I don't know what to call it

 We raised him to be all he could be.

He was a boy who seemed spun from light.

A firefly caught in our hands--winning

ribbons, trophies, hearts--

as if it were all just games he was born 

knowing how to play.

He made it look so easy.

We thought he’d go far.

Maybe to the moon. Maybe past it.

We didn’t see what would catch him.

I still don’t know what it is.

The vulnerability, the break, the hidden thing.

I don’t know what to call it — 

the thing that caught him.

If I could name it, maybe I could fix it.

On my worst days, I want a reason.

Someone to blame.  A fix.

On my best days, I let the mystery be.

He’s a natural at everything that doesn’t pay.

Telling stories.

Lighting up a room.

Giving things away.

Not a natural student.

Not a natural earner.

Not a natural builder of a safe, steady life.

When he asks for money now, I say no.

I tell myself it’s for his own good.

I tell myself it’s for mine.

Tonight he texts: he’s sick.

Can’t work.

Needs food.

And my wall starts to sag.

I want to throw open the door.

I want to buy him a week’s worth of groceries, 

a year’s worth of groceries, 

the whole grocery store.

I remember the fake Christmas tree.

The way he stood there, 9 years old, begging

for a live one.

I’ll buy it myself, he said. 

For our family.

I think about his birthday money spent

on teddy bears.

One for every girl in his class.

So no one would feel left out.

I think about the boy who told me his classmate 

Robert Garcia was the best runner, best swimmer, 

best student.

And when I said,  I'm sure you’re the best 

at something, too, he grinned, I am.

I’m Robert Garcia’s best friend.

And now I don’t know if giving to him again 

saves him — or sinks him deeper.

I tell myself it’s a boundary.

I repeat it all like a prayer.

I don’t know if no is love.

I don’t know if yes is love.

I just know he’s asking.

His parents were sending him somewhere he didn’t want to go

We were in 8th grade and Dennis didn’t want to go 

into the seminary next year, 

though he looked like the type of boy 

who ended up there—fair hair already thin 

and splintered at 13–

surely he’d be bald by twenty–

and he was chubby. 

I thought who cares if they make him

go—no girl will want to marry him. 

I think now he might have liked me 

in that queasy boyish way because he played 

so many pranks 

and isn’t that how boys that age 

show their love? 

He had 5 brothers and I had a crush on the oldest —handsome Paul— 

already in high school. 

I would call his home just to hear his voice 

and hang up when he said, hello.

I heard on TV that his father had a hard time untying 

Dennis from the closet rod where he was hanging 

from his own necktie. 

In Catholic school, boys had to wear suit 

and ties to Mass 

so Dennis surely had a few. 

The rumor was his brothers wept and 

wouldn’t return to school for weeks. 

Paul met me in the park one Saturday 

and still could barely talk. 

We sat side by side on a wooden bench. 

I hoped he‘d hold my hand, daydreamed even 

of a kiss. 

But I could smell his sweat, 

see his brown eyes open

yet blind. 

He didn’t want to go.

That’s all Paul said. 

I feel shame now that I brought 

my 8th grade graduation photo to show him. 

Hoped he would call me pretty, ask

 if he could keep it. 

I tried different ways, believe me, 

to get his attention.

But he was weak from no sleep.

So I gave up and 

sat quietly beside him, 

thinking about Dennis. 

His round face and dumb laugh. 

And remembered the last time I saw him. 

How he ran up to me outside school and 

grabbed my books and stuffed them all

into a mail box. 

I wailed at him, Dennis Glouster!

You’re gonna wind up in a cemetery 

before you ever get to a seminary!

I wish I could say grief stuck in my throat. 

But it didn’t. 

I thought only of the irony. 

And opened my mouth to tell Paul 

but shut it quickly, remembering

It is a sin to speak ill of the dead. 

And so we sat there, the silence 

of our breathing hovering over 

that park bench. 

Me in love with him, he in love 

with Dennis.

In praise of mothers

Praise mothers who stand guard around 

the merryground of our children’s lives 

for as long as we are able. 

Praise our moods that bob up and down 

with our kids‘ own happiness 

and praise us for the love we stubbornly give 

and for all the new languages

we must learn 

to keep up 

with their evolutions

Praise us for showing up for duty 

as often as the stars

 in the Milky Way

and for seeing the light 

in our kids‘ eyes and 

helping them to dream

praise us for accepting their strange desires 

and relearning our own courage 

Praise us for letting them run barefoot 

and shirtless

For being the oar guiding their boats, 

for teaching them how to get good deals 

at the markets, obey speed limits, 

pay their bills on time 

And for not saying 

Damn I told you so when 

they fall for a scam the first time 

knowing how hard it is to live 

well in the wild

Praise us for waiting in the dark 

for them to come home from

those parties—whether or not we snapped 

Praise us for the good lies we tell them 

when they ask, Do I look fat in this suit? 

and for helping them create— like a snail

 —a protective layer

and praise us for not drowning in the sea 

of their reproaches, refusals, tantrums 

Praise us for knowing the world finds its way

in no matter what we do

Praise us above all 

for when there’s a warrant out 

for their arrest and 

we don’t erupt into flames

Praise us for tiptoeing out of their lives 

when it is time—quiet as dusk— 

but praise us--for leaving 

the porch light on.

The powers of my olive trees

The olive trees have stood here 

far longer than I have 

and likely will outlast me 

by centuries.

The arborist who stops by doesn’t want 

to trim them. I ask why and 

he looks up at their leafy limbs and 

shakes his head 

with reverence, 

Because they’re beautiful

and I’m an arborist!

But I’m a worrier, and so is my neighbor, 

who sees their sprawling arms brushing my roof 

as kindling for a wildfire.

The arborist chuckles: 

No, no. Olives hold water.

In a fire, they’ll sneeze

Or burst into juice!

I hadn’t known that olive trees have such powers, 

or that if burned to the ground, 

they resurrect from their roots. 

Wonderful. 

They remember who they are.

When we moved here in 1995, for a few autumns, 

the kids pluck olives, fill baskets with their tout skin, 

each a bitter blessing 

till cured 

with salt and vinegar and hidden 

in our dark garage for months. 

The kids help until growing up becomes 

distracting and then the baskets 

are put away.

Now, every autumn, the olives drop uncelebrated

to the ground and 

vanish into the leaf blower.

There’s grief in that. 

A splitting in me, like bark under stress, 

when I recall the simple joy of gathering

and curing—rinsing off the bitterness, 

tucking the jars away. 

Watching bitterness turn edible

And now to see the fruit so wasted. 

And the kids have long moved on and

never mention these trees.

They speak now only of what they lack. 

Want. 

Some nights they feel like vines coiling 

over me—not out of malice, 

but of need. 

Tonight I light a candle on the porch.

The flame wavers gold and 

everything’s transfigured: trees, shadows, 

the deep womb of my heart. 

I remember their joy. 

Mine too. 

And in the flickering candle light, something 

that feels holy returns.

This is the darkness olives need.

The cool, quiet dark that draws out

bitterness, 

that softens and sweetens. 

And preserves. 

The miracle

The little tomato plant a realtor left 

on my porch is thriving

in the bigger pot of an old orchid 

     for whom 

the clock stopped ticking

during my monthlong wandering when 

the G-son forgot to water it and 

instead drowned 

      two fake palms. 

In just a week the tomato branches burst 

upward a good inch and 

look much greener and brighter 

than that wimpy slice of life looked 

      on its arrival.

Of course this is all nature‘s 

chemistry but chemistry is such 

      a miracle.

The plant turns sun, water--thin air 

--into food, hormones 

that make the leaves grow bigger 

and all that radiance burst

into red delicious jewels. 

     What a trick!

That same trick going on in me though

 in the opposite direction. 

Every cell in my body now whispering, S.O.S! 

I didn’t imagine being a widow. 

My man knew it. Said, this will be all yours to handle alone

      some day.  

He meant these four kids. 

This large house without them and

       him. 

He didn’t wish that on me.  

But saw it coming. 

      That lightening bolt. 

I think of him at unexpected times. 

Tonight during a program about oceans 

when I hear the long moans of whales, 

not the bright notes of his trumpet 

that shriek like a dolphin rising, easy and free, 

      on the breeze.

No, the whales sing low and slow

about the end of time, about 

     their grief, wild and 

breaking silence, stalking 

     like hunger.

For Fracture Zones Exhibit

Written in response to the topographical images in Andrea Guskin’s “Fracture Zones” exhibit that features large scars deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean forming fracture zones. To create these images, the artist crunches, pushes, and smooths metal and then mends the fractures with threads. 

How peaceful they look in their wooden frames—

our earth stories 

written in folds—long, raw seams where 

the crust split open, where 

the earth tore itself to make 

     something new. 

Eons of cracking open and settling again 

for yet one more upheaval, 

another strange, relentless explosion

     into being. 

How humbling to know that such accidents 

and flukes, valleys ripped apart, 

such molten heavings—

all that beautiful violence

of change 

had to be exactly what it was 

     to get us here. 

These are not scars. These are records 

of becoming. 

     They are birthmarks. 

And this also is the story of the soul 

when grief and love crack us open. 

Then too the earth tilts and 

the heart splits along a fault, 

everything warm spilling out.

  

We too are stitched from rupture, 

shaped by cracking and settling

for yet one more confusing explosion 

into rebirth,

carried along on waves of chaos and 

 accidental grace. 

We too carry golden threads 

that bind 

     our broken places.

And that is our inheritance.  

The fractures we live through,

the messy, glorious breakage that 

make and remake us.

Our ground always moving 

in its deliriums. 

Because nothing is ever

     finished. 

Chasing the blues away

Watch the moon roll
down the hill
of sleepy moles
then watch it roll
into the black and silent lake.
Now watch my heart bewitched forget
the countless insults of the day
now watch the moon
lead them all away.