Posts for June 12, 2019 (page 7)

I have worn too long 
This mantle of
Waiting

Weighted and pale
Enveloping into invisibleness.
I never learned who I really was.

I am done with 
Disco ball tears
And chandeliers

And hung up my 
Suit of lights.

Lock it away in a museum 
For the gawkers to
Contemplate

I don’t want it anymore.

I am old,
I want to rest.
I can’t remember why
I started this.

All I sacrificed –
Never enough.
Now my children 
On that altar burn

And what was it for?

What was it for?

The final curtain call
The lights go out.
Singer sits in his own silence.

No one remembers 
I was here.

my son’s first winter away
grandfather’s coat
keeps him warm

Walking back down to the convenience store

For some smokes and a bag of ice

I feel so isolated, so alone

Nobody but me, it seems

Is excited about the Women’s World Cup

At lunch, I made special sure that I recorded the game

Home last night for 30 seconds

Just long enough to crack a cold beer

And push “Play”

Oh, our young ladies shown bright last night

13-0 over Thailand (a new record)

The work, the skill, that extra pass

That tore the Thai defense into tiny pieces, all alone

Beautiful

I asked the clerk and the Chinese spy

I asked two random customers

All looked at me with the compassionate smirk

Reserved for the retarded

Sunday

Chile

Noon

If I went to church I would skip it

If there’s chores to be done I will vanish

Guests will consider me rude

Share in this communion but if not

I, only one, will be there

She knew how to make us kids laugh.
Always smiling, cracking jokes, buying treats,
taking us on adventures.
Aunt Peggy had no children of her own.
She gave her love to us.

She knew how to love,
even if we were
just nieces and nephews.

I think someone must have loved her once.

She dated a man the year I turned eleven.
For a time, she thought she could teach him.
Being cruel, he dumped her during Thanksgiving dinner.
We heard the whole thing from the kid’s table.

Birthdays, Christmas, summer break–all are filled
with memories of Aunt Peggy–
smiles and hugs and kisses and
wisdom on how to navigate this muddy rock
we call home.

Last September, she died.

Aunt Peggy was crossing at the light, cake in hand for my graduation,
when a college girl made an illegal turn and ran her over.
The street was a smear of blood and guts and buttercream icing.

The police report says the driver reached Aunt Peggy
just before she died.
The report records her final words: 

I never gave up. 

Plastic white bag flails
against a wire fence. The
field stretches beyond.

Bushwhacker, the very sound curls my lip.
Sneers are of little use, but going to war
Speeds the process, could halt hateful ruin.
Listen to my tale tell of hate and victory.  

Destruction planned for early morning
Before I could be standing guard, armed.                          
Oh, not with rifle or less, with a cell phone
Direct to congressional super gods, so they 
thought. both congressmen and tree killers.

With screech and threat, I stood in front
of a baby American Chestnut, so rare, the
Feds even have a forest protection clause.
County dared to park whacker monster’s
Giant carcass on a corner of my farm.  

Some things are so rare, so precious God
Expects us to lay down timid thought and fight.
So fight I did. The operator was told impolitely,
With no kindness about his lineage and his notion,
My tree was not subject to his whacker motion.  

Not today, not tomorrow, not ever, I say.
He, huge surprise, listened! He up and left.
Best I know that man and machine never
Has been known to come back Colville way.  

Chestnuts may never rise again, disease
Being powerful as it is. This one still lives
Don’t ask me why, protection, care maybe.
It falls on me to work and save one tree.

Our nascent potential
like a dandelion trapped in amber
of memory.
Unuttered whispers
carnival gypsy crystal ball future
that fades
with the warm setting suns.
The echo
from our sister universe
where we were one
still lingers
as the yellow beams
slowly fade to dusk. 

I am me
watching lorelai gilmore
watch barbra streisand
in The Way We Were

and you
are every man
who has had a good thing going
and ruined it.

Birds sing your rising,
a crescendo of light worship
pulls you over the rim, 
joyous sound spreads across the land
before your arrival,
perhaps even across stretches of ocean.
Fish and sea creatures reach the surface
to dance in the turn of the earth.

Once we waited on the beach in silence,
waiting for you at Kumukahi,
the eastern most point on Hawaii,
where two forces of ocean converge,
we climbed over rocks in semi-dark to greet you,
the moon was still paper-thin
on the edge between sky and sea.
There, with toes in sand,
a brief down-pour of fat drops of rain,
a pod of dolphins like shadows glistened across waves,
we chanted, welcoming a flicker of gold-orange,
like a pathway, from the horizon to the shore where we stood. 
We embraced each other as you rose,
our eyes wide and bright with rapture
reflected you.

We can’t go back, can we,
to easy lightness.  Hand
floating out the car window,
cupping the air currents.  Joy
so reachable, before

his devout white collar,
his too handsome face
full of kind concern.
Comfort quoted from scripture,
while his eyes offered
more and more.  Before,

conversations turned to flirt,
skirted the subject of desire,
allowed youthful fantasies
to ripen.  Before

his visits stopped,
temptation
the hinted-at reason; blame
coiled around a heart.
Before,

the dragging weight
of secret shame.  Hand
slapped down.