The wheel turns
and
The Universe brings change,
a constant.
The wheel turns
moving down and
everything is lost to time.
The wheel turns
moving up and
offers a moment of clarity.
The center
is always stable.
The center
is within us.
one year ago today i waited in the airport for six hours trying to see you.
the storm shut me down, so i drove ninety two miles
at midnight to catch a six am flight from a different city
to see the same person, to see you.
four days later you told me we couldn’t be together anymore
so i went home and tried to catch up on sleep
but sleep is a quick devil and no one is fast enough to get those restless nights back
not even you, not even me
today i’m back at the airport, only forty-five minutes this time
i haven’t been back since the first stanza but nothing has changed
same terminal, same gate, probably the same plane
new person, new city, “new me”
With a door that locks
So no one can interrupt me
With windows that shut
So I can ignore the world
With a crocodile-filled moat
So I can deal with transgressors
With soundproofing
So no one can hear my screams
With a cozy chaise
So I can curl up and weep
With a wet bar
So I can lubricate my life
With glass-fronted shelves
So I can keep my dreams dust free
With a strong cabinet
So I can secure my unrealized hopes
With a large cage
So I can keep my goals restrained
With a reading lamp
So I can soothe my broken heart
With a desk
So I can write out my soul
With a large hat rack
So I can focus on just being me
Being honest with myself
I think we could survive
because all the pain I’m grappling with
comes from somewhere else.
I give and give and give some more
to get so little in return
so I couldn’t help but break apart
when you had to break away.
I don’t know if that means we
could come back together just like that.
I’d like to think I’d be able to
but I won’t let myself be weak.
There may be no recovery
for the bullets we exchanged
or the sacrifices required
to carry on.
I’m sorry but in this time of survival
I had to throw a lot of things away,
cards and notes, all of it really,
including our precious little purple book
passed back and forth,
a diary of our romance,
because the reality I need to prepare for
can’t get hung up on these heart-traps.
Just seems we failed to live up
to the beauty of the idea,
a damn shame for the final page;
a question of eternity.
All of it we could have again
if all the forces line up right.
If my argument was
that love would find a way,
what stops you from reflecting that
back upon my forgiveness?
Maybe my fight
is the answer to our riddle?
But first I have to make you prove your love
to me, and that’s where you will fail.
If I know you, you’ll get caught
on the best sides of me I showed,
assuming they’ll still be there, and they are
but they’ll be hiding away from you.
I won’t be the gentleman you came to know.
You’ll have to bring him back to life.
You won’t know how, because you weren’t wrong in this
and neither am I, a true tragedy.
And that’s why the final entry in our little purple book
is my conviction, passing it to the trash.
we decided to face our abandonment and do something about it.
Granted, we were oversize & already long in the tooth, but not entirely at fault,
at least for getting old. Time & again you would approach the two of us, as if
to assess our potential to light up your evening meal in a savory soup or roasted
in a 425˚ oven. Obviously not aware that sweet potatoes are hypersensitive
creatures, you couldn’t know that your oft-repeated remark, ‘the thought doesn’t
do a thing for me’ — as you put us back in the hand-thrown bowl with its earthy
glaze job — would haunt us the whole time you were away.
So while you were gone & the kid next door came every day to take care of the
cats, administer prednisone to the one with bronchitis, empty the litter box, keep
the bird feeders filled & goldfish fed – ignoring us, of course – the situation really
got under our skin & late one night, to progressive jazz on the the classical music
station, we sprouted. In tandem, pace Rilke, four pale green spears thrust up in
the dark, leaning ever so slightly toward each other. When morning came we
altered our angle in order to soak up light from the kitchen window.
When you finally returned you greeted our accomplishment with astonishment,
taking us up in your fingers to marvel at minute tendrils unraveling from our
lumpy selves. Will she write a poem about us, we wondered. She paints weird
stuff: maybe we’ll end up in a watercolor and hang in a show. Exuberant Tubers
she could call it. Or why not plant us each in a pot on the deck, so two more
vines can join the others already strangling the place?
Instead, you chose the easy way out: found your phone and snapped a photo.
Then you cut us up & dropped us on the compost pile.
Poetry is not Alone in Gardens of the Night
I dreamed you in a painting, only
colors of this world could not contain
nor brushes bleed perimeters, refrains
return you to my rhyming arms—lonely
lines that transit mem’ry of your waist
like halfmoon bodies lost—their gravity
eclipsed by what they cannot feel or feed.
I have to know: Can other artists taste
you in the flesh? Can other artists touch
the aura without astral planes we flew?
Can other artists burn the cosmic roux
where you and I are stirring overmuch?
Can all we are and all we yet may be
be hung upon a wall, the world to see?
LOOKING BACK
“I need to see a photo I.D.”
she demanded.
So, I handed my driver’s
license to the clerk,
a large woman in her late
forties with graying hair
pulled back tight into
a long ponytail.
She studied the photo,
glanced up at me, checked
the photo again and
finally concluded, “Yelp,
that’s you alright.”
“Unfortunately.” I joked.
“Oh. you’re a good looking
man,” she lied.
“I used to be,” I replied. Then
as I turned to go she whispered,
“I used to be skinny,”
a far away look in her eyes…
Her middle name is Rose
She asks me may I take your drink order?
Sweet peach tea I answer.
Do you know what you want to eat
or should I come back?
I’m reading I tell her.
There is much to read she says.
I’ll bring your tea right out.
I do not tell her that I am reading her.
It is her eyes that captured me.
The color is not important.
The light in them is magnetic;
I see so many women without the light
I see in hers
& I want her to walk away
& return.
I want to know whether the light returns,
shimmers like sunrise
on Lake Cumberland.
The light within
has remained,
returning in her eyes
& she moves beside me;
to a point where her eyes are hidden.
I order.
Are you tattooed all over I ask?
She moves across from me, sliding into the bench.
I only have two she puts her left hand
over her right shoulder.
One is my grandmother’s name
& the other is my middle name, Rose.
There once was a dog named Tech.
His trainer could not keep him in check.
On the field he would charge
to applause writ large
for fetching the bat in a sec.
Two persons on a porch
a limp fan whistles on high
The woman paints a field of purple asters
a body gone soft beneath a tree of golden lamps
The man stares at a book, blind
to the black wave pulling her under
the old damage, poison
dripping from a broken seal
She places water, a shiny ribbon
Cows moo across river
She feathers in a dark scarf plummeting through blue
The low pitch of a crow pollutes the quiet
A red gate, a lime bush, a sign
that pledges night and stars ahead
~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem, “The Witness”
