Posts for June 2, 2017

They’ve bloomed just now;
Now-now: June 2, 2017.
I noticed at 6:51 AM.
I feel kinship of a kind.
Only I am waiting
To gather the wherewithal
To will myself to flower,
Once again,
After many a withering season.

There is no harm in hitting dirt bottom.
You analyze or memorize what’s known.
There is rock stillness, knowing past the heart.
I think it must be soul that we describe
when we attach a word to what we feel
is true. It doesn’t move, earth caught within
its orbit, where unknowns are measured null
and infinite, to match whatever clue
connects to fact, the elegance of math
that doesn’t lie while telling partial truth.  

You think you know a cat, and so you name
her Pitch. She speaks to you, but only what
you give her: purring for your hand along
her back. You hear the way you know an infant’s
needs. You did not teach her purr—that came
from want fulfilled. Beyond that hunger lies
a purpose we can’t fathom, reason why
we’re here. Beneath the wave, the water’s growl
is tame but power flips us over, sets
the moon in turbulence, because it can.  

Still, I would like to act, to use fake blood
and saline tears. You’d know that when you fall,
a distilled drama rises, recognized
as part reality, without the pain.
That mutant truth is close as anything
we say, connected to the death we fear
to fear. We name it soul, create a realm
of living to infinity, unknown.
We taste the mountain in the sand, the sky
in absent air, the power of a self.

There is no harm in hitting dirt bottom.
You analyze or memorize what’s known.
There is rock stillness, knowing past the heart.
I think it must be soul that we describe
when we attach a word to what we feel
is true. It doesn’t move, earth caught within
its orbit, where unknowns are measured null
and infinite, to match whatever clue
connects to fact, the elegance of math
that doesn’t lie while telling partial truth.  

You think you know a cat, and so you name
her Pitch. She speaks to you, but only what
you give her: purring for your hand along
her back. You hear the way you know an infant’s
needs. You did not teach her purr—that came
from want fulfilled. Beyond that hunger lies
a purpose we can’t fathom, reason why
we’re here. Beneath the wave, the water’s growl
is tame but power flips us over, sets
the moon in turbulence, because it can.  

Still, I would like to act, to use fake blood
and saline tears. You’d know that when you fall,
a distilled drama rises, recognized
as part reality, without the pain.
That mutant truth is close as anything
we say, connected to the death we fear
to fear. We name it soul, create a realm
of living to infinity, unknown.
We taste the mountain in the sand, the sky
in absent air, the power of a self.

driveways around these parts
do double duty as horse paths–
the joys of living close to kin
who often struggle to be kind;

and so, hand raised to wave from horseback, genteel
he asks “are you doing anything?” in the way
you ask when you want 
the answer to be “no, not at all, how can I help you”
and I answer “no, not at all, how can I help you”
because that is who this nephew is

we go behind my house, his plan
almost as if it was formulated the twentieth time
around the hay bottom today
and I know my role: to capture,
though I know not what I am looking for
and so I point the camera
trail his trail twice round
horse and him in frame like asked
and present my work to him

“good”
with a pause “but”
“do you think you can film it sideways and
make him bigger
so you can see his gate better”
and intuitively I know exactly what to do
with the camera
trail his trail twice round
again
fingers pinching and spreading
steady rotating
to make a product that elicits “great,
his gate is really getting better”

but then, “do you think you could clip it
just so it is the second time around because
you could edit it so much faster than I could” and so
back and forth we go,
question and answer, establishing markers
to delineate the “great” from the “good” 
until he has the clip he can smile at
while I stand
aware of what I did, but
ignorant of what I made
like he and I spoke two different languages

so to fill the silence, my hand reached
for the horse’s nose, to tickle a spot underneath the bridle
and then to pet a cropped part of his mane
dipping my feet in
a vocabulary he had taught me as a child
while my uncle watched himself
and for the first time my eyes actually saw
the beauty of this horse’s coat 

“they call it a bay” he said 
and I replied “it reminds me of cherry wood”
“I see mahogany” he replied, and added
“it’s a shame–no matter what I do,
the camera can’t capture how pretty his coat is”
and I said “I know”

it was only after he rode away
and my eyes could no longer dance on
the fine grain of that pelt
that I realized so many things in my life
are rich, and ineffable,
like mahogany

the man across from me has his hand on his lap
below the front of his jacket. he is wittling something, it seems
      yes, something intricate and hidden.

highway street lamps
curve hills over black tar
and painted stripes

two rows of sepia dots
hovering dark pavement
like roller coaster tracks

with worn-out bodies
decades old and
somehow unrotten

“You don’t sound like you’re from here”
You sound like Nowhere
A place I’ve heard of
But didn’t think people came from

Like Mars, Venus, or the Virgin Islands

The person at the table behind me
is doing that thing
that people do
when they are nervous,
where their knee bounces
over and over
very quickly.

The table where she is sitting
is covered
in a draping blue,
plastic tablecloth
that falls across her lap
so that each time her leg leaps
it scrapes across the fabric
making a crinkling noise
similar to the zip, zop sound
that parachute pants made in the 80s,
but faster,
to mimic the intensity
of her anxiety.

When I was growing up,
the pastor’s son
used to say,
that if your knee bounced like that
you must be thinking
about sex.

-Maggie Brewer

She’s almost 99, but thinks this is the year she’ll be a centenarian.
The cracker crumbs she keeps in napkins are akin
to the winding down shadows of the inevitable dawn.
Her dignity bends to meet the Earth,
arcing her aching and withered bones.
Her teeth are loose; her smile the saddest I’ve ever known.
She was an artist, a fashion illustrator, a seamstress,
a dreamer and doer, a daughter, a sister, a wife and mother.
Now, she waits for death to barrel through the door.
The dementia drowns out her memories of it all.
These cracker crumbs in a napkin are the only thing
she has to hold onto in this fragile life.
Her shrinking humanity, a shroud of tears–
this dismissal, bound and knitted into time’s turning gears.
This confinement, this bed, a booth whose aperture is thinning,
this loneliness, the startle, corrupt with veins flashing worms
and titanic sinkers, all of this and more–
our nature, a vacuum, tooth and claw, the fade seizing the trace–
we all will lose the war.
(c) Edelweiss Meadows-Millstone

As we linger on the back patio,
I read you headlines from my phone.
You roll your eyes. You say you believe
in systems, the strength of molecules,

of self-correcting patterns. You believe
nature learns. You say you don’t see
disaster in subtle changes in temperature
and attitudes. But all I can think about

is the rust colored bruise left behind
on the porch swing from a mosquito
you swatted between words. A smear.
I think about the same color of molten glass,

how balls of potential emerge from a furnace
soft, yielding to the glassblower’s celestial breath.
An orb expands, takes shape at the end
of the blowpipe, and the glassblower

turns his tool in his hands. I wonder if he
considers the weight of fragile gifts,
or molecules, or systems, or the hands
that will hold his creation once it cools.