after William Kitterman
imagine if this went on
much longer
if it happened again
and again
an old friend speaks:
you are a scared little man
my sweet friend
my sweet from end to end
bring a cup of joe
sit here on the stoop
slurping pain
let it happen once again
after the morning noise
where I thought much,
felt little—evening came—
and my heart was breaking,
no one was there to notice,
because I hadn’t noticed them.
Never touched one
No desire to wield
a tool to kill.
Pleading to
BAN
assault weapons.
Caregiving is a dance in light
dangling fingers and toes in spaces and places filled with indiscernible chi
ultimately leading to a place we all go . . .
the Light, the Shadow, the Dark, we know not
the caregiver grows in depths of silently knowing . . .
Listening to nature’s way of driving the transition from here to there . . .
gently shown when drugs need to be held at bay ~ and natural herbs invited instead
And as the usher, dim torch in hand, reads the ticket in the dark,
intuition leads on a lightened path,
ascending and descending in small steps
right to the velvet lodge seat
as the Light grows brighter inside . . .
Grandparents already
I think I was made to exist within a tornado
As a girl I loved storms much more than Play-Doh
I’m more beguiled on back roads than the dark of a bar
Long hair flows wild when there’s no top on your car
They cautioned against sticking my neck out bare
I wonder if the movie proposed the dare
My dad took me to see Twister
at the theater when I was ten
I never wanted
to touch the
tunnel but
Simply
Feel
The
Wind
At 16 I saw the pinky finger of God touch Masterson Station
to leave a message in the remains of man’s creation
They asked for my dad’s license because hey no through traffic
but no one sight sees with kids at a
view so tragic
other than those who take city planning games
And destroy them to see what the public blames
And isn’t that
POWER
why we are
fascinated so?
How everything
glides
amongst
Lightening
glow
My husband watches YouTube for storm chasers
Who study the currents with meteorological lasers
They answer the question of why does it rain
What qualifies precipitation to be hurricane
We expect expert answers be exact
and wonder why
no one agrees which fact will
fall from the sky
For whatever storm
percentage is listed today
Humanity will rebuild
what
nature
leads
a
s
t
r
a
y
**Please forgive potential formatting errors**
As of now, the hanging fruit basket is full.
I see it. By the end of this poem, it will be empty.
We have made The Big Mistake. Consequently, you,
dear reader, can infer the passage of time.
But it’s much slower than you might think. Five minutes? Two?
Anyway, We hope China will sit it out.
The President made a statement and then boarded a plane.
The Supreme Court is weighing in. My suitcase is still upright
near the front door. Sour air of absence. No one has lived here
in ages. The Speaker of the House is livestreaming from Austin.
Getting back to the scene now: Hanging basket in the corner
of the dining room off the kitchen in a small ranch house.
They say the missiles are coming. It’s the early afternoon,
way before anyone should be home from the world.
But everyone is probably home, or on the way. We’ve all heard.
Most of the news says it’s happening, but some still say: no
it won’t happen, who would do that? The fruit basket is still;
the fruit ripening. Just a hint of the sun threatening
to prepare to set. The President has disappeared.
We didn’t think that we would have to do this.
We probably didn’t have to, but we seem to have done it.
Somewhere in the American Midwest. Where things often threaten
to act before they actually do. Kiss of light along the kitchen table.
Moscow has made a statement, has committed. Long streak of light
on the polished wood says the sun is slanting now, slightly drowsy.
Something happened in Poland and then another thing in London,
followed by a thing in New York. Here in my mother’s house
in far off Kansas, I am just standing in the kitchen hoping for nothing.
Seemed once, like a good bet. Nothing ever happened when I grew up.
No one has any business out here on the far-as-the-eye-can-see earth.
Open sky, open land: claustrophobic. Impenetrable earth
beneath the schizophrenic sky. Though I have not been back
in decades, I recall, when I was a kid, the feeling of being squished.
Two planes. Sound familiar? And now this thing in Tokyo. I see the two
planes twice when I look out the window over the sink.
The land/sky plane marking a sandwiched disbelief and in the actual sky:
the hurried craquelure trail of an F-22 out of Mcconnell AFB and way,
way beneath that a Grumman Ag Cat, white with red racing stripes,
spraying wild, inarticulate loops over the sorghum fields to the northwest.
Beijing made a statement. China is not sitting it out. It’s happening.
As I stand here, watching the unsettling motion of a plane
between the motionless planes, in the vertigo of being panicked and safe
all at once, I turn on the water. Standing at this sink reminds me of losing
teeth, rinsing with saltwater, spitting. This same window-view. Perpetual
plainland where sits the house, and where hangs the fruit basket,
and where used to live my mother. No water comes out of the faucet.
Quietly. Feeling now further removed from the most removed place
I can imagine. Silently become silent. Xanax won’t fix this.
The earth moves without moving while moving me.
The sun is now, like actually, starting to set.
Lined with electric wires like pastures
keeping cattle within the boundaries of our land,
the southern most point of this ranch,
where they wander together and apart
chewing cud from green grass.
She was flagrant about the way she clipped fences
and mocked us for markers we’d hung out against wolves.
There was really no way to protect her
the way we protected the cows who had little to say
other than their lowing, low and slow across the valley
calling to one another, keeping the heard intact.
She struck out on her third at bat.
He pitched a fast ball after the curve.
They bent heads together in a moment absurd
after the ball struck her helmetless head.
