Posts for June 23, 2019 (page 4)

I surrender to the pale sunlight slipping through the blinds

weighed down beneath a quilt damp with night sweats

a pillow made from my father’s shirt     a hangover from

heart pills and hip pains     three trips to the toilet     an hour

of snooze buttons     dreams comparing the prices of

firearms and impossibly tall ladders     stomach pain from

the guilt that blooms every time I try to walk back a fuck-up

my youngest shifts beside me     his head buried in the nook

between my shoulder and neck     his fingers on my arm

in his sleep he lifts me toward the sun     he calms these hands

before they can dig into my eyes     his steady breaths say

that there are options    that there is more to life than death

and I start to breathe     I lean into him     I choose to live

Penny Pepperoni, I mean Pink Lady, I mean peperomia caperata
AKA my best girl
also known as the growing, breathing heart-stone

of the Silverleaf hab

The thing about peperomias is they can live through anything, except too much attention.

I have been overwatering
my insecurities
and my plants
–to have some sense of control–
–to convince myself that care is care, always–

now Penny’s wilted over on the dining room table, asking for more and less than my insistent whisperings of

“come back”

If you ask Penny Pepperoni what kind of animal she wants to be, you will remember laying in your front yard, rolled up like a snack wrap in a

bright
yellow
quilt,

so that the earth could hold you safe as your great grandmother’s hands

Penny Pepperoni plays the game exactly right.

If you ask me eight ways to next Sunday what kind of animal I want to be, I’d say, “Plant,”

Every time. Except this one. This time, and only this,

“The one that can help.”

the world needs praying over
prayers are humming like locusts  

some seek a lifting of the veil
sustaining seeming separation  

others hand God a can of gasoline
and a box of matches  

the world needs praying over
prayers are humming like locusts  

Ask anyone who knows
the stars and they’ll tell
you the two of us are
not well-matched. 

Each of us should 
have had a virgo
or a taurus, earth
signs to keep us
grounded.

How did we two fish
swim against the
celestial tides
to each other?

Truth be told
you don’t fit
the pisces bill
as well as I do—
I’m mostly parades
and you’re mostly
rain. 

But I like the rain,
without it, nothing
would grow and
growing together
is the joyous work
of marriage.

Astrologists may
know the stars
but they don’t 
know us.

-From one fish to another, with love

Like young winter spruce
heron legs quiet themselves
in the creek’s chatter.

They are always legion, because a man can fend off
one or two, but three thousand (plus cavalry) are more
than anyone can manage. Of course he thought

he was alone, because who can smell
fresh-baked cookies for all that sulfur, or feel
the snuffle of a wet nose on numbed skin, or taste
the grace of meatloaf with a mouth full of bile? Who can hear
a favorite song playing through infernal static, or see
the porch light left on beyond a wall of flames?

So he found his own way out, the lone way, and left us
stunned by the echoes of his going.

The two prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.    
 …Kurt Vonnegut

My childhood memories are the narrow beams of a spotlight in an enormous warehouse of the possible.  Why do these few dozen scenes survive while the rest disappear? How do they define me as I enter the gate of age? I do
not pretend to speak of these events as a 7-year-old, all have been told as I preceive them at 70.  Their meanings lead me to a befuddled understanding of myself.  For instance, my mind still has a clear picture of the sign at the   
Columbia Theater’s restroom: WHITES ONLY.  When I asked my mom what it meant, I felt the dissatisfaction that comes when an adult uses words they know a child cannot comprehend. She pulled at my arm to go get a seat.                     There were many black children who had also come to see “The Lone Ranger” on that Saturday morning but they had to be admitted through     
a side entry that went up to a hidden balcony. I did not see them.  I did not know they were there until after the movie when, walking to Kirchoff’s Bakery,  we came around the south end of Market Square and saw a long line of black kids waiting at a restroom with a sign above the door that said: COLOREDS ONLY

Our daughter has journeyed
on horseback across
the Mongolian steppes,
in red coveralls climbed high
upon natural gas pipe racks in Qatar,
ridden the bullet train to her office 
in Japan. Today I join my spouse
as we circle the half-mile
around our neighborhood
of thirty years. I haul
my usual baggage, greet
the same four cats,
wish my feet led somewhere,
my steps lighter, perhaps 
on a pilgrimage
along serpentine paths
the length of the Nile.

I made a cast of you
as you lay sleeping
naked in your trust.
When it was dry,
I stored it in a room
hidden in my heart.   

I’ll peak at it briefly
if the hours apart
become too many,
or a night alone
is filled with ghosts
that have no substance. 

When we get old
I’ll share it with you,
reminding both of us
that love and beauty
changed by time
aren’t less, but better. 

His eyebrows move like piano keys
before he goes away.
The last step is missing.
I know when he hits.

His feet are a damp scrape.
A sledgehammer is picked up
and dropped, dull,
behind the chimney root.

An assembly of heavy metal
is out of tune against the acoustics.
A saw screams and kisses!
Saturdays can be quite haunted.

I get a nose of ghostly solvent.

He materializes at the basement door.