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.

“Don’t talk about how he ran away
Took Another woman to another state
For awhile.”

He came back.

Stayed Still………..
                                Like
                                The 
                                Tap
                                Root
                                Of
                                A
                                Dead
                                Walnut
                                Tree.

We cannot eat cake
if circus is expensive.
Choose, choose, choose, dollars.

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.