know.

Untitled

You leave and
drive down a gravel road that is
dusty and well-tended this year not
rutted like last year and it curves a little this
way and that just back from the
dunes and up against the great
salt marsh and it is a
scorcher today it is a
record-breaker for April so hot and so
like something from another land a different part of
the world this anomaly of hot and the mostly
still-bare trees and the brownish
marsh still in spring ferment still in
the beginning of things it looks
like Kenya or the outback or a surprisingly
dry part of Colorado and the dust comes up
in plumes around you and what is it you feel what is
it this unease maybe
heartbreak maybe pain maybe
nothing maybe just the
mistaken notion from the
funny visuals telling your
brain that you are
far from home
maybe only the
oddity of the day and when you come
around the corner
and are faced with
this undulating bright green grassy hill
why is it you suddenly
feel like crying
you just wish there was some way to
more than look
you want to run a pair of giant hands over and
feel the feel of those swells and contours
not a plain round hill but a little
arrangement of hills so green and soft and the
grass just long enough now to
wave a little in the breeze and it shines in the
sun and you don't want to look at it or
run through it or
lie in it you
want to be it
want to get from
here
to there
and then you are past it but
thinking of it and feeling
all day
for the rest of the day
the choke of the crying you
didn't do and the wanting
to just be
those pretty green grass hills.