My muscles tear for you,
infinitely small and subtle,
healing and tearing again.
In time, I am bent to fit you,
my edges sanding down, curves
softening, wrapping through yours,
less opposite, more flexible,
able to twist with your twistings,
sigh with your sighs,
wonder with your wonderings —
a multitudinous one.
I dissolve, I bend, I become.
Francisco stop
Cool, damp dawn air,
soft thuds of platform planks,
long row of barely kept garages,
the alley easement,
weedy vines finding life
on the chain-linked fences
running along the tracks
and the wooden gates of tiny yards.
The city has its own nature,
breathing as it does
in these quiet between times.
A mountain range rests in late summer
from the pounding rain, melting snow,
unruly streams, finally basking,
drying out and finding its rhythm.
The city pauses now — feel it,
let it remind you —
gathering itself, opening.
Dark light dark light
dark light dark light
aspen leaves flip and turn
back and forth and around,
soft sequins mirroring
the six-sided moon,
imperceptible, but just
enough to slow time,
open hazy wonder —
dark light dark light
dark light dark light
dark light —
The Bustle in his Bedroom
The Weekend after Drop-off
Is loneliest of industries
Enacted by the Mother —
The Sweeping up of Bookshelves
And putting Clothes away
We shall not see used again
Until Thanksgiving (nay! Christmas) —
——————————————
One thousand pardons to Miss Dickinson, and to readers who are a little tired of my empty nest angst. But at least I chuckled a bit writing this. Good sign for everyone!
The first sense you have is of isolation
and how disorienting it feels
to not see anyone, even a stranger.
You wonder if really you are alone after all:
Perhaps someone is down the trail
and you have not heard them yet,
don’t know they are coming,
aren’t sure if it will be someone you know.
Then you sit on the dried out log
near the scattered ashes
telling yourself that your senses are enough,
that they are accurate,
that you have not missed anything
and that, really, you are alone.
A slight breeze,
relieved no doubt by being out of the sun,
runs through your hair at your neckline.
Dried leaves,
still hanging there from last year,
intermix with the thick mid-summer leaves,
adding an undertone to the dizzying,
showering sound.
A bird flutters in a nearby blueberry bush.
My breath still catches
remembering the story of KC
snatching that rattler and
tossing it down the dune
from up on the forest ridge.
The breeze pulls my attention back
and points to the little lake.
When I was a girl,
you could see the green water
with its dots of swimmers and triangles of boats.
But now, the trees block the view.
You need to wait for fall to see the little lake.
And then, turning around,
you could see the big lake, too,
with its stripes of darker blue
and more blue reaching back,
back to a foggy brownish blue
and up into the sky
and wider than all of Earth.
It was a good view for a god.
How can you understand
anything anywhere else?
Then another rustle,
and you wonder about the time,
confused
if really you are alone after all,
standing there on this hill,
in the middle of nowhere,
where your memories
are so alive, and waiting.
Poems from in between 