after years measured in either sabbaticals or fists
The woman in the box
Realizes she has only been an apparition
Sorting through previous
Versions of “her”
She sees one to nurture–
No lines around the eyes or heart
An ordinary girl
Who believed in human intervention
Fragile thing, scoops her up
Just a bird in the hand;
Looks for a place to set her down
If only to assess
the utility of wings
My son tells me his fears and I tell him mine are remarkably similar–fear of the tragic loss of love.
Sometimes he and I get to the end of an ordinary day and he says our crew is still together, Mom.
We are citizens of a dangerous and lonely kingdom.
But only because the true King travels in disguise.
He is this magnetic force–scarred forever by his tragic love for us, hole in the chest and again in each Vitruvian extremity.
Stranger at the party.
You should get to know this guy. His words and actions may seem either simple or radically divisive, but His gaze is irrevocable.
He is the perfect older brother, fierce in both love and justice. When I dread this fallen world I turn to Him.
Knowing He will never fail.
Imagine them as you will but never
Assume your scepticism will make them
Mythological again
In the smoke of our discarded daughters
/commerce of indifference
Shoots craps in crowded rooms
Sweat-palmed cash for common shame
Summon these
Monsters of righteousness
From this fire we
have made of love.
When I first saw Finding Nemo it was so much about you.
And after all these years, Finding Dory is much the same.
I may have been your brief and most arbitrary mama, but I will love you forever.
And your foster dad and I will never stop laying down the shells…not just for your way back to us, but as a mosaic for how you changed us forever.
You, beautiful girl.
I love them when they snake totemistically through the clouds, smoke before the storm
And when they are filigree-perfect by the pool, along the slender branches of new trees
Skin the same green as the leaves
But when it is the serpent
Climbing vertically toward the sparrowlets,
I cannot either
Turn, ignore
Or observe with the objective skill of a naturalist
intervene
Knowing grace is more than words before a meal
Or a sticker you wear to church on your lapel
Grace is the Hand that
saves the sparrow
Even at the mortal expense
Of the dragon.
we watched the old man
Build his doohiggy in the yard
For a hundred years
We mocked
his talk of “rain”
Unaltering our behavior
To the very end
Through the procession of paired creatures
Too quiet, too orderly, in hindsight
No longer
surprised when he shuts up his wooden spaceship
Seven day still
Then
Come rain
Rise relentless river
Through the rooms of our careless together
Drips, drops, seep, torrent, flood
words we coin
In the last moments of our lives
As the world entire
Recedes
they said they lost them
Tossed in the trash?
Recycled?
Whatever
I see them clearly
The shape of ordinary Syro-Phoenician
Cursed on lined paper
Wtf.
How do you lose
The story of the rape of children
In parking lots
Playgrounds
Public spaces as well as cannibalizing
The geography of “playing house” and “family?”
You should know that the state of f#cking Texas
Can “lose” the words we wrote
All they want
But the story belongs forever
To the indelible
Victims’ statements.
Her grandmother holds several objects close to her bosom as they make their way to the front of the store.
Serenity asks for a balloon.
Grandmother asks, do you want the balloon or the play-doh?
Play-doh, Serenity replies.
Behind them in line, I ask if I can buy her the balloon? (In honor of some young women I love who used to be the Serenities of the world, all grownup now.)
Serenity’s grandmother agrees.
Yet after briefly snagging a balloon, Serenity puts it back.
You don’t want it?
No, she replies, we are going to the park and it will fly away.
We inventory other possibilities–a two-headed dragon?
Nope. One too many heads.
A bag of plastic dinos? Yes but only this one, and this one, and this one.
So efficient, young Serenity. I give her 30 cents worth of plastic.
She gives me joy.
Grandma picks out several pieces of fruit from the wire basket. We sit and eat our respective breakfasts in silence as the pert weather girl plots the course of the storm into which we intend to drive.
I do not intend to drive, I intend to passenge, pulled along by my grandmother’s gravity.
Slow rain begins to fall as she indicates with her hands my need to wrap it up, Girl.
I ask with my empty cup if I may get some more orange juice?
She says, you drink as much as you want now, but understand this: down the road I am not stopping so you can pee!
I attempt my most impassive gaze, like the people on the poker channel on the tv…no tells.
Will she or won’t she? I am betting she will. I stake my money (and my bladder) on the belief that down the road she will stop somewhere…
So I can pee.
in my head
I sing off-key
Pick through the rocks
On the steep uphill
Dark of course
Avoid the fruit
They say
I long to look
Behind me
Willing you be there still
As though a woman of no particular gifts
Could summon the missing
With scraps of broken notes
Strung together
Carrying Light 