Cattail
A fluff in the wind
To chase around and around
Her unruly tail
I have some concerns
about bombs and propaganda,
both of them dropping
around the clock,
about the reckless ancestors we’ve become
to ourselves and our children,
about the rising of fascism
and the dwindling of light-
ning bugs, here in the tall grass that I haven’t
managed to mow. If I do,
butterflies will stir like speckled dust,
the ones that remain. I’ll pull back the levers,
slow the zero-turn beast I finally
learned to wield. The instructions I was given:
steer it like a tank,
hardly illuminating,
as if anyone should ever
know what that means, and yet
how many times now
have I traced a perfect circle,
tight around the trunk
of a punctured and choking ash?
is like twisting
the pepper grinder
hands awake
to the click
click click
no peppercorns
inside
new covid strain you’ll see on the news next month
i exist to testdrive them all
twitches
demyelinate
word vapor
cloudy form
someone needs
me to be clearer
it will be two weeks before
I can
if you tell the wrong doctor your body alternates through cycles of
infection
pain
itching
burning
in their turns
all days
never all at once
hysteria hypochondria functional neurologic disorder
get batted around
thank gawd for better doctors
in toxic soup
of
these
U n i t e d States
please
grow,
little plants
may this
yard become
its own
country
Everyone has limits.
Not everyone accepts them.
-Felix Baumgartner
There is no such thing
as an infinite endlessness
between two fixed points in space.
We are given starlight as proof of this.
And the furthest away
one can be from another
is in not knowing they exist or
not having faith
in what they can do.
I may not be able traverse light years
but I have discovered
the Earth
is really quite small–
has shrunk, even, in the advent
of trains and planes and cars,
not to mention our little technologies
or the still-present power
of pen and paper
So there is little of this world
that I’ve found
truly impossible.
The question now is
what does that mean
for you
and I?
I’ve met lovers who were born
decades apart,
watched people learn to fly again
after rock bottoms of divorce.
A friend of mine hasn’t lived
in the same country as her boyfriend
for years.
My own grandparents began
as a World War II letter
sent by a woman
to a soldier she’d never met,
so don’t try to tell me
what can or cannot be done.
Ask yourself again,
what does that mean
for you
and I?
If our entire existence can fit inside envelopes
I will savor every letter.
If our only connections are data and radio waves
I’ll keep my phone forever charged.
If I only get to see you
for one hour out of a busy week
it’ll be the best damn hour of that week.
And in those limited spaces
is the only true endlessness–
the capacity of love
to fill in all the emptiness
and the only impossilities are
if you don’t want this–
which I can say nothing to–
or, more important to the moment now,
if you don’t have faith.
For I believe
somewhere in your skies
is a dim and distant star
just waiting to be seen
and if you can find me,
if you can recognize me and trust
that I can make it home,
I will dive from the cosmos
and through the heavens.
Thus the fearful
and the faithless
will find a way
to collide
in eternal creation.
That’s what all of this means to me.
All that’s left then is
what does all of this mean
for you?
Out the door before dawn
pause
breathe deep
hold it – count to four
Let – It – Gooooooo
The morning restores my soul
A quiet walk
I the observer
Greeted first by the playful bunny
I watched
He hopped, hopped, hopped away
My second encounter on my journey
Two Cardnials, one red, one brown
First they hopped
Then they flew, flew, flew away
I heard the rustle before I saw
Squirrels dashing and darting
Across the street
Then climbing, climbing, climbing away
My journey had come to its end
I smiled as I relived my quiet encounters with nature
I wonder what they thought of me
Did they say
There is a human
She walked, walked, walked away
Safe at my door
The Sun was waking up
With a great big hello and
Ready to glow
I tried to dress like Diane Keaton
in boxy blazers and man trousers.
I wore a long strap that crossed
the front of me and held my purse
at my side.
I wore a hybrid hat bred
from a bowler and a fedora.
I wanted to exude joie de vie,
but I looked like a little boy
who had rummaged
in the attic.
I couldn’t carry it off,
for I’m no Diane Keaton,
nor will I ever be,
nor will anyone.
