Untitled

My knees hit the ground I feel
warm grass and dark damp cool earth pressing
in through my jeans, contacting
my skin and nerves

I push my sleeves up, unclasp, slip off
a silver bracelet. I rest it on the ground and
its beautiful shining in the dirt. You're patient. Swimming quiet and then
surfacing to look at me with round dark eyes
and silent questions, like a harbor seal
watching the shore
in a wintry ocean.

What am I doing here?
I take a breath and fill myself with air as much of it as I can stand.
I think to myself, on the long exhale,
of a few road trips with friends
who were terrible drivers
and who spun us out into the median strips of a couple of different
highways. I was angry.
I was scared.
We never tell those stories.
We drove away.

I'm alive. Its peacetime.

Its also
tumult, entitlement, despots, hubris, torpor, and revenge

despite all this I'm so naked. I'm so free. I'm transcendent
here in your backyard.
I reach for and gently take
your ankles
in my hands
You allow it.

I bow my head and feel your ankles in my hands
I make up the best small prayer I can think of. I say it. I mean it.
I don't take it back when you hate it.

I cup your heels, I hold them and expand into the
miracle of your feet. It takes time.
I lift and lower them slowly in a
yellow kitchen bucket, full of
soapy water in the bright sunshine, I wash your feet with my hands

your backyard is drenched in a sweet hay smell from
the slanting sun's
rosegold light on the dry grass. I pick up a clean
grey linen towel, warm from the sun, from a patch of
wildflowers
in the grass
forget-me-nots
pretty blue.

I dry your feet with a loving rub. You are pleased. You
say and I say
thank you.

Later on, this is what I think:

I think you may be naked and free.
I think you may be praying.
I think you may be warm and dark and damp and cool
to the touch.

I think you may be alive, in peacetime.

Wyoming

By Wyoming, there were long shadows
and a steady driving wind, the kind
that permanently bends trees
changes the ways the
locals go about their chores, and days, and fills your
hair with grit, right down to the roots. I'm grateful though
for Wyoming
and all the other states in between us
Once we decided
we were through
I felt better being able to look through
my old Rand McNally
and know Wyoming
and its ill wind
and Idaho
with its undistinguished anything
and Michigan
with its empty lots, full of weeds, broken glass, and
rusty things
were strung together like ugly beads on a cheap elastic
interstate thread
a buffering bracelet
I could snap
to wake back up, if I started to drift, go hazy
thinking about the long shadows
we made
in Wyoming
where we stood side by side
watching the cattle cars roll by on the tracks
your arm around me
my face in your chest
that wind
drawing tears from our eyes
when I said goodbye to you
and you to me
to our failures, and hurts, and stunted dreams
there's a whole country
between us now
Wyoming
is intangible
wind
and shadows
the map says
its so
and its just as well.

45

PI Light

Turning Home

Atlantic, March

Merrimack