Lay your head upon the pillow of your arm,
like Mother Goose tucking her bill into feather down.
Forget, for a moment, your heartbeat.
Watch sideways the little gray gosling clouds
skim the surface of the lake.
There is a breeze.
There is a mist.
It is summer.
You are here.
I’m not sure I know what normal feels like anymore,
but I want to to get back there.
Not some perfect state
but a level of pain and energy
that I can handle,
without the nausea.
I don’t want to sleep through my weekends
and my summer
and my life.
I’m not asking for
the deeply weird dreams to stop
or some miracle cure for my headaches,
but a version of life I was used to,
one that fit better
if not exactly right.
I want to feel
the same kind of bad as before,
not this new worse.
I want to reach the pathetic level of productive
I used to be able to achieve
instead of this nearly nothing.
I want to get back to normal again,
whatever that is
(for it has been so many different things
at different times).
After Pablo Neruda’s “A Dog Has Died”
I don’t lie next to you on the bed,
and I don’t plan to join you now. For me,
it’s the stubborness of cold words
because I don’t believe in absolute
togetherness. Promises droop like a giant peach,
holding a world of large insects
who befriend a boy. On the page,
they await us, again and again.
Though I won’t speak of love,
it hovers around us, like the blowing wind
or the stars that float above seagulls.
Intimacy takes many forms, and one is silence.
Time is ours to waste, here in this pure land
sweet with chocolates and kindnesses
and shameless daily joy.
We are not yet gone.
I remember Grammy sitting
at the small kitchen table,
her back to the built-in cabinet
and drawers Grandpa built.
Her glasses on the end of her
nose, she is sipping black coffee
while playing Solitaire.
Grampa sits across from her.
I see him stir the cream into
his coffee with the end of the
pencil he was using for the
sketch of some project he’s making.
Even as a small child, I was
watching all the grown-ups,
how they attended to things,
what caught their attention,
how they sat silently together.
It was their calm presence
that gave me security,
even when I was just a quiet
observer in their world.
6/9/25
KW
they remind me when we went to mamaw’s
taking the new road, which passed the back yard
the front porch aligned with the creek, the old road
once under the arbor, down the concrete steps
we played on the aluminum glider
its screech announcing our visit, followed by
screen door whacks, plop of bucket in well,
the crunch of green apples papaw would pick by the barn
did I tell you he used to save snowballs wrapped in foil?
saved for us kids when summer came and we couldn’t remember
the cold we once held so dear
now an impossible dream
Our daily lives, punctuated by pleasure.
The w.
The feel of silk, satin, or velvet.
A baby’s soft skin.
Soft friendly whispers.
Feeling a kitten’s soft fur.
A whispered endearment.
Tinkeling wind chimes.
A song bird’s bright solo.
We take it for granted
as part of our day
not noting how special
a gift it can be
for recharging our soul.
Do what you can
toward peace for us all.
I had a grilled
chicken sandwich
and a fruit cup
washed down with
a diet Coke, and
I still think
I might’ve had too much.
Calories jump higher and higher
as the day goes on. They want me
to food journal, write down everything
that goes in my body. I don’t wanna.
Blissfully ignorant is something I want back.
No one counts calories when you’re 5.
I’m sick of my body hoarding the
precious pounds it’s collected,
only letting them go during bouts
with stomach bugs. I want to be
healthy without effort.
I want a body that
works right, that doesn’t
need to be strong or svelte
enough for me, that doesn’t
have to turn down food
like I turn down overtime,
that makes me feel comfortable
about being in a world
where there’s so much
I want to eat.
Some days my normal tasks feel
like five alarm fires to my brain.
I am walking to the corner store,
or I am being hunted for sport.
When I bravely venture out, my cheap
foam sandals thwack and suck
the entire way, clinging in the spaces
between me, and the sweating sidewalk.
There’s little resolution here.
The universe guides my way,
path paved with dingy florescence,
Arizona Iced Tea, tacky seasonal
goods, and eccentric flavors of chips.
I do make it to the Walgreens,
but it will be something else tomorrow.
