Posts for June 28, 2020 (page 2)

for Kristi, 39 lines on the illustrious occasion of her 39th journey around the sun

Sold what the line
divides, how each person has a singular shape, straight down the page, how these
               lines are used to create our borders
to box in what we write,
who we are, to keep like with like, keep us from each other, or ourselves. We’ve     
               been told too many lies. So with our own stubby yellow
pencils clutched in shaking hands, we draw box box box around each other, bigger
               and bigger, what a friend
the incased words then become, this pencil growing more powerful with each
               swoop, what I mean

is that we’ve proved how every new boarder
can become someone we now know and love, friend
pulled through to the present by hands yellowed
with dandelion rubbings; what used to be the hard mean
lines
the world wrote

with its ice pick, words that had one meaning:
only “we are in competition” and the reality is “there’s one spot”, whispers in subtext
                 “we can’t be friends”
only strangers, bears rearing up in defence, with border
wall built of rejection slips, prizes listing others’ names, our blades for slicing each
                   other down. In our yellowing
dreams it’s hard to admit it, but what we swallowed rote
can be spun into better fabric, a stranger, stronger coat big enough to keep all
                   warm, strands & lines

woven together, box us closer, zipped in with our hands open catching snowflakes,
                   and raised to greet each other as friends.
Once I wrote
a hundred poems filled with lines
examining the borders
in myself, all the mean
and friendly ways I intersect and cross yellow

stretches of the world, the way my own writing
hungers for home, for whatever friend
can see through “but i’m not from here” and then say “that’s mean
to yourself, come in, come in, I don’t know you but here’s my yellow
sheets, something cold to drink, here’s a page that’s empty waiting for you to fill it,
                boards
for you to stomp on when you are angry, listen, I’m not lying,

you are welcome here.” A box is only what you place in it. Can be sharpied over
                again and again. Hold fruit, candy, all our fresh and fiery flags. Friend,
we’ve build new boxes out of whatever we could gather under this yellow
consistent sun, filled the house with poems, lines
playful, important, new. We don’t want to leave anyone behind, the world is mean
and you know we know this already. All the borders
are shot to hell and anyway, we cross them all the time inside of ourselves. Let’s
                 write  

a new poem together, we say, within safe borders, we say, one filled with lines
of compassion, a soft yellow light left on all night above the stairs. Where friend
pulls friend in, right leaves foe outside the door, where we forget what mean, means. 

When I wander
through the fog
in the evening
after a stormy day
and lightning bugs
rise from the creek
banks around me
filling the sweet air
with flickers of light
and birds still sing
at the cusp of dark,
the time between
day and night
feels so tender.

…Speckled on their backs like fawns…

Right here is where my picture was taken (to promote my gallery opening, -was it 7 years ago? I forgot to even ask myself)
With a powder blue Mercedes
I am holding a taped box, gifted moments ago in the turning lane of Richmond Rd, which contains a piece of art made from that photo. 
Both made and given by a man about to move to Atlanta, dressed in the same powder blue as the other friend’s Mercedes (the one who used his car in the photo)
You are like Luke Skywalker, I yell in encouragement, off to Degabar!
He replies..”That’s really strange
I was just listening to an interview with him not 20 minutes ago” and trails off
And we talk for a moment as if we weren’t standing in the middle of the turning lane between the medians of Richmond Rd, but it’s Sunday evening, and it’s slow moving, though the man is quick to pull away, jumping quickly into his car and whirling off like a startled rabbit.

There is something about love that binds everything together, all of these ins and outs, the stage directions placing choreographed steps in time
There is a very young rabbit, his tiny ears just visible above the grass towards the peony fields, I suppress the urge to run and attempt to grab it,
Here
Some young robins, two that I spot first in the low branch of a walled garden tree, another one running along the ground outside the lichened brick walls.

They are speckled when they’re young, like fawns
And I think of the sprawling ears of fawns, catching the slight movements in the surrounding space
And I know there is something magical whispering here 
The Blue Ash spotlighted with violet greens, waiting for it’s soon to be portraits,
The fairie tree nearly torn apart
–it’s been less than a year-
less than a year and it’s wide walls moved apart by eager, exploring little hands, its impossibly large branch removed beside it, only a day after I had painted it, and it hundreds of years old-
And here-
by an old Spruce’s multitude of dangling sleeves, 
the impression of a Thursday session, painting with an apprentice,
still marked in the grass,
the memory of gazing towards the south east still 
stirring my limbs

When I struggle to stretch my way out of a sweaty dream
where your presence shocks the breath out of me,
standing there with burly arms crossed across your chest,
glaring a hole through me and furrowing your forehead
as I cower across the room, the worst of our moments relived,
I can’t help but wonder if I could only erase bits of you
from my memory—your brother’s date of birth, 
your dad’s middle name and favorite golf club,
the way your grandma taught you to make spaghetti—
maybe a month might pass by without me fighting 
the ghost of you, resurfacing as dawn meets the day.

Standing in a boat, a feeling floated 

On Lake Cumberland,
escaping Corvid-19,
I cast live bait
toward the rock bank.

Old Seventy Creek
in its flow
falls in mist
against my face.

I stand in the
wooden boat
my father and I
built in a shed

off the milk parlor.
I cast live bait
into the foam topped
roll churning.

In morning light,
laps of water
against the wooden hull,
captures a rhythm that

pushes the boat back.
Words escape my mind.
I want to write poetry for you,
fishing is no longer a priority.

The sun rises, a feeling floated up
to the surface, reminding me
of how lonely I am
without you in our dry bed.

Sitting on top your mantel,
chiming every hour
on the hour. But now
it’s more of a scratch
than a chime. It’s
crying an S.O.S and
my ears were the only set
to pop up
for the fifty year old
piece of our family’s white flag.
Only I heard the siren
it sang so softly.
It’s been my music
for life and now
that you’re both gone,
it has run out of juice, no
sheets left to play. After
aging alongside you with
every tick, the clock
is being forced to let go—
so am I.

Like a two star general
When I open the writing desk of the secretary
I discover an invading army of ants, numberless but as one

My neglect of mopping up
The scattered crumbs from the battlefield
Of last night’s prolonged scrimmage against decent poetry

Is Painfully obvious.
Through my magnifying lens I’m awed
At the ants’ singular purpose, soldering their bounty

In a straight line down the desk leg
Across the floor and out the sliding glass door
To a hill camouflaged in your copious garden of delights.  I march

To the kitchen for supplies
But my return finds you standing 
By the secretary rooting about in a pile of composting

Books.  I can only look sheepish
The way you pivot your eyes for my attention
and say, hey, do you want to hear the two big things

I’m always asking myself?
How can we help the soil improve its figure
How can we make sure there’s room for us in the world

The fire
may burn
tall,
but my
ashes
will float 
higher.

the angel is cold and gray
she waits with patience
all will join her here someday