an offering
don’t.
So I won’t.
And we’re gonna write a poem somehow,
even if the neighbors are being loud,
and coffee casually drip dots the page
so that we don’t notice it right away,
and now there are tiny luke warm smudges,
but where good verse should be, it spells nothing.
she hoped this time
it would be
easier
trusted this go-round
would prove her
wise
found out love
offers not
wisdom-
but requires
a shit ton more
love
Two old friends came
To visit this evening
One, returned with a worn hug
With tears behind a smile
The other, a familiar hitch in my chest
Named Ol’ Anxiety, that comes from dread
Because I knew I couldn’t
Save her heart the ache
Looming in the words
“We’re getting a divorce.”
There’s no amount of hugging
Sarcasm, or cheesecake
To fix any sort of brokeness
Such as the loss
Of life of your love
Especially the only love
You’ve ever known
Instead I just offer
A few nods and back pats
Over a cheeseburger
Reminding her that this
Really isn’t the end,
While memories of my own divorce
Flashed through my head
While picking at a blanket
As we snuggled
“This too shall pass….”
I say
I just don’t know when.
I was three when Halleys passed
1986
I walked most of the way up the deep hollow
Past meadows following the creek
Over bridges
Winding up a gravel driveway
Around over or through the red cattle fence
Past the farmhouse frozen
in another time
With peach trees, lights still on, furnished. As if someone still lived there.
Theres quilts and sheets on the clothes wires sometimes, and baskets of apples left gathered nearby apple trees, a ladder, an antiquated street light always buzzed somewhere
Dad carries me some of the way,
it grew steeper as you pressed nearer
the top of the hill, ringed with many shapely cedars protecting an iron fenced graveyard.
The tops of all the other mountains stretch away from you here, and the wind blows differently,
wilder
The starry sky presses down
And owls hoot and
The whipoorwill and frogs
Sing songs my mother knew
I know I fell asleep after finding it in the telescope, and maybe I saw Saturn’s rings
Rachel was a musician
Her ashes are on her piano.
It’s mine now
She knew everything the bobcats knew,
The forest knew her as well
I saw things with her that only happened because the mountains were all used to her
She knew the habits of the stars, the birds,
and the other things that moved from Steven’s Cemetery to Haldeman
And music echoed off those hills
Your eyes adjust to the dark and you don’t use flashlights to make the journey home.
Pace yourself…
That’s what I need to do
I screamed a lot,
Ran up and down the stairs,
And thought about Nicolas Cage for some reason
I was dizzy
With spit and cracking ears
I had to lay down
