Posts for June 18, 2019 (page 2)

a heart is the dark moon 
floatinf in a still sea 

birds ask questions
pulling at loose threads
simple stillness broken
like a book long closed

a heart is a broken bell
frozen in the night

phoebe wonders aloud
“why do you cry?”
tugging at some long forgotten memory
like peroxide on a wound 

Honey comb lips, the warm embrace of heaven.
You are so sweet my lover, wait for me in the clouds.
Watch me from above.
I will remember you by your soft spoken words, and the hum of the buzz as you fly away.

Ode to a particular girl not so far away 
ode to a funny thing drifting day to day
from notes to things and love and rings made of paper clips
laughing knowing having going 
in on an acid trip
i sat alone pizza no phone cause we’re back in the day
no childhood romance a victim of circumstance Darwinian advance etc don’t have a chance
ode to a childhood crush.  
Life wouldn’t have  been so grey

Toe stubbed
against
overused bed frame.

Elbow smashed
along
marble sink.

Newfound hips
crashed along
thin drywall.

Bruised heart
battered along 
what used to be
yours.

what if

there is a redemption story

that can overcome the evils of

the world–

that could look away from judgement,

say no to shame

and choose love?

what if love really wins?

When Claudia, in the final
stages, described the smell
of bone dust I could feel the drill
bit entering her
skull. Her joy: listening for a barn
owl;  watching nuthatches
at the birdfeeder & when the scarlet
tanager swooped in—a rare treat—she forgot
the unbroken pain. Her daybed
was positioned just so she could gaze
at the Richmond as it rushed by.  She wrote, 
Today I can move the arm just
enough to hold a pen. So

2
happy to be near my river.
I drive my chipped-up
green pickup on gravel that
like a caterpillar on a wet
branch, hugs the narrow
finger of the Big Sandy where
old chrome & yellow kitchen
chairs sit smack
dab in the river which is beginning
to rise. I imagine the favorite
perch of a husband
& wife who bait-fished for blue
gill & yellow perch & after
they died the chairs became
a shrine like a grave
or a secret spot to let
your mind drift with
the rumbling water, fancy
free & with no cares. The first time

3
I saw a river
otter swimming in full
view, I almost passed
out from joy. It was in a cut
& run, count your losses, grovel-
for-half-the-401K kind
of life, but I was turning
away from it, though
still acting out. I remember
so little about the petty
actions of divorce, rancor
has long lifted
from my body. From that slice
of time, the ecstasy
of meeting an otter remains
intact. I feel her little
pips & bleats in my cells
& clavicles. Such a vision
as she glided
away from me on the mighty
Nisqually, water trailing
behind like a wedding veil.

a profane waiting room;
it really is the waiting
that kills you

I always thought getting older would make me wiser. Turns out  I’m just as lost as I was at 18. A few years and a thousand miles don’t mean anything. I’ve changed but my problems have stayed the same. No amount of running can keep them from haunting me.

Her first boyfriend was a
scientist while she was an
English major
And wasn’t that most hare-brained
Predicament
She ever found herself in!

But they both got
Something from it –
He learned that using exclamation marks
Can help you appear excited
Even when you’re not!
And she learned that
What happens
In quantum mechanics
Where the observation of a thing
Changes the thing’s behavior,
Also applied to her.

Places that don’t get much rain
don’t much appeal to me.
It’s not that I don’t believe a
land can’t be lush without it.

I know better. I just need the change
in pressure, the varieties of clouds
in the sky. I’ve been around enough
to know we don’t need all the rain

all the time to grow. It’s that I’m partial
to how it cleanses things, how it forces
some of us inside, and invites others
to skip into the streets and dance together.