One last bite

Just before life spirals down 

into the waiting game bag like a bird 

shot in midair--

it is still summer, 

the summer before 

it all begins to end--

he wakes from a nap

and wants a burger; one crooked wing 

reaching up, his hand clawing mine.

Such strength!

Still manhood in it!

(Even the fire fighter who lifts him 

from the floor five times last month thinks so.) 

And he scolds, Come on! Help me up! 

This impatience hurts me, but I say, ok! ok!

I'm doing the best I can! 

Which now I regret; how I regret it,

this, all my corruptions.

And then my arms wrench under his pits 

and lift him as the feral wife and forklift I’ve become. 

I lift, lift, lift my man’s heft, his clots of skin,

his flossy egg white hair leaping from his head,

until he stands, 

wobbles and shuffles, a man on a ship rocked by storm 

and I drop him into the wheel chair and bend down, 

nose to nose to cream the bruises on his cheeks 

as stars and tiny warships dart from his globes.

I don't see my groom in there and this drains 

hope, the blood of life, from my own body 

but his hunger galvanizes us so I pull

his bird feet from the floor onto the footrests.

He repeats, I want a burger with everything on it! 

How shocking. 

He has not eaten in days 

and now when all is lost, 

when his mouth 

and vital organs are going berserk, 

he craves life--one last sweet bite of it--

and so I rush to the door, lay down the ramp, 

push the wheel chair hard and fast 

over that ramp because it is a bridge 

and we are rolling, rolling 

over water that is rising, ever rising

ever.

Golden Gate Bridge

A marvelous sight. 

The shoreline shines into view 

before it's swallowed as the bright blue door 

of sky opens 

and closes in silence. 

And the ocean restless, without rest

pulls back and forth and heaves itself onto bluffs, 

a wind on its heals blowing grayness fast and furious, 

fog rushing like tumbleweed across the land 

while the bridge stands still and silent as a ghost

lurking behind the curtain, another world.

I love the bridge hidden in fog, the bridge of memory.

I love it hidden as much as I love it clear with red steel rising.

I forgive all whose arms winged from it. I can see all

through their eyes vanish into whiteness, 

then darkness, churning their souls clean. 

The moon

How big the big moon tonight;

how it stirs this heart 

with its perfect swollen shape, 

with its dazzling light--a great celebrity 

in that world of night. 

Forget its cold truth: waterless, airless;

not a better world--it would kill me given a chance. 

Still I never tire of the view. 

Every full moon, half, any phase

feels new and gay and wonderful. 

My astronaut eyes fixed on earth, 

brocaded blue, unguarded in the path of sunbeams. 

The shock of that empty awesome 

surrounding black would change me. 

Even decades later 

while brushing my teeth, the image assails me--

our patterned earth circling in the ink of infinite deep. 

The mystery of it. 

The total mystery of it.

And no one to turn to. 

How I'm feeling

Don't ask me how i'm feeling. 

Please      just      don't ask. 

Because   I      am     reeling. 

No no no      ask me.

DO ask.

Because I’ll tell you 

even if you don't inquire, 

even though I'm drained 

of all routine desire. 

I want to tell you. I really do. 

I   do   not  want     to  be alone 

emoting blue. 

I need to report it. 

Or should I say, deport it. 

But the right word for 

this anguish, what is it?

What explains my hot weeping? 

These pounding moods 

that hound me like a shadow

that follows me around?

That when I see a bridge 

I want to jump!

Is the word....the diagnosis.....

Donald Trump?

Broken window

I do not want to die indoors.

My last air smelling 

of just mopped floors. 

No.

Set me on a meadow, please.

Lay me near a field or shore. 

Never, never please, oh please 

behind a door. 

I would break a window if I could.

And crawl out to the nearest 

wood 

so in the end my eyes could open

one last time on

something green, immense

something born,

where I can mulch with those 

already gone, 

where stars can clearly see 

what's become of me, 

and once again reach out

and gather my remaining matter. 

A beautiful lie

There is a barrier between us 

and the dead; 

not even physics can explain 

where they move 

but they do move 

through a light source 

of their own. 

You can see them now and then 

but only from the corners 

of your eyes before they vanish

in a sudden flash 

like when a light bulb fails.

It can make your heart thrash. 

They are good listeners. 

That's all they do 

because the next world 

can't get through a barrier 

not even physics can explain 

and atheists disdain 

and the faithful sustain. 

A soul steps from worn out armor 

into the immaterial home 

and no one alive can be that happy. 

There is a barrier between us 

but they want for nothing. 

They wait for their own happiness 

to grow. 

And they will greet us, their dearly beloveds. 

There is a barrier between us 

but they do not forget us. 

Eternal without amnesia.  

Old death and young life entwined 

at once. 

Every moment a first moment. 

The best. It's yet to come. 

Believe it. 

Whispers

All that I feel is faint 

and bare, 

all that I say 

is barely and only briefly 

there. 

all whom I love,

all that I know 

whisks on wind,

all that I hear drifts 

from that seer.

What a sibilant din

in my ear.

bruits all that 

sound I can hear.

all that I know, drifters and

shifters

blowing swifter,

blowing silent 

like snowing,  

drifting, shifting then

going.