a early morning surprise
an awful ringing sound
a phone call at 5 am?
who other then my wonder wife
making sure i didn’t get to sleep to long.
the morning light through my drapers
very pale
a soft rain falling quitely
like magic
back to sleep
until the dog decied to use me as his pollow
wonder felling!
just happy
to just wake up another morning!
put the unrequited in a marbled blue cup. i won’t ask You
to funnel it, to pour a writhing straight line until it goes
dotted, cut here. i won’t ask You to speak. i know how
many words i am worth to You. it isn’t enough to get rid
of me with a clean scrape.
i’ll mop myself off the tile, You go. take my wings.
should’ve known You
had Your own. want pay for Your time? Your insight?
don’t look at me now. don’t look too hard but don’t glance
either. don’t give me anything else.
i’m going to turn my back. You go, i’m not watching like
some lovesickened soldier wife or teenage bluejay. don’t
look at the rip marks by my spine. should’ve known You
had Your own. go. Go.
but summer birds dance
and feed in tall uncut grass.
Wings with warm air lift,
guide tiny talons surfing.
Elegant, sunlit stems bow.
Once I saw a beauty
across the room
at a Valentine’s Day party
almost too much
for my eyes to process.
We moved close.
My eyes closed.
Gory glory,
the wounds
in Christ’s wrists
& side barely bearable
to Thomas’s eyes,
seeing, believing,
I blinked
& thirty years later
our bodies breaking
like emptied bottles
or tombs
we had four kids
scars and wounds
we never could have
imagined, peace
& joy beyond belief.
They are tinnitus, like ice in bourbon, tickling rhythm with rhyme.
Old country songs, about a Lineman and Galveston.
They are almost a memory, the Gulf coast, a tire-swing,
tar covered heels and his white Coastie slacks and coat.
They get in front of work,
they get in front of life,
dragging out what lingers in darkness
between the sun and the sea.
They ring like conch shells
I heldup to my ear.
It’s been so long that I can’t
remember what I’m listening to.
Like remembering would silence
the tin sound of my transistor radio.
Their lyrics, barely a memory. I strain
to hear them, just once more, before
they become indistinguishable
from that incessant roar.
It’s time, not geography.
It’s just that time stood still
for so long here, and now
it’s catching up all at once.
Things we did
or didn’t do.
Things we wouldn’t.
Things we said
or didn’t say
or couldn’t say.
Details we chose then to remember.
Details we chose to forget.
Details we’re choosing now
whether we know it or not.
Maybe admitting past mistakes
is the closest thing we have
to correcting them.
With deep thanks to Barb Walters, Dana Wangsgard, Jerlene Rose, Andrea Carr, and Carol Rice.
Horrible things happen
Dearest Kate,
I’m coming home, if only for the briefest of reunions.
It’s been too long—too long—and it makes me wonder about time
and the passage of time on the other, on your, side.
Where do I start? Then, in those heady college years when we first met,
decades ago, me wandering (as I was wont to do in those what-the-hell
does-it-even-mean and where-the-hell am-I-even-going days in the hills
of Eastern Kentucky. At Morehead State University. Behind the locked doors)
of Button Auditorium, where, late in the nights, you’d come to me. As I rehearsed
lines in the green rooms, hammer nails like poignant words into bird’s eye boards,
or painting base layers beneath set colors on the surface of flats for the Production
class (I think I ended up failing, for not showing up). I didn’t show up for many,
to be honest, but I lived that year and a half surrounded by the same set pieces
and cobbled walls and musty curtains you seemed hesitant to leave behind.
And you would come to me, when everyone else had gone, when even my roommate,
Master of lights and sound, left his equipment unplugged and silent, left but one spot
light in a pool, centerstage, so I could continue to work in the collective absence
of actors, of actresses, stagehands, or director. I remember
the way I’d hear you talking, laughing, dancing in the light of the dressing rooms
(though I’d turned off all the lights before exiting and locking up) when I’d walk
behind the theater, for the night. Those lights gleaming, again, through frosted glass,
so that I couldn’t see what you might be up to, only stop in cool, autumn air, and
listen. Listen to the lady so many had heard, seen, experienced, though practicality
and greater logic said she was a theater myth.
And the one night when I crouched, paint brush in hand, the absolute silence
only ever experienced in a vast, old room, heavy with history, sheltering a gravity
of decades of drama, and dramatic personalities, and mirrored ecstatic response
from the audiences—and in that silence, as I stroked the muslin, I felt you come.
Turning, I saw the one spring-loaded seat in the front row slowly, so very slowly,
descend. I said,
“Kate. I’m not in the mood tonight.”
And that seat, so slowly,
returned to its natural, upright and unoccupied state.
Twenty-plus years and I remember that moment. The way you moved, and I spoke,
and you responded. And twenty-plus years of interaction with those who yet held
possession of their physical bodies and they—they have not moved, have not responded.
One moment of connection.
One moment burned in my memory.
One moment and one woman (however spectral, however intangible, however
equally unattainable in this or whatever remains of a life).
I’m coming home, if only for the briefest of reunions.
And I’m feeling less than tangible myself.
And I’m hoping you’ll meet me, again,
there.
Forever regards,
But One of Your Many Actors
I watch her dice onions with the chaotic precision of someone who’s done this hundreds of times after 10-hour shifts.
With the backside of her knife, she scrapes them from a worn wooden cutting board. The pieces fall into the cast iron, pinging as they land.
This pan is her favorite. There are knicks in the enamel from years of sliding it in and out of the cramped pantry next to the stove. It is cast iron, and meant to be everlasting.
I look up from the stove and cast a glance in her direction, I want to be her favorite.
These are precious moments to me. I collect them and put them in my pocket to look at later, when the acrid stench of Marlboros and Milwaukee’s best has overwhelmed the sweet aroma of cumin and oregano.
She throws in a cupful of spices. She can’t tell me how much because she never measures any of it, there is just a generational knowing.
This recipe is a blueprint for survival. She’s returned to it a thousand times-
When she’s lonely
When she is proud
When the light bill is due
I know it’s important for me to remember this sequence:
Garlic, sofrito, raisins, capers
Havana, Miami, Massachusetts, Ohio
I’m mapping a way for my eager mouth and heart to be sated.
This kitchen is my compass, and she is the North star. Distant, as always, but glimmering.
I am not
over
whelmed.
I am not
under
whelmed.
I am
just
whelmed.
And that is
fine
by me.
