Posts for June 12, 2024 (page 4)

Some slipshod witch,

Lately, my body has forgotten
how to sleep. I recite my childhood
prayer, “Now I lay me down
to sleep.” But I don’t. 

Wakefulness chases me
through the still small hours.
Midnight. Three am. My body
restless, my mind turning

like a chicken on a spit.
And in those rare moments
when I lapse into sleep,
my dreams parade a list of loss. 

All my family elders, every
pet that has died. All the homes
that I have lost. All the friends
that are no longer mine. 

she grabs a fistful
of innocence
clovers
flowers and all
offers them up
dusting the ripped greens
from chubby fingers
onto a covered bookcase

they will dry
in death

then I will brush them
into my hand
worn well from
the work
mindful to catch
each piece
smile
and throw them
away

My father sings

to hummingbirds. We

used to wait and hear

his voice with the guitar,

or in the pews at church. 

Once, I heard him sing

over the hum of a vacuum.

But now, he sings to hummingbirds. 

We call them his children. 

“Your children are hungry,”

we say when the sugar water

runs dry. And he fills the feeders

promptly. “Little birdie,” 

goes the song, as they buzz

around him, anxious for a drink. 

He feeds them well, keeps

those red feeders full for those

green and white bellies. And

they grow accustomed

to the sugar water. They don’t

have to find food on their own

because he is there.

I do. 

Remember school shootings.
Young slaughtered innocents,
souls that live on.

Open your heart
take them in.

On the patio at a desert retreat center, I wait.  Not for God, like Simone Weil, but for a hummingbird.  This hummingbird loves one small bare branch on the woody ocotillo in front of me.  Not the next small branch, just the one.  I want the hummingbird to come.  I wish the hummingbird would come.  Oh—the hummingbird has come.  I see his bright black eye, long straight black beak slightly curved at the end.   Now I want the hummingbird to leave.  What makes the hummingbird leave?  He twitters.  He twitches his small ruff, that black vent on the side of his neck.  He turns his head, first right, then left.  Listens.  Click of my camera’s shutter; footsteps and a human voice on a nearby path.  They don’t make him leave.  The breeze?  My hands slithering around the camera body?  A blink of my eyes?  He’s gone.  I wait for him to come back.  Sometimes he only hovers, nearby; othertimes he disappears for a few minutes.  Once he zooms past me, almost grazing my face.  Only when he whirs by do I see the green glint of his wings.  For an hour, I stand.  I am a silverhaired plant, calm, quiet like a saguaro, unmoving in the breeze.  I hardly notice my aching shoulders, left sock bunched under my heel, rocks beneath my sneakers.  Like Weil, I surrender.  I wait. 

One day I’ll miss laundry mountain

Abundant with multicolored cascades

The summit I fear I may never reach

One day I’ll miss the chip crumbs

Embedded in the carpet

The eternal foe of the overworked vacuum

One day I’ll miss the sticky spills

Kool aid kisses on the couch

A paper towel supply that never suffices

One day I’ll miss the kid cacophony

Toddler hums and preschool hymns

Coalescing into a chaotic harmony

One day I’ll miss the midnight awakenings

Tiny feet fleeing down the hall

Desperate pleas for comforting cuddles

One day all I’ll have are clean floors

A house too quiet

A bed too cold

A sleep too solid

I’ll wish for all I once took for granted

I’ll beg for

One

More

Day

(at Lettuce Lake Park, Tampa)

Spatterdock
and water lilies
a swamp forest of cypress,
hardwood hammocks
and pine flatwoods
kayaks and alligators
i’m not such a nature person
other than everybody is nature
and all my other everybodies
have flown the coup
(temporarily i hope)
my granddaughter phones
that i’m living in paradise.
Like the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock
i’m starved for affection

Again today 
an osprey soars above 
with singular focus on the surface
of the river, and then it dives,
feet outstretched and yellow eyes
sighting straight along its talons
in its hunger for live fish,
Paradise is not for everybody

Gather the right words, and for spice, a few wrong ones.
Put them lovingly, leapingly together
and let them fly free from the dark, dank ditch you’re in.
They won’t help you get out.
That’s not what this is about.

They’ll fill the world with beauty,
but the world doesn’t know what to do with beauty.
Can’t sell it. Can’t buy it.
Can’t use it to sell anything
above sticker price or buy it below.

The few who get it will be stunned, unable to function.
When the words return, arrange them into a bed
and sleep on them. Bouquet them. Arrange them
into dreams and let them break you all the way down.
Re-arrange them into a new poem,

and then another, and another, and–