Posts for June 2, 2021 (page 7)

Have you felt it?                                                                                                    The first fluttering butterfly wings of life?                                                       Then a baby against your heart.                                                                       Counting of fingers and toes.                                                                             The breathing in of the precious new baby smell.                                         The skin soft as satin against your cheek.                                                        Downey  hair tickles your nose.                                                                        All followed by….                           First Smiles.                                                                                              First words.                                                                                                          First Steps.                                                                                                               Your heart memorizes each milestone.                                                           Locks them in your chest for protection.                                                         To protect as this life you are blessed to love and keep safe.                     How can one of you not speak?                                                                         Not SCREAM with agony an anger?                                                                 Not SHOUT at the top of your lungs seeing children in cages?                   Children jerked from arms that have felt it too!

Back in the day way before any
individual took to assuming their lifestyle,

intentional communities could provide you
a way in or out of your whatever.

Peggy and I drove to the B.F. Skinner one
in Virginia. Any hospitality there
was tents we brought ourselves, while plenty
ticks were provided. My orientation
to the members baffled any etiquette
I ever knew: in a settling rural, bucolic,
pedestrians walked past you, stared through you
like in subways. During a meet with minimal greet
visitors learned that couples — or was it just women? —
needed committee approval to conceive a child
but not to abort them.

In St. David, Arizona was a monastery of several sorts,
religious and lay, in houses and trailers.
It fell to me to hold up an altar candle 
so the celebrant could see the pages of prayers
after the power went out.

Down the road and over some knobs
from Gethsemani, Merton’s abbey, 
I prayed lauds in the dark
with the Families of St. Benedict.
A single mother there had such a sweet little kid,
Eddie. Sometimes as he went to and fro,
to and fro, more to and fro, he’d softly chant

      Take your time, it’s time to go home,
      take your time, it‘s time to go home.

Fruit selection from the dark orchard
where the stories caught up to Alice
turning her a little sad her white
patent leather shoes on the algae
and cement of a church
in the hollow where rust
runs like blood from crusted hinges
underneath the biggest goddamn
juniper in the world where bones
in bear scat fertilize
the smoke of autumn’s passing.  

I needed to dream today,
and instead I just broke stuff.

Woke up 
thinking of you 
this morning
 Fall with brilliant leaves

What happened
What did you do?
Take something new?
Forget to take
What you should?  

Biology Chair called me
Around seven
Said your spouse
Could not reach you  

You had not come home
From the University
Your little girls
Were waiting  

They came home
from their music lessons
You weren’t there
Dinner was not ready
On the table

Where are they
and how old now with children
of their own
and some substitute grandmother

Security searched
the Science Building
Went through every biology lab, classroom
Unlocked every office
Nothing/no one
 
Ten o’clock
the Biology chair called
He was going to go back through the labs
Told him to take security with him
He didn’t      

He found you curled
Under a lab table
Security had missed you
Small of frame and stature  

State/local police
came FBI arrived
Foul play
University responsible
Chairs face  

At your funeral
Little girls, their father,
Your spouse,
Sister, parents
 
The Rabbi Read meaningful Psalms
Spoke of the beauty of fall
Of changing leaves
Lives, life
Living without you  

Instructor, I know
Only your Family
Brought together By you.

There was a Luna moth on the gravel,
stiller than the floating specks of light
warming up the air around us

A night when we should have kissed,
the water lapping toes in hemp shoes, 
I put your arm around me, and you
took a photograph memory of the feeling

Neither of us were psychics but there was something
in the air that made the fishing line
holding us together grow stronger 
more like a minty floss
whose fibers beg to be used

Now we’ve cut our teeth in practiced ways
on others who shaped points into daggers
and dulled edges in need

How could we have known
that the thread between us would grow
into a fisherman’s knot of a particular strength
Had you seen it written in the wings of that moth,
would you have stepped forward
and grabbed my face like you do now?

When we go back
the delicate wings covered up
by the heavy humming of cicadas,
I hope you know

I wouldn’t change a thing

I still hear your voice in the traffic:
we’re laughing over all the noise –
sidewalks we crossed –

and I just can’t imagine
who likes me and who hates you,
but you’re so unaffected.

They’d all be so disappointed;
I guess that you’ve been workin’ on
all the questions you used to avoid.

You’re doin’ great out there without me,
And I thought my heart was detached
From all the sunlight of our past.

Ain’t it funny?
I kept quiet so I could keep you,
’cause I love people I don’t like.

All lines were taken from the songs “brutal,” “traitor,” “drivers license,” “deja vu,” “happier,” and “good 4 u” written and performed by Olivia Rodrigo on the album SOUR.

hair and skin.
art is pain.

listen to the silence.

relearn the dance.
miss the new.

worlds in constant shouting.

confound and stuck.
aching and sore.

Recall spring lights.

I shelved the face shield today 
Put away the cotton masks
I only hope that next year
I will not need to “protect” myself
From little hands that reach for me

The sun like a white light against my closed, darkened lids
Warm on my salted skin
The dried mix of grass and those still green
I feel between my fingers, grazing my knuckles bare
The dance of bees somewhere in the distance
A song of mating and fury
As they bounce from sunflower to sunflower
Yellow dust gently floating in the wind
Swirling in small tornadoes to the ground below