Imagine a box
A brightly colored box
Like a present/
Like a gift
Something inside of it
Calling you to life
Christmas morning and all your birthdays
It was the birthdays that got me
The little girl alone in the hospital with army issue socks?
Tragic.
Life is tragic.
But we can all use socks…
You taught me to love
And risk myself
be brave child,
You whispered
Open the box.
Treasure inside.
I promise.
Blue night
Bright moon
Luminous face
(smiling he says, like this..)
Unspoken splendor
Scattered across the slope of earth
Like a silvery veil
Pulled across the lawn at an evening
Wedding
Between us
And eternity
There stands only
Time
Like the face of a clock
Luminous but broken
Dragging it’s hands slowly
Across the face of it
Looking for someone in the night
Looking for Someone in the light
Odysseus,
I picture her each night
Her hair, the yarn unravel
All the work of a single day
Woven and unwoven
Like the even exchange
Of breath in and out
Her days are split
Between unwelcome suitors
And reflexively scanning the horizon
For the husband of her youth
Waiting.
Holding the wolves at bay
Unspooling the skein of her work
Making it invisible
To save the idea of a man,
Odysseus.
We used to sing
someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
So long ago I did not
Know she was a train
Or that the kitchen was the vaulted place
Where someone might
Fix her
I always see
My grandfather’s kitchen
Coffee brewing
And a momentary sense of safety
In old stories
People he once knew
The threaded string of memory
working on the railroad
All the live-long day
I rise to a quiet kitchen
No signs of Dinah
Or any other train come crashing through
Still
I worry about Dinah
All alone
She is a tough mama
Says things like
listen carefully
And be still
Of course she is swamped with work
Mostly contract–
Cleaning up crime scenes
And the debris left by careless
Men
She does not make the stuff she cleans
Disappear
She simply packs it away
In suitcases which resemble– safes
Attaché cases
Body bags
Zip
Then she turns to the aggrieved
Yes, the aggrieved
with her steely-eyed gaze
Says c’mon
Let’s drag this
To yonder cross.
Anger is my intimate
Companion
Eyes me over soup
Shouts instructions
As I mow the lawn
He has the worn face
Of a college professor
The demeanor of a silent
Partner
In what?
You are right to ask
Why is he here?
Oh, I will blink,
As I think how to phrase this…
He helps me to articulate
Why I am so dependent on
His wife, Forgiveness,
For everything
Don’t miss the pain
Wrestle it like a bear
Don’t miss the scenes
I can see them in my head
Don’t miss the humiliation
Worse things have come
To light
Don’t miss the sorrow
It is my silent twin
Don’t miss the girl
I used to be
Go to her and tell her
It’s not your fault
It’s not your fault
It’s not your fault
The connection is not good
His speech is blurry
I ask the usual questions
About job and schedule
what are your plans for the future?
He says he may join the army
since the %#*^#%^
what?
I ask
What?
could you say that again?
Knowing he is standing at a pay
Phone
Miles away from me
Ask them is
What would you say to your uncles
if they had ears to hear?
For a long time there is silence
Then they say
Why didn’t you fight for us?
Speak for us?
And your aunts?
Sigh.
no dog should mean more to you than a child
That comet dust would make me
Think of you
All dazzle-y and luminous
Because of wandering
Light
your eyes
hold all the
Cities of the world
And their lashes
Each borrowed
From distant ashes
Come from burning infinite
Suns
Carrying Light 