The girl-child mama ties her daughters to her–kites, they rise
Aloft in the summer breeze
Curl, swirl, dip, and sing
Bird-children
While faraway grandmother
Ponders apogee
The furthest point one can be from another.
Apogee
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Category Archives: Poetry
The Space Between Us
I see the man making models of planets in his meticulous, scienc-y basement then lining them up like a photographer arranging and rearranging a family portrait,
Mercury, you stand here…Jupiter if you could squeeze in by the ping-pong table
Or the final run and podium judgment of the Westminster Dog Show
It is a neat trick
Of human folly to think we can order the objects floating in an infinite sky, make them feel smaller than they are, more manageable
When even the moon is beyond us
Its insistent pull and reflective splendor
Missed so often in the ordinary
Night sky
As we pack all the objects of this solar system
Between us
Furniture against the door of Love
When you get lonely
Go for a run in a safe, well-lit place
Sing your God songs, loud if possible
Kick around in the Gospels, the Jesus stories, the Bible project, CS of course
Ask Him direct questions
We love you sooo much
But He is love–
oceans-are-small-compared-love
No-story-too-small-love
Big-sky-love
Lonely awful die-for-us love
Lend us a child like you, Love
Arms wide open love
The stars are more than fire love
In the dark sky they admonish/love
He will never leave you, never walk away
Dear Heart,
I keep thinking about the video of you when you were wee, all dumpling, sass, and wild curls. You were getting ready for something, and judging by your cute little dress, something liturgical. Your dad told you to say goodbye to the camera, but you misunderstood him and thought it was me.
You protested, but she’s my mommy!
Seems like both yesterday and three lives ago.
There are no words for how much you mean to me.
No words for how hard it is to close the book on the always with you chapter of your life.
I love you
All you have been to me
All the joy you are to me.
Poured out perfume which fills the room
Forever.
Love,
But-she’s-my-mommy
The parable of the retold
I remember you
I remember when you ran into the waiting room with your sister
I remember all the warnings and admonitions I got from Martha-the-caseworker and your recently relieved first foster mom
And your blue-as-the-sea implacable gaze across a very misguided table
I remember your speech therapist and her fairy godmother-like delight in seeing you make eye contact and in watching your self-inflicted facial wounds
Heal and not return
Storms all over the place
Storms in you swirled all around us, even when I tried to contain them.
The Way Love Anchors
I wonder, did he stick to the margins of the day? Hold palms aloft for shade? Trudge through the seasons? Chafe at this appointed endeavor?
Think, “surely this will vouchsafe my peaceful demise?”
I do not know anything except
The hours he had
Squinting into morning sky, evening sky
Lovely clouds, all sea foam and flocks
Anchored by love
Isaiah 40
Deuteronomy One
The metal doors are the only punctuation Between Caution and Horses going south as the great, white wings are bourn up the coast
Why are the giants stilled? The wind is alive and there are no Quixotic figures on the horizon
We sing sad love songs
As the wind unfurls ribbons of smoke from engulfing flames
We go to the sea
This kind of grief
For weeks now I have watched the tree thirst to death, unable to tell it that there is very little hope. Its auburn hair has cascaded around us, weeping, and I have felt both inadequate and way too nonchalant.
So I crafted a fictional me who did all the desperate things the real one should–buy yards and yards of burlap, soak the naked roots with water scooped from the river, gather the seedlings, cut careful branches and apply growth hormone to them, explain all this to the dying tree
The real tree gestures up to the mother tree, deeper into the soil, the manicured lawn, sources of man-made hydration.
And then down to the clay and rocks, blanketed now in the reddish needles, strange nourishment
sufficient to grow
Saplings
once she has gone
The Angry Biddy
She flaps her (flightless) wings and flutters about
Because surely birds can’t cry and this world is full of sorrow
She is almost human, fully sentient with the wary eyes of someone who knows what it is to not have opposable thumbs
So I tell her, do your graceless angry dance and I will translate for you
About how eternal we are in this brutal place
Where the stars tell us things in the darkness
About hope
Dammed hope
Which will one day soon
Break free
The Bald Cypress
The bald cypress
Is just a tree
A single tree on a riverbank where
Autumnal colors signify slow, thirsty death from the bridge to the broken
Dam
They try to tell us they are dying with a bride’s train of leaves blown out on the current
Stronger now that the dam has broken
The world has always been this way they will tell you
As if that would be enough
For you, for me
