My First American Sentence on the Last Day
Our pen nibs wept, sang, joked how evergreen juniper sprung to summer.
Our pen nibs wept, sang, joked how evergreen juniper sprung to summer.
You’re my first in person student in two years
We’re reading Cynthia Rylant’s ‘Van Gogh Café’
It’s fun to play magic with you
I introduced the Mind Boggling Card Trick
So much fun to watch your eyes pop out!
So tender when you placed your wish: To see your elders who are in heaven
with Dill our trustworthy wish keeper
Now we know a possum in Flowers, Kansas
We’ve witnessed his ability to heal broken relationships
To make enemies friends
Fighting lovers can’t help but embrace
Maybe we should send this magic possum to Washington, D.C. to work his magic!
You told me you are kind and funny
I believe you
It’s fun to play Heart and Soul together on the keyboard
Your ivory touch gentle sweet harmony
Can hardly wait ‘til we perform our duet
Lightning is about to strike at the ‘Van Gogh Café’
I told you I wish I could go there
A place once a theatre now a magic coffee shop
Just to hear the phonograph play, “You’d be so nice to come home to!”
And be surrounded by painted purple hydrangeas in the girl’s bathroom
It’s fun to weave educational therapy magic thru concoctions of creativity
Your self-portrait yesterday was a dancing fun guy
A side of you still hidden in your quiet
Your poem was filled with wisdom beyond your 11 years
In four short meetings I can already tell you have taught me so much
I only wish you came last fall and yet we know all is in divine order
When you say good-bye in a few short weeks and move to Chicago
I know I’m going to shed some tears
A blood moon tonight &
licks of flame, fallen stars,
the ones from the mouths
of our ancestors,
a question I couldn’t answer.
Yet my bones sing.
Imagine your electric heart
pressed into that whorl
of ruby moon hyacinth.
A man boards a train
going somewhere.
Spider respins a broken web.
Moon walks in her sleep.
This splintered world,
the only one that matters.
As in the past, I offer for my last poem a cento from lines of poems posted here, this one from the writing of (in no particular order) Linda Bryant, Pam Campbell, Jim Lally, Jennifer Beckett, Nancy Jentsch, Kevin Nance, Liz Prather, Karen George, Tabitha Dial, Gaby Bedetti, Melva Sue Priddy, and Alissa, each of whom were kind enough to comment upon my meager offerings.
Flesh out the contours—
muscles, legs, head—
then thicken the body
with crosses, curves, shadings—
then erase— erase—
erase— erase—
What’s left? Six lines
that snort, fume, stomp, charge.
(I appreciate everyone’s artistry this month!)
Searching the landscape
Where are those towers
of rising oblivion
Tall beacons
sometimes gold, sudddenly silver
Lost for those falling free
What marks the way
toward that time
empty where they stood
Orange, rust, magenta
scarlet yellow brillant life
Beacon to search the landscape
Where are those towers of rising oblivion
Come back down
to my town
where yester youth waved
and played
frolicking in theatre
forever there
Where have desires gone
that last drunk on the town
This long edge of real estate
leaning into the water
Close whereby you fly
Where are those towers of rising oblivion
Unsung songs
hovering
in the air
Cannot come back to you
What did you gain
from all this, Mister Death
How have we walked
through this gray air
Without your presence
I cannot find those firy towers of oblivion
Suddenly
coming back to life
Here again
Two blood red trees
leaves in the park
Suddenly towers
Fiercely your fire
reaches for the sky
Where are you
Where are those towers of rising oblivion
Not here now
All the performances
will never bring you back
There are those
who would rather
Cry Radio City
See Shea Stadium
Roosevelt Island
Than my life
Rolling around to this
empty space of sky
Willed here
Call of recognition
For the Chrysler Building
The Empire State
No more Windows on the World
Still they are not here.
We’re not field crops,
we’re mosses.
We don’t belong in dried dirt
cultivated out of recognition
but forests and on sidewalks,
porches and prairies and
old lawn mower seats.
We belong where we want to grow
landing on barren earth,
coloring it green,
making way for life.
Take our water,
our nourishment,
our rights,
but we hold strong
waiting for that single
drop to wake us up,
fill us out, remind us
we can thrive.
I am not celebrating this year.
Can’t afford to. Let’s just say, I’m spending time
thinking. There’s making an inventory.
Words like deficit
to describe the animal clawing inside my leg,
my gut–it wants out bad.
I dreamed of a dew-gray hawk one night.
I was the hawk and I saw myself flying.
Who knows how the story ends?
I’m a writer–no politician–no soothe-
sayer, either. I want us all to have–
to be nice things to one another.
—
Thank you all so much for your words and your community.
Next June is too far away. I’ve been really busy with life
the last week but I look forward to reading back and seeing
everyone’s poems I might have missed out on due to busyness.
When the sun sets on hot summer days,
I sit in a white rocking chair on my wooden porch and
We enter the park on Radburn
Slip beneath the metal slide —
that a few short summers ago burned our delicate skin.
One of us asks, “Remember launching ourselves from up high to the sound of the swing chains clanging against those rusty poles?”–
I ate. I ached. And, after a while, I accepted all that I am.
I breathed (a lot), bathed (surprisingly frequently!) and
basked in the stillness of this borrowed time.
I cried (also a lot), cooked for myself when I wanted to,
and chewed handfuls of arugula when I didn’t.
I danced. Actually and essentially, which was necessary.
I doubted myself almost as much as I dreamed.
But I didn’t define myself by defeat.
I said enough.
And I said endless.
And I ended up writing 49 poems – in 2 months. Some of them good.
None of them edited.
I found freedom in the face of fear & friends in unfamiliar places.
Plus, I frequented family.
I gave up at times & gave in often. But, mostly, I just gave myself permission
to be generous, gracious, and gentle with myself.
I held space for the unknown & made space for my heart.
And, I have to say, I haven’t looked back.
I insisted on simplicity & invented infinite new ways
to take in the same quiet days.
I joked that I was lucky –
But I’m not kidding –
I AM lucky.
I am lucky to love, lucky to laugh, lucky to let go,
lucky to latch on, lucky to live this life letter by letter,
line by line.
Moreover, I meditated. And made time matter. I stretched it out
and found myriad waypoints for relief along every measured mark.
I napped naked and, one night, I nearly burned down the apartment.
But, needless to say, I didn’t.
I organized my thoughts & opened myself up,
over & over again, to something new.
I privately promised myself I’d make myself proud –
not perfect – but persistent.
I queered. I quieted. I queried everything.
And, along the way, I quelled a lot of fears.
I received roses upon roses upon roses & read reams
upon reams of poetry to make sense of each thorn.
I sat still. Seriously.
And I strived to soften.
And I kept myself simple so I’d be ready for more softening.
I even took to getting soft serve ice cream to secure my salvation.
I took long walks in the tulips & talked to myself & tried
to steal tiny dogs to take off the edge.
I understood my mom a bit more, unpacked the unsavory, & uncovered
the underpinning of what we undergo
to undo.
I variously vacillated on the value of vows against the
very velocity of validation.
I wrote & wrote & wrote, while all the while watching & waiting &
wrestling with what we won’t ever have words to widen.
I examined the x-factor that makes / or breaks a relationship,
what it means to exit / or exist, & the weight
of an e/x as a viable variable.
I said yes more often than I said no –
because of yoga, because of the color yellow,
because of you. Always You.
And I zeroed in on what’s essentially important:
When we strip away the extraneous, down to the elemental,
to the eerie moment before pen touches paper,
when even words have not yet collected in the throat
& are still but letters, lightly flung & equally weighted,
an alphabet of emerging possibilities,
outstretched before me in all their
ascending
abecedary
zeal
for that
elusive
zenith.
