I wish you could spread
in that restless, vindictive,
ambling way —
to not be held back,
to spew spores whenever
someone tries to uproot you,
sloppy, lazy
enough to reproduce
anywhere.
How I wish you did.
It would all be so much easier
if you did.
———
Something along the lines of Hafiz.
How you pull me down and up
at once.
In you I see ancient, raw days
when I brought something polished
and fine and you,
face down,
eyes darting,
question my sincerity
which I prove again
and again, for now.
Stones are easy to stack
when they have been split
and sanded. The challenge
is to balance uneven ones,
those shaped by nature’s
peculiar whims, or
those left
to their own devices —
like feral children bent on
revolt, intent on upsetting
our day’s order. They insist
that the stacker sit down to
watch how it is really done.
———
On pondering the parallels of stone stacking and poetry, and then landing as I often do on ‘the trouble’ with misfits.
In my belly, now flat,
curled a spine
with indistinct tissue
wrapped around
its tiny bones
like those of a bird.
I imagine them now
bleached by the sun
and gathered by the wind
into some sheltered corner
like pickup stix.
In that corner,
sand, brittle leaves, acorns
layer alongside, under, above
and make another mound
perhaps more permanent.
Perhaps not.
My beating heart moves to them
and follows each turn
of their journey.
They flutter inside of me
restless, kicking for love,
wondering, always wondering,
whose arms will hold them.
They find kindness instead
in the rocking
of this soft breeze,
in the tending
of these haven leaves.
They flutter,
on and on.
I bless them,
this mound.
———–
Set in motion by Jeff Schwaner’s beautiful Effigy Mounds.
For Mother’s Day. I find parenthood to be a place fixed somewhere between keeping and letting go. In every stage, realized or not.
Inexplicable. That is what I say
when you tell me
and all I can do is shrug
and count:
How this is one more thing
that separates us
How you would kiss me goodnight
and I would pull back
How you stood wishing the boys
would come to you
not out of duty, however
precisely placed
Even one hard command
changes everything
I stop myself in this rant
because you are alone
as am I
awkwardly spinning through space
unexpected in every sense
And in our irregular orbits
we await a chance to cross
at last as night turns
blacker black
and perhaps we will soon decry
that our crooked ways
did not braid together
more often
in all the time on earth
that rambled round us
Even the meek swell
with water running down.
Come now, spill yourself
into our long water.
Let it trail you down
over gullies,
under arched branches
in its passive rush.
Feel the undercurrent,
what draws the flow
beyond eyes,
buoying each awkward twig,
tripping up glossy stones.
How I long to know it by heart –
to hang on its stories,
to tell it mine,
and then to burst forth
my own river,
to tumble over earth afresh,
upending stubborn boulders,
washing the grass clean
to grow wild again,
letting love loose
in all its crazy ruckus
over every plat we survey.
For Mr. and Mrs. Jorian.
Poems from in between 