Posts for June 26, 2020 (page 9)

The day Samantha and Hugo met she was wearing a dotted scarlet scarf and handcrafted silver and turquoise earrings that drooped down three inches, tickling her neck when she moved. She was reminiscent of Frida Kahlo, though her hair was ashy blonde & she wore no flowers. Samantha had a countenance of authority & her wheelchair, too, had power, almost like an animal. Often unobtrusive and lovely like a seahorse but it could also be muscle-tough like a bobcat or lithe like a prairie dog scooting back into its home.

her arms, sinewy
summer sun brightens her face
glamorous blue fingernails

They chatted in a coffeehouse with three friends, a mid-afternoon soundtrack of Van Morrison & Annie Lennox playing on low. Hugo had just met Samantha the week before; she was new to the Eighth Avenue scene and he was intrigued by her. Samantha ordered Darjeeling tea with a slice of lime and when she squeezed the lime into the hot golden tea water much of it squirted on Hugo’s thumb. Hugo and Samantha begn a laughing fit and for 10 minutes they just couldn’t stop. That was when something rearranged itself in both of them. Just like that — at the moment of lime and Darjeeling — they fell. They sailed and tingled and now, four years later, the recurrent feelings of delirium, comfort, and wonder haven’t yet ended. 

can’t pick who you love
he guides the wheels of her chair
this is happiness

Pine Mountain Cemetery XXVI
              Little Girl Blue

There is a song that sings of two li’l girls
In blue, lad, two li’l girls in blue, mountain
Music rings sad and true so mirrors those

Hard lives, bitter disappointments and loss.
These little girls were no different, the
Prettiest one buried on this mountain.

Torn from sister by whisper, feud and greed,
Blood defied that held our clans in thrall.
Great fear it was that shut the door, one

Girl fairer than the other, red fire of
Jealousy tore at him and drug a trail of anger
From deep inside to demand a ransom.

None of hers dared come near their place,
Feared they might make him worse. Left
Alone she began to change, either that or

Face the dread of threat and pain, kids
Cried when she hurt, and so she stopped.
In time the beauty that drove him wild did

Begin to fade, her will weaker, her song
Quieter. Turned her back on all she knew
Left kin behind to save a piece of edge

Where she hid safe, with children, too. A
Hardness wiped away the last soft smile,
Grit enough to shelter and take them through.

Kids didn’t turn out too good, no surprise. Fear
Shatters roots needed for a healthy child.
Late, aunt stepped in for the little good it did.

Two little girls in blue the old refrain, no
Stone to point us to where the sister lay,
“Good, I’m free”, we can almost hear her say.

Neil Moss came to Oxford
To study philosophy—the love of wisdom—
And soon after he died
One-thousand feet below
The gentle hills of Derbyshire,
Smothered unconscious
By carbon dioxide that sank, 
Only to build in slow triumph
From the base of the shaft.
Our breath, like desperation,
Is heavier than oxygen.

“I just can’t fit.  Yes, I believe it’s time for us to quit
But when we meet again introduced as friends
Please don’t let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world.”
—Bob Dylan, Just Like A Woman

and after Estrella Morente’s La Noche, and Pablo Neruda’s Ode to the Sea

1992

I have no answers, no reasons but your wicked game.
In this world, there is no one who will love you like me—
Underneath it, I have died, to hide, so you will not see.
For you are sun and dawn, swans bathing in your rays.
I am night, here to meet you every morning, but only—

Those green eyes, reconsidering.  My eyes, arrested.
Estrella, what did you have to hide?
I bought you this ring.  Yes, I bought you this ring. 
“Perhaps.  Quizás.”
I bought you this ring, my wife?
We never saw the altar, organ, or freshly dripping
Wax—and being tired, waning
I stopped buying you things.

I stopped buying your love—again

The evening fell, and a cloak winding the trees—
Drunk to you I ran.  Street naked, on my knees, and 
Repairing to my rooms, I decked myself a feathered white—
Like a swan without a partner, like a man without a wife.

Candles.  
Candles from heaven.  
Candles from heaven falling 
On you, my immense sea.  
Wax floating, votives washed over.
No more safety at the lee—on shore
The night fires snuffed out by your tidal tongue.  
Saying yes.  Back a no.  Saying yes, of course!  a yes!
Yes to us!  And perhaps, perhaps, but then, a no.  

I am only alive because for years I did not know what to feel. 
I am grateful that I did not know what to feel.

We stopped at our usual black grated institutional bench.
Someone placed a red sticker on its arm.

Luckily no dog walkers appeared today causing my 
little man to go into small dog syndrome.
He snarls and barks keeping all dogs at bay protecting
me from some imaginary danger.
Puffing his ego and embarrassing me.
Putting shame to his therapy vest at home.

Under the spreading chestnut elm we were shaded.
Birds chatter perky gossip from tree to tree.

Three couples stride by in sync.
The women chatted hands a flutter but the men
focused eyes straight ahead.
Just like my Jim.” We’re walking not talking.”

Serious bikers with helmets, gears, and spandex zoomed by.
Families with young children new at biking took their time.

Walkers and joggers passed at various speeds.
A few nodded hello.

On our return to the car Clancy lunged at smells in the grass on full alert.
Ears perked. Tail up. Trying to impress with his prowess as he drops
peemails on blades of grass, bush or tree imagining what he would do
if I dropped his leash.

i can’t remember the last time i caught a firefly 
and i don’t know when i stopped calling them
lightbing bugs 

time passes, and the frequency with which i say
“my memory is terrible” is getting worrisome 
i know 

no one warned me about this part of imbalance.
the tidal gaps of rushing water once a moment 
now forgotten

i’m too afraid to talk about how afraid i am.
like maybe if i don’t speak it out loud, it’s 
not real

so for now i’ll fill my notebooks and keep my fingers
crossed that photographs take long enough 
to fade

tied their legs with thread
we watched them fly in circles
I grew up country