we have forgotten
what the earth would teach,
that not just sun and soil
feed a flower,
but stillness and patience too,
quiet faith in constant things,
the stars steadfast with their light,
the unhurried rhythm
of suns and seasons.
we have forgotten that our days
are only numbered
if we count them.
There is something delicious
and essential about the love
that won’t quiet itself –
that won’t be silenced and calmed
no matter how many blankets we pile on top.
One last ember we stoke and guard.
A memento.
An artifact.
A proof that our hearts have beaten.
We savor it – make a meal on the memory.
We tend to the space it has taken up
in the cavities of our body.
We offer it as a gift.
A tribute and an honor
to the one who put it there.
This – I do in remembrance of you.
This belongs to you.
You exist here.
You were cherished.
You were important.
And why do we sit and treasure
these scars and lacerations on our memories –
single them out for inspection and delicate handling?
Because they are also a tribute and reminder
that we too exist.
We can cherish.
We are important.
A cloud drifted across the sun for a second,
shifting the summer’s light in the room
to melancholy winter’s when the sun meanders
just above the treeline,
a reminder that days grow shorter,
gain momentum toward an unspoken ultimatum
between all this: gestures to empty room
(filled with books and a computer on a desk with a chair)
and companionship found not in this house
for colder days bathed in muted light.
Before the Trilafon
wiped away the last shred of her personality
making her placid
easy to manage
without passion
void
her mind wiped clean
like the blackboard
in her fourth fgrade classroom
at the end of the day
my mother’s demntia
led her through wild mood swings
now in fear
appearing as a horseman of the apocolypse
again as love
infinite and unconditional.
One night
as she wrestled with the demons
of memory long repressed,
she cried out in anguish
as if a sin were being confessed
stained like the blood on the depth of her soul:
“I have Indian blood in me!
I have Indian blood in me!”
Some time passed, but before
the Trilofon washed over her mind,
carried her away to that dark sea
without memory
She smiled sweetly to me
“You’re Steve.”
And your name?
“I’m Edith”
And then in some far corner of her mind
she found this fragile flower:
“Well, we know who we are,
but it seems like we don’t know much else.”
Maybe that’s enough, mom.
Maybe that’s enough.
Nov 14, 1997
The sun still rises in the morning, just as it did
when I could manage to open my eyes four years ago.
I know of the light it throws out so carelessly
from silver-wisped clouds, not because of the warmth
it wraps around the birds or the life it gives to the creek in my backyard,
but because the hope in my heart tells me
the sun still rises.
And I hope it does,
and that wherever you are too,
the sun rises for you. I haven’t opened my eyes
since the last time we said goodbye
(for I am afraid to see what this Earth looks like
without you)
because without you, there’s nothing to look forward to.
Not even the rising sun,
(which we will one day conquer
and chase over glowing hills and glowing streams),
is beautiful enough
to paint over the human-shaped space that
you have left in my heart and
that you have left in my head.
Build Fire big
Big Fire builder
Me am
Got burn big
Logs real hot
Me did
No real reason
Fire real peaceful
Me like
Warm glowing ambiance
Soft crackling destruction
Humming peace
I think about the
layers of the forest.
The emergent treetops
peaking out above
the canopy where
birdsong fills the air
fleshed out with life
and leaves, branches
swaying in the wind
over the understory
where I count
wildflowers
with my kids
as we hike;
walking along the
forest floor where
we pick mushrooms
to cook for dinner
and find snails
and rocks
and rollie pollies.
The air feels different
in the realm of
these four layers,
it smells like decay
and growth
and potential,
and every small detail
of spiderwebs
and dew drops
and deer tracks
brings peace to us
in the chaos
of our world.
We are death cleaning, like the Swedish do, for the old lady
still alive and withering in her chair, that way there will be less to do
once she isn’t. Bank statements from decades back, birthday cards
never sent now stuck to their own envelope glue, clothes, photos, magazines,
flotsam and jetsam of a life 13 years gone. We siblings sit in the shady lawn,
sort through the boxes of goblets and perfume bottles, the fragile legacy
of a glassblower. I take the metallic turtle, the galaxy paperweight,
the unusable shot glass shaped like a gun. Brother takes the pig bong. Sister takes
the murrini vase and scorpion-stemmed goblet. I take his linen Union Jack
and brass bugle from the only time he ever went home to England after leaving.
Brother takes the concert t-shirts (Rush in the 70s, Pink Floyd in the 80s).
I take the Monty Python shirt, black so faded it’s gray. Sister sorts his tie-dye,
pulls at her mask to catch her breath in the heat. COVID and her kidney transplant make everything dangerous. Here on this lawn, where I was a child, I find a check
he began to write, dated August 2007 and signed, just 3 months before he died
in that hospice bed, and I tuck it into a book on tea recipes I bought him,
put it in my pile. He’s dead and I’m alive, and sister is alive with a dead
person’s kidney chugging away in her gut, and brother is alive,
and mother is bent parallel to the ground as she shuffles with her walker
to the bathroom still alive, and we are surrounded by the last of his things
on this grass where at 14, I practiced a tour jeté and barefoot landed on a dead bird,
feeling the bones pop between my toes. I take his old work ID, a copper moon,
a newspaper from September 12. In front of this house where we ate his dill dumplings
and suffered his narcissisms, where we were born and parts of us died,
we each take a copy of the day’s paper with his obit. This place where we were alive
together for awhile with him and are now alive together without him,
brother, sister, and I take our boxes to our cars, take the full bags of trash
to the cans in the driveway, pack the rest down into mother’s basement,
to deal with later, once we begin going through her things, whenever that may be.
roses are red,
violets are blue,
this makes the 64th poem
i have written about you.
my thighs were pink
but my chest felt fine;
is the first poem i’ve written
about you that rhymes?
now my heart feels blue
and my mind feels numb;
was the fever between us
really just dumb?
my neck is purple
and my head feels black;
when you touched me like that
did it leave you crawling back?
our drinks were golden
and our minds were bright;
you can’t tell me that part of this
didn’t feel right.
now you’re sitting across from me
and your skin looks red.
i can see it in your eyes,
we’re better off
just in our heads.
