When one generation dies
The following one carries
Within
The sound of their
Voices
Which reside in their hearts
Echo in their letters
And laughter is heard jotted on cards
Yet wth each new generation
Vocal vibrations of ancestors
Lessen in intensity
Over time
With fewer vestiges left to
Remind us of them
As I gaze at these family photographs
I ask myself
How can I pass on to my
Grandsons
All that know about my
Grandparents
Without the music of their
Voices
caretaker
you give
so much
from the care
you take
caregiver
you take
so much
from the care
you give
When I hit the scene- Run the scalpel Quick whisper The ocean was my
the crowd parts. down my spine’s at the table, first long-distance
Splits open. invisible ridge. Aperture-round lover. She pulls
When I hit the Fragile- do it fragile. in my memory. her sand
scene I split open. Aforementioned We know better. through my soul-
Hit me and I’ll dirty fingers- We have stars I carry a pearl
split right open. like clumsy thumbs on the ends of our eleven hours home
Get me all over into mandarin oranges, eyelashes. to horse country.
your shoes. like juice down We have gold Everywhere I am is
Pat me on the slender, bony wrists. in the soles of somewhere I
back and I’ll bruise Polish me to our boots. belong. Everywhere
like moldy fruit- shining pearly I have always been I am is somewhere
like i’ve overstayed white, something in love with people I wish you
my welcome. you could be proud of. with round-bedded nails. were too.
It was my first real job. Two years invested in secretarial school – long stretches of shorthand, typing our fingers into devotion, poised hours walking around with a book on our heads. Every month they took us to lunch – best dresses cleaned and pressed, hat pinned to styled hair, gloves starched white. We used the correct silverware, made small talk between polite nibbles, placed our gloves discreetly on the lap below the napkin. Nothing there prepared me for my boss – a balding man in a tatty brown suit. That first morning, he told me his wife was from Texas, liked that he wore his cowboy hat and boots to bed, made him say giddy up at just the right moment, leaned his clammy bulk over me, pulled open one of the desk units, and said he would have to get into my drawers now and then. I went home for lunch, called the office and said I wasn’t coming back, then took a job at a fast food restaurant. Nobody mentioned my drawers, and the only hat I had to wear was made of paper.
Spent with gardening
Boots shed feet propped to porch rail
She digs the sunset
I am too lazy and cheap
to plant the garden I want.
So…. I took a painting class
and I will paint it.
There are many advantages to
my potential, virtual garden.
No watering, weeding or wilting
no deadheading.
I don’t have to wait for things
to grow, no surprises.
No freezing and dying when
The season is over.
Seasons will not matter
in my garden.
I can paint daffodils
with sunflowers,
lilies of the valley with mums
crocus with marigolds.
My garden will bloom on the
wall in the cold of winter.
But, I wouldn’t be able to pick it’s
flowers for the table,
feel their softness
smell their fragrance.
It will not feed the bees.
And, no matter how much I learn,
how long I practice.
I will never come close to replicating
the beauty and grace
of the simplest flower.
What comes after a bad day?
Something relatively better or just the same?
Do we only appreciate the sunshine after the rain,
or after the cold five months of winter’s pain?
Maybe there’s a daily silver-lining,
but I’m having a hard time trying to find it.
I recall times when life was lofty,
now I lay at night reflecting on them fondly.
When the days were long, but not so daunting,
and when we were grinning softly,
before the gloom embodied us.
Tomorrow we shake it off,
and wear it in a whole new way.
“Intimacy, whether found or lost,
is a sure thing.”
– Stacey D’Erasmo, on writing
III.
it’s 3 a.m., & i’m riding
the rings of Saturn.
at 2 a.m., i’d given up
sleep. i needed answers.
i’d started outsourcing
experience.
anyone who’s dated
online—knows—that
moment when you ask
to take a step further:
to move to the phone
revealing & finding
voice; it’s when you step
from fantasy to tangible,
when an interest becomes
a person. in short: More.
it’s impossible to hear them
& not, in a way, know them.
i have your words.
i have description
of voice. so i search
google gold dust woman.
sound app for waves on a shore—
chorus of crickets at night~
breeze to stir the trees.
& NASA, now, to settle
beneath blankets of space—
too much space & too much
silence; you’d shared
shades of silence, too.
but silence, the kind
of silences you shared
are the secrets of intimacy
& proximity we do not (yet)
have.
it’s 3 a.m., & i’m still
laying in the dark
of questions & possibility.
*** *** ***
II.
Scribe it in blood—
carve it in flesh.
This breath.
This wish.
This runic landscape
just beneath skin,
like temples,
like labyrinths
of possibility
buried beneath
viscera
& tendon
connecting spirit
& bone.
Paint it in need,
drown it in release.
You
& Me
subsumed by
We.
*** *** ***
I.
There is a place
between here & there
where we arrive
at a choice.
Meet me at the tree
(your favorite tree, or
the willow that weeps
from my childhood);
choose to
fall
into its cradle space.
There’s a knot
in a trunk
of hope & the sun
is waiting
for an us.
A tiny opening/a light wish:
I’ve been lost in the semblance, the memory, of a kiss
that has not been discovered—between lips that have only
yet imagined the secrets whispered, one pair to the other,
& first taste of a mirrored dance.
Stop imagining.
Come
with me
there, where we forget all that’s intellectual or logical or effectual &
choose
this
refrain:
Hands, together, palm to palm, face to face, forgetting
anything but the flight along legs open to wonder / or pressed
between pages, against chests, to remember, room left only
for the energy of souls, drawing nigh & nigher, that ev’ry wing’ed breath
might break into fire; that what is written, story to story, poem to poem, gasp
to contented gasp, would set words reeling~~spinning~~Be
something more than what we, as post-romantic writers, can
create
after the reality
of once
or the fantasy
of once upons
to the only once
that matters:
The Once
More.
