Posts for June 13, 2017 (page 5)

She’s at that age
random aches
pains
She doesn’t ask for help much 
This keeps me young,
she says

Her son, 28
light
can pivot
with his legs
Otherwise
she lifts him

10,222 days and counting
she has taken the day shift
bathes him
dresses him
laughs with him
cries with him
holds his hand through
countless
doctor visits

10,222 days and counting
she has taking the night watch
chasing away
bad dreams
changing sheets

Her own sickness
could not stop
the care
nor dim
the light
speak to her
and see
Jesus
in her eyes

I want to hear what He says
when she’s caught up
in glory
Well done
my good and faithful servant
Well done

Right, right, left
right, right, enter
into a skinny country lane
The family wagon inches along
bump by bump under the canopy of trees
jarring sharp mindfulness  

Others have traversed this pea gravel
with its muddy canyons
bits of broken pavement
bringing a range of history
On every occasion the tired bumpy drive welcomes
the voyager and invites her story to come along  

She allows each abrupt thump
to bounce another worry from her 

Soon a thousand cares once trapped by tension’s spun web
spring loose from sticky chaos
Thoughts transition free as a breezy
hammock stretched between two trees  

Rest, renewal, retreat
and every single mile traveled before and after that
is part of her story—
the smooth course
rocky places
nooks and crannies of her murky depths
and her shattered fragments—
all part of the same road  

Narrow is the way
full of mishaps and missteps
She drives on little by little with the occasional
stop to stretch out in a hammock

(someone said ink was the inventor
of philosophy which was the inventor
of nature)

At the earliness of the hour
as a solitary fixture of the place
words come at a snail’s pace
the accidental rhyme
the slanting slope of line
hand to pen, pen to paper
mystery of a runaway mind

It brings to mind a question:
how do you know nature?
in the backgroud dog bark 
cooing of mourning dove and
the memory of professor basho
who in reluctant stir of class
looked back to the blackboard
to find the chalk and write:
nature doesn’t know itself
so how could we?

neon mind

dreams of galaxies

colliding

flash crash and burn

the story never told

Do your past bodies 

wait for your new bodies 

to walk into themselves

before saying This is me—

I’m the yesterday-you who

wanted and tried to walk away.”

See, I told you I would catch up. 

 WS Merwin’s “My Other Dark”  Garden Time

The coin lands on heads.
A spot near the store’s door frees up
as you pull into the parking lot.
No one is angry and nothing breaks.
Fun still glows like a coal
in your child’s chest
as her energy settles down for a nap.

Today you are twenty four 
and as you would like it to be known
have reached the age where no one cares
if you are sick and tired.  

Today you are twenty four 
and acid has fixed you in ways it could 
fix me too, if I would let it, 
you told me on the stoop of your 
front porch underneath the sadness
of a strawberry moon. 

Today you are twenty four 
and we will tie dye t-shirts and eat 
ice cream on me, to celebrate
having made it this far. 

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