Thoughts about the dead bee on the porch

 From the kitchen window tonight,

I see a lump on the porch 

that I know is more than a lump. 

This lump has three legs. 

         Wings. 

It has a heart 

      that was rushing her 

somewhere else 

     not here to the shine.

Surely she did not know 

      what time it was.

Not one of her five eyes could see

      this coming

As she lifted another drip of sugar,

      on her knees, from my

forget-me-nots.

Suddenly my own heart rushes,

      with thoughts of sudden rain, of sudden stings--

of sudden anythings. 

Tomorrow, her sister bees 

       must go
right on sipping

from the brightness.

 

It's too much for a girl

 The Sisters of the Holy Cross teach things 

       that break my heart.

Like Only Catholics go to Heaven. 

    

The infidels 

     must have known this

     when they hired me to babysit.

     

When I lean into his crib, 

he does not wake--he sleeps 

as if 

     his soul were cherished and

secure. 

Then I see his small fists knocking 

      on heaven's gate,

     the teddy bear backpack stuffed 

     with PJ’s, the toy giraffe 

hanging low 

on his back. 

I hear the Angel Gabriel, hard-nosed, 

     Sorry, you're not welcome here.

It’s too much for a girl of 10. 

     And so 

     the small chapel of her soul 

     crumbles--the heavy stones 

    fall off her shoulders 

         to the earth

        below her boots.

Sea shell

There it is again--his voice

calling far away.

A voice like wind swirling

     in a shell. The wind of 

     my blood
     rushing through 

     my ears rolling 

     back the stone

    of my heart.

He is born 

    again in

    that wind.

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.