stand here while the sun falls
paint your mind in sky colors
foist those opinions on anyone
walking past and I’ll pull up
a piece of dirt and plop down
beside you to commiserate
to dream to hope to hold
onto the night until morning
breaks and we’ll go inside
draw the shades to block
the day so we can pretend
it’s evening again when
things seem easier to face
She asks
What does it mean to heal
I stare impassively
Rest chin upon knuckles
Expel breath from beaten body
Tongue walks barefoot across cracked lips
Heart flutters like an autumn leaf
Falling onto the rain-soaked ground
I cannot answer her question
I stand outside myself
Watching my mind body spirit
Strike blows against one another
Like drunken revelers in a bar brawl
Death is inevitable
I will not leave here alive
I faintly recall what rest looks like
Before chemo slathered me with fatigue
Even with a searchlight
My brain cannot find words TBIs
A tsunami waves of tears
Erodes my safe place my parents die
Yet I still hear my father’s words
You are a fighter you do not quit
Loop like a song on repeat
Maybe healing looks like
Staying in the ring
Wiping every trace of blood sweat pain
From a face stained with tears
Maybe healing is just surviving the fight
she scoured the beach every morning
for the perfect treasures
the ones that woud leave deep impressios on her heart
each shell choosen carefully with a purpose
often turned into mementos she would create
sharing with those she loved so dear
they were all different in ma ny ways
you see the ocean had put then through the test
crashing on and off the shore
something in each one would catch her eye
soon to be added to her collection of summer art.
a way to share a piece of her heart .
We lived beside a bridgeless branch that flooded
the whole time I was a kid. Down a canopied path,
we went through, or went around.
No bridge. Before me, maybe,
my parents remember
their wood bridge. Perhaps swept away
in between the years. It’s squat concrete now,
for all it’s worth. Just a low meander
in a gully in a thicket. Freshwater bivalves
and bluetipped black butterflies.
Angry black crawdads
and a solitary water snake.
But we were baptized there: I remember
coming up gasping in a big white tee:
the place I used to play made new,
echoing of frogs and foreign Holiness tongues,
my mother’s.
Low and gray high water.
Branches from the branches,
somewhere between ditch, stream, and river.
Before dementia began to erase
his memories of his mother,
so beautiful in her lacy 1920’s
wedding dress, or his tall
broad shouldered, tuxedo clad
father. Before his earliest memories
of being the beloved first born
grandson grew pale and paler,
he collected photographs
labeled each in neat dark
handwriting, gave us the gift
of knowing what he’d soon forget.
This morning’s like a mountain burning,
snowy peaks subliming to steam.
The clouds, lightning stricken,
still tinged orange, linger in cornflower
fields. In the wake
of the storm, God smiles in the firmament.
“What an imaginable sadness,”
her comment read.
She meant un-imaginable,
but the accidental omission
makes the sentence true.
There is hardly a limit
to what we can imagine.
If, for example, I described to you
in vivid detail, say,
a giant rainbow beetle—
its black marble eyes,
three sets of legs,
front set slightly serrated,
growing from a dome-shaped,
iridescent exoskeleton
(electric green, violet, & gold)
alight in the brilliant sun—
you could picture it, right?
It’s right there
in your mind’s eye.
But what would you see,
I wonder, if you allowed me
to describe for you
the shape of my sorrow,
its height &
impressive weight,
its texture, its many
changing colors.
Muddy water
from a swollen waterfall
the drain scarcely
keeps apace with the flow.
There are no fish in the pool
the kings of this realm
are water striders.
Gleaming black carapace,
long, tentacle-like mouthparts
as they literally
walk on water.
A feat only accomplished by
one human.
He walked on water through
divine intervention
or maybe some chakra focused into the feet
depends on what you read.
Water striders use good, old-fashioned
hydrophobicity coupled with surface tension.
Simple science, but compelling.
My boys and I watch them
skating across the pool
searching out mosquito larvae
enjoying a specific ecosystem
pondering the niche we witness
marveling at the small wonders
we don’t often enough stop and see.
