I haven’t heard 
from him since Maman’s entire life shipped 
frozen—ropes frayed, packages whistling
in the cracked box crammed 
with clothes, moth balls, and dried fruits
from last season. She had barked, were you rocked 
near a wall? swiping the ladle from me, stirring 
the crème fraiche and butter, adding 
mollusks, and I swear, 
a little cider, a little salt, 
then a measure of wine to break 
open before dinner, I say damn!  
Damn. The smells before Maman’s cancer came:
Laertes, her chihuahua, and the nameless scent 
of a hospital, only she died 
at home, feathers beating, angels singing
Descartes backwards, I am therefore I think!

Keeping my distance from her, I’ve stood 
on fields and vast American mountains fretted 
with trees. Cabins my cafés and wind swept 
memories—then the snow-caps of winter frozen 
blue like North Seas—never lucky.

I think therefore I am in this terrible mood.

They kept 
ortolans and ravens—gray and night— 
and the pale flicker of candlelight slowed 
her heartbeat under her ribs.
I could not sense when her spirit flew,
but Papa kept 
affairs regular in their silence.  
Everyone in that room was a bird.

Eyes and talons so still you could see yourselves.

He says you’re getting 
better each time I come
But I want much MORE
to get rid of that blasted
Old lady rollator NOW!

                 “it is joy…nature makes…late as tonight”

I should be five years younger- wait.
This poem shouldn’t be happening- no.

Let me start again.
There is a violence in creation
that I am unable to stave off.
My notebooks are mostly empty,
nearly perfect, marred only by the words
I’ve somehow managed to stammer out.

Speculative sculptor,
this forest of marble
will not wilt at your touch.
Breathing upon an unshaped
slab of stone will not cause it to crumble.

How can you possibly make strides
towards anything
if you’re unwilling to stumble along the way?

The felon mythomaniac bullets righteous, deceptive nonsense.

i need this.
let me count the ways.
i collect compliments like acorns.
i can’t find them when i need them.

“The wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it’s supposed to be.” – Chidi Anagonye, The Good Place

The waves, like us, are wanderlust.
See the glimmer in their crest?  They yearn
for places they’ve never seen.
Restless, they ricochet
between shores, thrashing against Malibu
sands, tickling bare feet along Japanese coastlines,
carrying mackerel to Cape penguins, and lifting surfers
toward equatorial sun.  Wherever they go, the waves 
ferry souvenirs from their travels, carrying silt 
and seashells and messages from far away.
It seems they could go on like this forever…

Yet the world is only so vast, and someday
they’ve seen it all, so when their voyage 
is through, where do they rest?  On and on they flow,
soaring across saltwater expanse, rolling ever onward
’til they reach world’s end and spill over Earth’s edge
into oceans of endless sky. 
Soon all that’s left of the waves are the sunlight sparkles
that shine like stardust, lighting
our dark nights to guide us toward
places we’ve never seen.

Sometimes, often really,
I can’t remember not being 
a mother.  Who was I?
I know I had similar views 
of the world, what matters,
what I wanted to be.
Compared to being a mother,
my dreams were small,
somewhat shallow. 
My world expanded four 
times its original size.
My vision, all my senses 
intensified with each
daughter who came 
through me.
I am more because you 
created me, the one
you call mother. 

KW
6/27/24

Can I ask you this: Imagine you
are not you now,
but instead you bloom
like algae
in the cool flow
of a gentle river. Its steady current
ovals and ebbs, snakes
through the limestone and silica
like it has for
so long.
In this ephemera, you feel
sun,
its true bronze-gold
sweetness: the fresh
river air like a forgotten
memory–
let it encapsulate you
and ride this river,
be algae,
home as far as some distant ocean
home itself
of many rivers, 
where you live as far away as this feeling.
Let me me ask
and take you there.