Tag: #poet

We who are left

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storm-bird

Electronic numbers in bank accounts

Archived Email folders

Shelves of books and boxes of keepsakes

Your clothes carefully folded in drawers, except that one batch left in the washer to be put in the dryer later

A fridge full of food

Beloved flowers and bulbs sprouting in the garden out back under the spring trees you loved so much

Photos of you with your love, your children, your parents framed on the walls

Unfinished paperwork scattered across the desk at your office, and a calendar full of appointments

 

The world kept turning

The sun kept rising

All the parts of your life are

Still here

Exactly as they were

When you left us.

 

Just a few days ago, I saw you

With that enormous smile, that powerful hug

Later, the light on my phone indicating you had texted me

We bantered, and laughed

Ending with a ‘see you tomorrow’

like we do everyday

 

Your body is ash now

They call them Cremains

A word you and I would have laughed about

“It sounds like something you would serve on a salad” you would have said

“I’ll have the Chicken Walnut with Cremains and Cranberry Viniagrette” I would have quipped back

They will take you and spread the ash far away in a place that you loved

And that warms me

 

You changed me

Showed me so many things about how to live

And believe in myself

And be authentic and kind and straightforward and real and loving and successful

You taught me to look ahead

You taught me to laugh harder

You changed me

And not just me

You changed us all, all who loved you, all who you loved

 

I’ll keep you at my side

That’s what we do, we humans who have lost

We keep you alive next to us, within us

We hear your voices

We feel your presences

We stand you up next to us to remind us of what we were taught

Of who we are, of who you are

 

We will stand together

We who Remain

We who Cremain

And we remember you

the night sky

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milky-way-984050_960_720

I recall wishing once to be hard in all my soft places

those supple and diaphanous systems within me

that had searched so valiantly, so militantly, for things that cannot exist without. 

 

Then…

After the one who could have been there and wasn’t, 

And the one whose needs filled the room to bursting, 

And the one who used fists, 

And the one who made unkeepable promises, 

And the one who used up all the natural resources and kept farming for more, 

And the who was there and then wasn’t, 

And the one who could only see himself, 

And the one who could never answer (because he didn’t exist), 

Then…

 

After the sun set, 

I stood under the stars, 

right where I had always been standing,

and I looked up, hard and jagged and careful within, 

reliant more upon that beautiful night sky

than I ever had been upon the clouds. 

 

when silence surrounds you

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enjoy_the_silence

close our eyes in any space, and all that remains is sound

outward: soft electric whirs, the distant sound of traffic, gentle wind on tree

and inward: resonant heart thumping, breath in nostrils, digestion

 

these same sounds carry us from highway to mountaintop

they are immune to the heartbreak and soul ache,

persistent through sleep and stress and sanity

 

in this sought-out silence, amidst the chaos

we realize childhood truths,

we sort out spiritual deficiency,

we heal from the deepest wounds,

and we realize that those from far away may love us still.

Love is an Autumn Leaf

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Love is shining armored knights braving deadly dragons at swordpoint.

Love is a lightning strike, unexpected and straight to the heart.

Love is caramel corn, sticky-sweet-gooey-crunchy-salty, making your teeth ache.

Love is an old family recipe, carefully handed down, timeless in its simplicity and perfection.

Love is little spoon, and big spoon, too.

Love is a straight-jacket in a padded room.

Love is a helpless addiction, needmoreneedmore.

Love is paying bills, bank account dwindling until payday.

Love is the smell of freshly brewed coffee at seven am, deeply inhaled before eyes open.

Love is a firm handshake, a signed merger, an exchange of strength and trust.

Love is molten lava chocolate cake, stomach full yet always room for one more bite.

Love is an empty home after a scary movie, every sound and shadow carrying the unknown.

Love is the sharp edge of a blade, harm so easily inflicted without careful handling.

Love is the chemical release of lips against lips.

Love is a blanket and pillow on a rainy day.

Love is a safety deposit box, contents secure.

Love is grandchildren.

Love is a ghost, haunting long after life’s end.

Love is an empty easel, a paintbrush, and a limitless supply of color.

Love is a glacier, securely underfoot, mobile and massive, extending over the horizon.

Love is the rising of the sun, every day, no matter the season or weather.

Love is an autumn leaf, once green now richly red, carefully falling to the earth, giving life back to the tree, to grow and begin again.

my tribute to my sister Sheri, and her person, Heather

Stepping on Cracks

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crack in pavement

As a child, I carefully measured my sidewalk steps, making sure to avoid the cracks,

Knowing inwardly that the cracks were there to test me,

And that a single misstep would break my mother’s back, or worse.

I focused so closely on each crack that I lost track of the world around me.

As a child, I knew nothing of concrete cohesion or molecular expansion, the very reasons the cracks were set down in the first place.

Now, when I walk or run or skip or dance, I don’t notice the cracks,

For who would choose to stare at the sidewalk while missing trees and sun and birdsong, love and laughter, lungs full to bursting then empty of breath?

And despite all my worry of years gone by, my mother’s back is fine, and I realize I had little to do with it.

Save Yourself

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danger-river

When the storm is raging or the river is wild,
When you scream hysterics (damn that inner child),
When your hidden desires stack too high on your shelf,
Grab an oar, daughter. Save yourself.

Mujeres Tristes 12

If you need his love or you just might die,
If you look in the mirror and have to cry,
If your unfinished list inspires a yell,
Pick up a pail, son, and save yourself.

planking2

Life has a way of laying you prone.
Life may strip you of all you own.
Life makes you question your own mental health.
Use a pen, dad, and save yourself.

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Ever the weight stacks up on your shoulders.
Ever you dodge insurmountable boulders.
Ever the day comes that feels like hell.
Dial that phone, mother. Save yourself.

iceland-baby-stroller
Too often you forget it’s not meant to be easy.
Too often you leave home your coat when it’s freezing.
Too often you need me to open your cell.
Here is the key, child. Save yourself.

bitter/sweet

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painters-palette.jpg

there is liberation in lonely.

confusion in cuddling a one-and-only.

confidence can be confining.

dedication denotes far too much defining.

strength stems from sadness.

you often find meaning just after the madness.

happy can leave you so horny.

magic moments pass by without warning.

disappointment, what a dream.

mediocrity makes you mean.

far too easy to forget the fire.

chaos rings loud from the chords of the choir.

vengeance is visceral, vibrant.

fear leaves you open to future and finite.

like a nip of chocolate with a chili bite,

i won’t go on without a fight.

Chili-and-chocolate

You Are Alive. Are You Living?

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Miracle-593x371

You are Alive. Are you Living?
At any given moment, there are a Million little Miracles keeping you Alive.
Amazing autonomic processes like digestion and respiration,
New Life constantly Birthing within you as old Life dies,
Neurotransmitters, white blood cells, amino acids.
You are a Living, Breathing, Miracle of Life.
You are Alive. Are you Living?
Do you take moments to Connect to the very Spark of Life within you…
Your Spirit, your Soul, your Chi, your Seed, your Nucleus…
And Wonder at the very Miracle you are?
Do you see the Horizon or the Mountains or the Ocean Tide
And Gawk in open Wonder?
Do you Laugh with your Whole Being until your gut aches?
Do you Embrace others and Hold them tight and let your Hug pack a punch?
Are you Kind to yourself? Do you allow yourself to Cry, to Indulge, to Risk?
Do you Love? Fiercely, Loudly, Often, be it your Friends, your Partner, your Children?
Are you Afraid of what you might Find if you open that shutter or Peel back one more layer?
Do you shy away from the Tears, Sweat, Blood, and Pain
That are Crucial to that Release you so desperately Need?
Do you Thrive, or merely Survive?
Do you let yourself Soar, Plunge, Thrill, Sing, Be?
You are Alive. Are you Living?

Canvas

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Background with blank canvas on wooden table

If I were to paint a self-portrait, I would need more than one canvas.

I would need several tens of thousands

To get it all just right.

I would start with my jaw

One canvas for my set jawline, teeth clenched in determination, breath held, strong and chiseled and unfailing.

One for a soft jaw, chin with relaxed lips pursed and parted in admiration and wonder, appreciating the natural phenomena of the world all around me.

A hundred more, a thousand, then I’d start on my eyes.

One canvas for my eyes, eyebrows raised in casual confusion, focused on some small detail and wondering how it turned out that way.

One canvas for my eyes, shining with moisture, open wide in a mixture of vulnerability, exposure, hope, fear, and love all while locked on the eyes of another.

One canvas for my eyes, relaxed, calm, newly awakened, playful, still sleepy but ready for a new day.

A hundred more, a thousand, then I’d start on my spine.

One canvas for my spine, naturally curved and naturally bowed under the weight of life and stress, money and parenting, divorce and determination and unflappable effort.

One canvas for my spine stretched to its limits, every vertebrae soaking in the sun and oxygen and adventure and new dawns.

A hundred more, a thousand, then I’d start on my hands.

One canvas for my hands clutched tightly together at my stomach, holding my world together as I roll with the waves and the winds and the words, none of them in my control.

One canvas for my hands, fingers spread wide, each pulsing with a feral, comprehensive staccato of celebration and rhythm.

One canvas for my hands, each clutching a smaller hand within it, protective and warm and all-encompassing.

A hundred million canvasses could not contain me.

For I am powerful. Incomplete. Wonderful and beautiful and complicated. Needy and sensitive, assured and spiritual, flighty and passive, comfortable and sensual.

I am joy. I am fear. I am grief, loss, anger, ferocity, absence. I am arrogance and hope and love and loneliness and determination.

I am young and old, present and past, living and dying and ebb and flow, mast and stern, patient and professional, hot and cold and tepid and alert and exhausted.

I am my grandfather and my grandchildren. I am earth and air, wave and flame.

I am fiction. I am fact.

I am every word and idea and dream and theory in one form. I am every color.

I am beautifully complex. I am horrifically simple.

I. Am.

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