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.