The end of summer

This bowl of oatmeal looks pathetic          

and I'm the one 

     who prepares it for him.  

It waits and cools on the table 

     as my love is wheeled down the hall 

     toward the breakfast room.  

Bits of dried apple and puffs of cinnamon float

      on this mush the way lotus

      and spatterdock 

drift on a pond.  

His eyes fall on it. 

The spoon and a napkin wait 

      with me for him to take the usual 

      four bites though I hope he will eat 

it all this time. 

My love is so thin. 

But not his face. 

      Still boned and squared.  

Not his hair: still full, still thick 

      like the sweetflag around a pond.  

But oh God he is thin. 

He is disappearing. 

My love is a twig

      on which a single blossom clings

      to summer.  

Get over it

 

The Peace Lilies I bought 

     for his funeral 

     look the same 

 six years later;

their green mirrors

     the shade that consoled 

     a room 

of trembling hearts.  

In the beginning, there was

     a husband.  

    He got sick.  

He died.

Doesn’t everyone have grief 

    like this?

Doesn’t everyone have pain 

    spurred 

on their bones? 

Aren’t we all crumpled bags 

     in the wind?

His son might be over it now.  

    (Does singing in shower mean 

he’s over it?)

Should my heart still feel 

     this dry—

    a hill of frozen dust?

When does ice melt 

    into a stream? 

Where is 

    that point?

When the blooms fall

The orchid's petals 

uncouple on my dinner table

just as my heart blooms and loosens

over and over

again and the light

dims from white to honey 

then steel to black

and the loneliness comes

and then it goes

as these petals come and go.

Such is the character of life

that day after day the world

feels a garden of plain and tender

and anguished hours

so sometimes the day feels

endless and sometimes

the night feels so

like now with air around

the orchid thick with my beloved 

dead.

Sneaking away from home to write in a cafe

 

     The Moony café now a restaurant once

      was a nave where I stopped 

     many eves after work 

                       before reuniting 

with the domesticity 

     my family of six 

     had wrought.  

I liked to sit in the back 

     along the wall--patron chats

    did not distract 

from the guttural

ones I seek with

    my journal. 

Sometimes the word winds 

     blew 

across the pages, sometimes 

     so hard 

               they pressed down 

on my hand, sometimes 

     only a light snow of longings, 

sometimes making sense,

    sometimes not, sometimes 

words landed perfumed, 

sometimes not.  

When I got home, my lateness 

     was forgiven but sometimes 

     not. 

Even now decades gone, 

     I am startled I got away 

    with it so often, sometimes 

I cannot bear to remember 

how I stole the time, 

     sometimes I can.  

Hard to breathe

Oh this man. 

This man who stands before me 

smiling. 

This force working on me.  

When his knee leans

on my knee, we blush. 

His knee admits what 

he is thinking 

and my breath 

is my confession.  

Our pulse no longer

under our control.  

Now I know his secret 

and he knows mine.  

The problem is:

I have a man 

and he has a wife. 

We are just  magnetic poles

standing much too close. 

His north pulls hard on my south.  

The field between us 

gaining power. 

We cannot be judged.  

What is happening is simple physics.   

Invisible forces circling 

the center of our beings.  

I will pull us apart. 

I will pull     pull      pull      

us far apart.  

I will defy the laws 

of Nature. 

Another birthday

Ahhhh another birthday. 

I've had many but beg

for more despite 

the gruesome 

consequences.  

Oh Universe, let my glow fade 

as slowly as the coil 

inside a burned-out bulb.  

My friend fought death with every weapon.  

Every full moon egged her on 

but she vanished anyway.  

Death as much a miracle as life. 

Is it not confusing 

to see thin air where 

your friend stirred the soup 

and poured it steaming 

into bowls, one for you, 

one for her?

Savory soup 

over which you chatted 

with the leisure of Redwood trees 

that will flower in their fairy ring

2000 more years.  

As if our presence had roots 

that stabilize the world 

we stand on. 

My dear man's laugh 

still hangs in that same thin air.  

The echo fading not by seconds 

but by years. 

Is it not a miracle that a mind pulsing 

with wit and song will cease? 

Because chemistry always 

comes undone, because rain 

sweeps away the soil

silt by silt until 

just the stones below remain. 

Whatever waits

We meant to spend the night on Lake Isabel 

but made a wrong turn 

and now the light on the mountain 

burns rust 

then old rose and 

soon a very dark 

wine. 

Should we turn back,  

try again,

keep going 

on this pretty road,

the one walling this river

with boulders 

that rolled down from the sky

like a horde of moons?

Should we stop at this inn 

with a view of the river 

rushing toward all 

that is waiting? 

We do. 

All night the river 

rams the rocks. 

We hear the purling, 

the tumbling, the crashing

them toward 

what is waiting, what

will keep waiting.

We drown in our sleep 

through that all-night 

dash into all that 

is waiting, waiting. 

We bow to this wrong turn--

it is a gift 

on our journey into

all that awaits.