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.