Posts for June 3, 2020 (page 4)

Your eyes meet mine.

I don’t dare look down.

I must remember not to

steal a glance at your lips,

or the conversation is lost.

I may never recover.

Like a look down

when climbing at great heights,

one dizzying glance

might be all it takes

to send me tumbling.

I am conscious

of every part of you.

Your hips shift in your chair,

and I must be careful

lest I lose all balance

and fall out of orbit.

Do you also feel

the tide of your body

pulling me to you?

like a wave that threatens

to pull me under?

But still we talk…

If so, I would not wait

for your tide to take me—

I would wade out to you.

I can feel you lapping at my skin

…but you’ve asked me something.

Somehow I manage an answer.

Your eyes meet mine.

We have only just met,

but you look back at me,

familiar, remembering.

Perhaps we knew each other

in a dream?

You were the sea,

and I was a woman

dancing in the waves?

Or were you the moon?

And I, the sea?

But we knew each other, didn’t we?

In a crowd of faces,

I would know your eyes,

seek them out,

return to them

again and again.

They feel like home.

When the world is balloons,
 the poet must sometimes use breath
 inflating more balloons, but sometimes
 it’s better the poet speak needles.

I’ve
never
seen myself
as
someone
interesting,
I’ve
always been
called a
“goody two-shoes”,
which
I’ve
always taken 
as a
compliment,
I’ve been 
told
that I’m
“no fun”,
even
a few
of
my friends
have 
told me
that
I’m boring.
But,
I don’t
think I
I have the
right
to be
offended,
because
I’ve
never
seen myself.

Behind my skull, rests my brain;
Safely out of my control.
A crown of sorts,
A jesters hat.
Amongst all others,
I stand to be culled.
My bones rattle, and my skin crawls.
All in all while I wait for clarity.
Deep in the brain, rests a world.
Filled with eyes, and spirals of mercury.
Who am I to deny it’s existence, or to deny a peak inside?
Behind my skull, rests my brain;
Different from the rest.
For my understanding shapes the way it is.

Radiation Therapy: A Baptism

I wear a white robe
It billows on the water
The pastor pinches my nostrils
His palm covers my mouth
The water holds me
The ones I love are with me
I take Jesus into my heart

The tumor is over my heart
Plastic plugs hold my nostrils
A plastic tube in my mouth
I listen for the voice
On the intercom

Take a deep breath
and hold it

I inhale and lift my ribcage
Light soaks my chest
The great machine takes me
Deep into the wilderness
No one can come with me

You can breathe

****

Take a deep breath
and hold it

I summon a river
A rippling current
And halos of light
The Holy Spirit descends
As a heron
O Spirit stay with me I plead
The voice calls me back

You can breathe

And I breathe.

If Mary Oliver and Billy Collins had written a poem together, 
They would have had to decide who went first. 
They might have chosen an alphabetical sequence, 
Letting Collins lead off with a scene
That both highlights and deprecates his virtuosity:
He ricochets around a room, for example, picks up a dictionary,
Sees the word “lanyard,” and stumbles into a luminous poem. 

Or, they might have gone in order of age, 
Allowing Oliver to coax us all into the scene
That she is about to illuminate—
A marsh, a wood, even a room,
The one in which you lie half asleep,
With the ominous, twiggy Night Traveler outside.
Or where a heron rises over Blackwater Pond.

Either way, in the next part, tension arises,
Though small, ironic details, if it’s Collins’ turn, 
Or, if the pen has passed to Oliver,
With the arrival of some glorious creature. 
Both will exclaim how, as poets,
They really cannot explain this thing,
Whatever it is, but still they draw us in again,
For the satisfying close.

It’s here that I like to think they’d pause,
Perhaps repair to The Night House,
For a cocktail party where other poets join them.

There’s Dorothy Parker in the corner, 
Muttering tart witticisms, having started drinking early.
Walt Whitman, maybe, singing of himself,
Or of the Body Electric.
Wordsworth, popping in 
On his return from Tintern Abbey, 
Bringing daffodils. 
Coleridge, with some opium, and that albatross. 
And Sharon Olds, going back to 1937. 
Even pale young Keats might wander by, 
Still coughing a little, but politely, into his elbow, 
Carrying a Pot of Basil as a gift, 
Cheered to see that poetry
Lives on, and in such capable hands. 

Eventually, the party ends, 
And Oliver sets off on her journey
Back to The Afterlife, to visit her beloved dogs, 
Or some Wild Geese, or even Edith Wharton,
Leaving Collins Sailing Alone Around the Room, 
Searching for the last lines.
A couplet, perhaps, or a quatrain, without the rhymes.

But certainly a salient observation
That thrills us, and feels like a benediction. 

I sit on my couch and listen to the rain fall.
I have a few minutes to myself,
no tasks to complete in the moment,
only items on a To-Do list to ignore until later.
Time is irrelevant because it is my privilege to control it.

The rain’s rhythm lulls me into a quiet semi-slumber,
but I only give myself a few minutes to rest.
I have a sick obsession with movement
and my mind fights my body’s natural urge to take the necessary pause.

My mind slows from a sprint
to a brisk jog
to a light walk
to a slow saunter
And it rests on a vision I’ve long avoided:

I am in another dimension.

I am in the same position on my couch
Listening to the rainfall
Fighting this body’s natural urge to sleep
And my clothing is wrinkled.
A child rests by my side.
She is six or seven years old.
She has large brown eyes and thick, wavy hair.
She smells like fresh apples and dirt.
She presses her little body against my untoned tummy.
She reaches her arms and tries to get them all the way around me.
I feel my body cradle her featherweight frame.

But the phone rings
and snaps me back to time’s irrelevance:
on my couch
listening to the rainfall
dismissing my body’s natural urge to rest
and shattering the vision with a To-Do list.

I smooth the wrinkles from my t-shirt,
run my hands across my flat stomach
and look over at the empty cushion beside me
wondering if she’ll ever return. 

I asked the shiny black ball
if I should leave you.  

“Reply hazy, try again.”  

Great.  Even this damn toy is noncommittal.  

You are wavering.  And wavering is different than fluttering.  

Fluttering is falling.
Fluttering is feeling your heart
swell and contract,
grappling with the rush
of hormones and chemicals and arrows.
Fluttering is swinging madly toward the other
with Velcro fingers and sticky, tacky lips.  

Wavering is one foot in and
one foot out.
You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself out  

I told myself I would know
when it was time to call it.
When it hurt more seeing you than not.
When the air in the room felt suffocating with your breath added.  

“Ask again later.”

Long day to closing time, juggle fish tank list of beans to do
stiffy Charles junior mop and sticky worker bees in glue.
His name a fuzzy funny something, Ringa Ding J.B. Spearman Drew
built a mint on rags and bottoms, worded criticize and coined it too.
Beady pine corn cushion apron sideburn suspender,
tan tweedy slacks pop a gold watch money lender
double change on half a fifth of ones and twos
smoke a slim little yellow guy, some like reds and blues.

Three year old
in a tub
six times his size
splashes and squirms
until the water
storms around him
and he sits,
giggling,
in his own disaster.
As we grow up
we find ways
to do the same –
create the storm
just to sit through it,
laughing
at our own chaos.