Posts for June 9, 2024 (page 3)

So yesterday
I didn’t do anything but what I wanted to do

I hugged my babies
I watered my garden
(the parts without weeds)
I made sure I took a good hard look
At what I put out into the universe
As well as what I need
I went to the library and checked out books
(I forgot I used to read a lot more than I do now)

Did a couple deliveries to earn some extra cash
Spent half of it on some groceries and put the rest up for gas
Listened to one of my friends on the radio
Reminded of how far we’ve all come
And how much further we’ve yet to go

I stopped by my friend’s mural and told her she was missed
I said a prayer for the ones we lost yesterday
I said a prayer for the ones we will lose tomorrow
In all hopes that our joys will be greater than our sorrows

And somewhere I took a nap that went past 11pm
Woke up and spent the last hour wrapped in love, lost track of time
Looked at the clock and realized that it was past 12
Past the deadline to complete the poem before midnight on the date
And there’s a summary of how I spent this past 6/8

Our entrance into this realm of existence
Is one of bursts of light and pain
Before the journey
there is a great forgetting
we come back again
again
again
Shouldered on each side of the portal,
the (M)other Wound
the last few visions of the Mission
but they flash by too quickly
to be imprinted

You once walked to the purest music
And put into our minds the skull-faced masks
And welded metals
Of yesterday’s devils and puppeteers.

The same butterflies
Denote storybooks and family legacies.

A throwback and a raconteur,
Writing the tale of a man and a monster,
And the areas where the two
Find themselves intertwined.

We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.          
            —William Anders  

Christmas Eve, 1968. Three men make history on the near side of the Moon as the Earth’s south pole rises into frame, blue as a bonnet, a berry, a baby boy; the ocean, delphinium, lapis, a jay. It’s a marbled sky, the scatter of sun as it travels on its shortest waves to enter these furthest eyes, the first to orbit a foreign body. & then ten years later Withers writes in rhythm&b: when I wake up in the morning, love, & the sunlight hurts my eyes, as a way of assuring us that everything will be alright & then ten years later my brother is born to reassure & extend our family line, & then ten years later I stand between two fast-moving trains on the tracks outside of town where I feel the untamed wind whip my skin, & no matter how much time passes, this remains the most alive I’ve ever felt, this bright patch over spreading darkness. &, so, I think this is why Bill Anders reached for the color film, told his team to be patient as he set up the shot to send back to Earth to be developed at the only same-day color processing lab in all of South Texas. Because maybe all we need to do to save ourselves is walk upright somewhere new, soft footprints floating with uncertain mass, eyes trained toward home & anything blue.

Astronaut William Anders died on Friday, June 7, 2024 in a small plane accident in Washington state at the age of 90. He was credited with taking the famous Earthrise photograph.

4:30 AM and you call out and I must answer

You instantly fall prey to the warmth of my arms

Seeking safety and comfort

From a familiar embrace

My eyes are heavy

I realize how much

I needed this too

The same summer I was old enough
to ride my bike the few blocks over to Vaught’s Corner Grocery
and pedal home balancing my dad’s six pack of Dr. Pepper bottles on the handlebars
or clutching the twisted end of a loaf of Butternut against my grip,
playing cards tick tick ticking in my spokes,
I was also old enough to absorb news about the Chowchilla kidnapping.

Three men hijacked a school bus with 26 kids in California,
kidnapping them and the bus driver and hiding them in a buried shipping container.
For a week, the 11 o’clock news drifted into my bedroom
with the story’s sensational details of
how the kids and the lone adult stacked mattresses
the kidnappers had provided for them,
pried open the hatch, dug out, and escaped to safety.
Then the kidnappers,
who had worn panty-hose masks like villains straight out of Scooby Doo cartoons,
surrendered to police.

That summer, Bruce Jenner won gold at the Olympics,
Nadia Comaneci scored a perfect 10,
I played Kill the Carrier with my cousins, sister, and brother
until one of us got hurt enough to cry,
and our parents began to make us kids ride together to Vaught’s.

(For JKS    1947 – 2022)

I knock at the stone’s front door.
”It’s only me, let me come in…
…I don’t have much time.
My mortality should touch you.”
Wislawa Szymborska

Stoney
I’m not sitting beside you
But on top of you
in my writing chair
Perched on a flat stone’s turtle back
                like a green heron
                in the middle of Five Lick Creek
                waiting for a crayfish morsel    
                to reveal itself
A morsel that contains
                the oversized claw
                of my obsessed mind
I know this stone is You
Not like Jesus’ stale bit of bread
But You
                in the molecules
                in the tiniest grains
                of this limestone promontory
You are the Prime Design
                of this singular stone
                with its raised fossils
                and curious hieroglyphics 
I don’t have to read You
                hear You, see You, smell You,
                taste you, feel You
In this stone You are here
You seep into me
I seep into You;
It’s one of those tricks of space & time
The play of dark & light
The play of how you were true
                 and ruthless and dependable

I didn’t know You had died
                 in October of Twenty Twenty-Two
The news came much later
                 from no person or tree or rock
But from the far off nebula of google
                 after You hadn’t responded to my calls
I still don’t know how you died
You were fine and strong and full of plans
                 the last time we talked
Perhaps you didn’t die, maybe google
                 made it up

It makes no difference
For I have spent this morning with You
                 doing what we’ve always done
Hanging out by the creek
                 with your music
                 and my poetry
Sharing some of our thoughts    
                 keeping others to our selves
Until at the end of the day
A great storm will come out of the west
And this babbling brook will rise up
Into a great torrent
To sweep us away

I’m tired of the sunscreen
and the do-you-believe-me-yet hives
and the loose-necked stare into the
far-off familiar middle distance.

I’m tired of the meningococcal vaccine that’s
hung on far too long, making me stiff-armed,
but not enough to excuse my poor performance in nearly every
sport.

Quite frankly, I’m tired of the pain that radiates out
from my bones, my tibiae pulsing in time to what I imagine is
my heartbeat.

I like to imagine that I exist separately from my body,
that I am a consciousness placed (randomly yet unfairly)
in a body I resent.
In this way, I absolve myself of blame,
of the guilt my mother and father carry,
of the “should”s they carry too close to their hearts.

When I am bone-tired, I feel like crying, like
getting on the floor and wailing and thrashing
like a toddler. This is proof that physical
pain rules the mind.

I have had many private tantrums in my mind this past week.
I will have many more this next week.
I am tired.
And the only path left to me is acceptance.

This is where I pray, at the kitchen sink
baptizing vegetables for soup. 

Onions. One hard pill on outer skin reveals
moon bodies that pull tears like tides.

Carrots. Soft brush to coax away clinging
earth, polish their hearts of gold.

Mushrooms. Damp cloth, gentle touch
to wipe away stubborn night. 

Dark greens. Cold bath in clean sink,
shake dry, set aside. 

My hands move through chore of cleaning
to monotony of chopping.

My mind rests as it never does when I
sit still. The rocking knife lulls all thought.

I am only eyes for colors piling up,
only ears for the sizzle of oil.

When the vegetables meet heat, they exhale
sun and rain and good clean dirt.

I breathe in Dad’s garden, Mom’s kitchen.
I am fed before I take one bite. 

you say,
both of us loving to fly—-
airports being the peak liminal space,
you say

everywhere’s a liminal space
is my retort

your body’s a liminal space
I want to stay forever,
so you text me in Austin:
your flight was delayed

your absence, I can only pray,
is liminal, too