When my subconscious squeezes

Shall I go to the shower
and see people who
are acquainted with me,
who seem to want
my company?

Shall I ooh/aah over gifts,
sip melted orange sherbet
and ginger ale punch,
eat tiny squares
of cheesecake and
play party games
with baby themes?

Or should I stay
home, cradling
a heating pad
when I would rather
be cradling a baby?

The package of tiny shirts
I have stored in the drawer
are meant for
my someday baby,
not her real one.

I will draw the blinds
and take Tylenol and tea,
awash in the misery
and monthly disappointment.

The invitations
were not to her liking with
‘a Celebration
of Love’ nontraditional
she huffed, I proudly ordered.

each movement, a release
of energy–
designed to hamper or harm
our opponent

never thinking of them as
enemy, only 
obstacle

learning the kata, 
much like dance choreography,
begins with memorizing each step–
repeating, until it becomes
second nature

until the ballet becomes battle
and the battle a ballet

as you study-practice-fail,
you begin to understand
the foundation of all martial art,
of all art–of life itself–is
breath

drawing it into you,
converting the gases
to energy for action,
breathing out what is
not needed

but more than that–
for you see, even galaxies
have a pattern–
the universe, now expanding–
breathing out–preparing
for the next Great Inhale

the ultimate kata, the one
True Obstacle

Remember
the value of art
differs from heart to
heart

Don’t try to force
a connection

If your heart
broadcasts vibrations 
that set your spirit free

the frequency syncs

from your heart’s station 
to other souls
who tune in
naturally

Five pieces of bread
Five pieces of bacon
Five pieces of biopsy sample

Five chunks of meat
Five chunks of musty cantaloupe
Five chunks of concrete fallen off a bridge

Five fragments of wisdom in an ancient language
Five fragments of song I know but can’t recall
Five fragments of shattered glass to be found later

Five pictures of a wedding
Five pictures of a mountain draped in morning fog
Five pictures of relatives celebrating, now all gone

Five thoughts of fear while laying in bed
Five thoughts of remembrance of the best summer
Five thoughts of resolve to make this day

I’m at a biology lab.
Bright green seaweed floats in jars
for study by braincells in white coats.  

Miasma is a genus,
of which there are species.
Two of them immediately interest me.

One, half the size of a Swiffer,
gushes like a firehose,
enthusiastic and hopeful as a puppy.  

The other, with longer fronds,
pumps laughter through our bodies.
It floats in the middle of our right kidney.  

When healthily alive, seaweed knows
the great seaworld that we don’t see
and goes where ocean needs processing.  

The study of seaweed requires trust,
the same trust that makes
creation float.  

sunrise 
shattered glass
a thousand prisms 
blooming
refracting summer
        
solstice rose rising
over rabbits and wrens
my open door

after a painting by Magritte

Of all the things I owe you—
including my life & the care you took to raise me
until I could raise myself—
I owe you most of all
my sense of how fragile things are,
how quickly they can end,
how nothing lasts.

You didn’t last—
neither you, Daddy, from heart disease at 53,
raving in your hospital bed
about rats in the room,
nor you, Mama, at 46,
on your way to work, rounding a curve
into the glare of a brilliant sunrise
& the rear of a stopped school bus
carrying my brother.

I rushed home both times—
from Yellowstone, from Basic at Fort Knox—
but you’d taken it with you
into the dark.

I’m older now than either of you,
your faces mixed up in mine,
getting old as you might have
if you’d had the chance.

Sometimes I look at a photograph of you
before I was born,
leaning on each other in a dusty driveway—
each other’s pillar,
pillars to sons soon to come—
& give thanks that I’m no one’s pillar,
fragile as I am.

Utah’s Wasatch Range forms the granite backbone
of the Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons, sculpted
by alpine glaciers during the last ice age. Wasatch

can mean low pass over high range, the way
a saxophonist stretches on tip toe to reach the high notes
and crouches to find the low notes. The mountains

have lifted and stretched after millions of years
of painless folding and faulting, wearing and tearing.
The sax player’s knees are sore after every concert.