In this pandemic
with feelings worn,
disheveled like the bed
from which I rise each morning,
words evade my mask
these nights and days
as though dead,
chilled,
they are
to my touch
not heeding
my tears,
my mourning.
In a red sky,
from the southwest,
red sand drifts,
with words ahead.
I will gather the best
of them
like heirloom seeds
saved
for spring planting.
I will dig them
into a blank page,
running horizontal
like furrows
across a garden.
I am pulled like a tide
under this crescent moon.
My thoughts gravitate to you,
a resolute rhythm.
I wax and wane with
longing, I wash up
on the shore of moments
half-faded by memory
but held fast in my heart,
less detail now, more
raw feeling, I
ebb and flow
with your pulse
in my veins,
your cool light reflecting
off my surface
like gratitude.
visited the roadhouse on days after
a brawl to pay for damage to the premises
fought on the battlefields of France in WW I
held a classified position at home three decades later
writhed and moaned during a recurring nightmare
about a kitten, coat and railroad station
drank whiskey, shot craps on Saturdays
taught Bible class on Sunday mornings
tried to live according to the teachings of Christ
yet rejected the concept, Son of God
ran his thumb through a power saw right after
he finished teaching a class on safety
read philosophy, history, Shakespeare, the Psalms
delighted in Peanuts, Pogo and musical theatre
When my children’s
lives depend
on the fate of a
world that feels
too much
like a dystopian novel,
and humanity
is failing
the simplest tests of
compassion and empathy –
it is too much.
I take them
into the woods
often to learn
the plants
and mushrooms
and berries,
to learn to build shelter
and track animals,
to soak in the
life-sustaining
beauty of our world and
to understand how we fit
with these trees
and cliffs
and squirrels
despite our
educations and
technologies;
despite the ugly sides of
ourselves we see paraded
across the news, and
to know we can blaze
our own path
when we need to.
I never had that signature rebel phase as a teenager,
so I’m surprised when it bubbles up in my thirties:
dark purple lipstick here; a bottle of half-drunk moscato
in my closet since Christmas; vivid orchid hair paint
in my Amazon cart for a few days just to mull it over.
If you’d asked me at seventeen what I’d be like
at thirty, all I’d have been able to conjure up
was the pitch-black vortex of unforgiving space.
Never could imagine myself past my twenties,
but if I had, I’d have told future-me to finish the wine.
My hydrangea are all pink
pale pink, rosey pink, pretty pink.
I want them blue
violet blue, sky blue, purple-black blue.
When did Barbie arrive here in her high heels?
waving her pink purse around,
giggling in my garden,
even the pink roses are not amused—
she is taking over—
her blossoms big and bossy,
I have never seen pink this sassy—
the dianthus are fading fast!
,
She sits on the moon
Fishing for stars
She casts at the dim ones
Because the bright ones
Are too easy
She catches glimpses of shooting stars
And sings a wish.
She dances on the craters
And stares at the sun
She makes conversation with Mars
And floats to Jupiter
She holds Pluto in her hand
She dreams of the Milky Way
And the places she’ll go
Please don’t forget when we met
there was plenty of hope in my eyes and
spirit flowing through my veins.
Please remember me as the girl
who fell in love with you
and not the woman
you broke in the end.
Unfold those letters I wrote to you-
just streams of consciousness.
Could I not shed light on
every good part of you and
help you forget the filth
and the darkness?
Please don’t forget I was once
lovely and unscathed.
We didn’t get to say goodbye
so I made an effigy of you,
of sticks and pebbles and mud-covered leaves,
to set outside my bedroom window.
I wonder if I could have saved you from
yourself if I had told you that you would never leave my heart.
Perhaps I should have said that the grief
(and guilt) that rages around in the floorboards of my house
would make me want to burn
and wither away
(just like you did)
But we didn’t even get to say goodbye.
Should I have known better than to not drown your phone
with arguments for living? Or should I pray for absolution,
that this fiery pain will one day too
burn out?
