Candle

Thank you, old pier

for standing here

so many years

keeping your 

worn legs and back

still, strong, straight 

against the wind.

Thank you for holding fast

in the currents against 

the storms that want 

to take you out limb 

by limb.

Thank you for your beauty 

so welcome tonight

on his birthday, gone 5 years 

but resting somehow in

this hovering purple mist.  

Thank you for the planks 

that recall his dark brows, 

for the spray like his silver hair.

Thanks for your stillness, 

for this lovely pause 

as the moon shines on your 

old bones like a candle on a cake. 

On the 5th anniversary of his death

Dear husband,

I wonder now what did I mean

standing before the judge those years ago

when it was my turn

to say, I do. 


Still young but slightly broken,

we two, this our third 

October 2, 1982

or fourth time 

trying.

Thanks for those rainbows 

you carry 

down the aisle

tho I subdued in my expression,

of the big promise

  until death.


No one knows the mountain who has not

slept on it.  I like to say.

Perception remains of that scent

on your cheeks that even now

impress me like 


a desert star.

Facing it

I look at it now 

and then

     with haste,

his remaking--

butterfly 

back to worm 

to zygote and

pre-zygote.

I re-hear death.
Its rattlings.

My cold white sorrow.

I bring it all back 

for another look.

To be certain of his mighty 

     gone-ness.

It is good to do it--
to turn and look 

into that hole
and really face it.

Even momentarily.

After a call from an old beau

 I feel you on my tongue, sweet baby, 

 sweet sugar baby.

That postcard dated long ago. 

It brings back and makes me cry

his cool back seat,  spilled rum and coke,

his tongue's range of tricks 

On the phone, he talks and talks. 

I can tell he wants to meet. 

But he talks and talks--it's so weary, 

all those words--none make me teary 

and that precocious tongue now 

keeps its place in mundane things. 

He left before I had time

 Do I miss the child whose shadow 

     bobbed 14 years in mine ? 

Who drew me flowers

     and named me Queen?

Do I wish he didn’t own opinions 

     I cannot understand?

Do I fret to name the turning point?

Was it when he said

    I don't care what you think?

When my heart leapt from the floor 

   like my dog at my step at the door?

Did the ties that bound us fray 

     moment by moment?

Or did all that bloomed 

     just suddenly die?

Did my boy leave before I knew?

     Before I had time to say I love you, goodbye? 

A Christmas legend

On the top shelf of my closet, 

our old ceramic Christmas tree 

sits tight for winter.

Come December,  always one of us 

coaxes it down from cramped repose,

clears a place on our buffet 

and directs the tree to burst 

into color--to shine its many tiny bulbs 

on our patch of earth one more year, 

to let every single bulb release 

all it can and light up continents 

on our burdened  souls. 

I don't know why or how 

I lost my hold but our heirloom 

tumbles like a bird shot from

the sky and in a flash of color 

I see Christmas past, 

I see the future as a memory, 

I see a Christmas legend 

being born. 

Syllables

For a time, I think nothing. 

Nothing at all.

None of the usual syllables

come to call

like  pan dem ic 

like au tis m

like wi dow 

And so I know nothing 

for a time--for a blessed morning, 

until unwanted syllables 

do their jack in the box 

trick again 

and more than ever, I want 

a church to join or at least 

a new plot to work on 

so now I muscle all that 

into a poem 

because poems are homes 

for unwanted syllables  

like ach ing 

like strug gle

but also for the wanted 

like o cean

like ba sil

like mer cy.  

Will he hit me back?

I hit him and freeze. 

I have never hit him before 

but I've wanted to

hit him for months,

my boy now 

     tall as me.

Hairy and hooded, mumbling, 

he turns his back on me but

teachers keep calling, 

he's not zooming, 

keeps lying, 

mouthing off, 

    dropping f-bombs. 

Will he hit me back? 

Wondering, waiting to be hit back, 

I see a shy boy flicker 

cross his face but

it is just a flicker 

like a light bulb 

     about to die.  

I should be home by now

What did I know? I was just a kid lost

in play.  Lost in make believe 

in the high ceilinged rooms

of Christine's house down the street.  

Christine with hair light and pure, 

a free-from-dust glow around

her golden threads and periwinkle eyes.  

Fair and sweet as infant Jesus 

watching from the candle-bright altar.  

Then I remember and throw down 

the dolls and shriek, 

I should be home by now! 

Run girl run, my mother's voice 

shrill in my head loops and loops 

and I see her face disfiguring

before me, her oldest child, 

the one most likely to turn out like her, 

the impulsive girl with unkempt hair,

the one she must subdue with brute force, 

must break her in by lunging and slamming 

and throwing her down

until the girl stops screaming and kicking, 

until she lies still, playing dead, and then 

my mother strips from her nails 

the daughter's dislodged hairs, 

one at a time, the silky brunette strands 

of hair without a halo. 

Into the arena

 To the heart ....was it ever less than treason ... 

to bow and accept 

the end of love or a season? --Robert Frost

On our routine walk across the grass

to his first grade room, my boy lets 

my hand go.

You need not hold my hand anymore, 

he says, abashed.  

My gulp, the noise my heart makes,

all squeeze into a smile.  

And before long,  the boy instructs, 

Don't walk me from the car.  

I can go myself.  

His voice still small but dense with volition, 

a fresh-born will, still damp from its placenta, 

but unshakable

So I swallow and watch with pride--

and it is genuine--

this boy run across the grass,

fast on pup's legs, 

without expertise of any kind, 

and alone, still a stranger 

to the world.

Then one day comes the text:

Do not pick me up from school.  

I will walk home.

Now it all looks clear. 

He is suited up, almost free 

from my love--his oppressor.

Iron-cold fireplace

I just read about a convict 

     and think of you, 

    father of my friend--

another boy raised 

in an iron-cold fireplace

who keeps winding up 

in iron-cold places 

     as if jail means a home 

     you can always count on. 

I don't know what to call a boy 

with small fists knocking on doors 

for food then carried off to strangers 

till parents get him back 

for awhile.  

I think of how you bludgeon the world 

     with your sweet looks and mind with wings  

     but it jackhammered your life 

     anyway.  

What amazing good/bad luck 

to have it all 

and nothing 

at the same time.  

I don't know what to call a grown man 

with 14 families in his head and

no God around to help--you sure learned that, 

father of my friend.

    

     Prayers not answered in a world

     that cannot make things right. 

You hold up your hand 

and make a circle between your thumb 

     and forefinger to show me 

     in that tiny patch of sky 

    a hundred thousand galaxies.

What God, you ask, can care about all that? 

Life goes on

I come to pour him 

into this empty beach.

I move toward a quiet realm

where currents scare my species

     away, there 

     I pour my precious dust.

The crabs have noticed. 

Already working 

toward this meal but that's ok.

Let them feast on him before wind 

     and water take his rest away

     and so his life goes on. 

I choose for him the shadow 

of a giant rock black as iron

     thrashing waves about it

     like a castle in a moat. 

This rock so easy to find again 

     and again.  I tell our kids,

walk past the long lagoon, 

pass the cove, the overlooks, 

keep walking,

stay close to shore, watch for a rock, 

     alone and dark and for a crowd

     of shorebirds poking everywhere.

Look for Herons flying high,

     join that merry wake.  

Walking away

The quest now is to walk away 

from fear and from the fear of fear, 

walk off into the woods and cool humidity, 

walk close to the edge of the river's rush and roar 

where the trees stop, where the borders of 

branches disappear and you hear them--

a conspiracy of ravens screeching 

but see just a flash of one black wing.

Keep in that direction, 

follow that primeval shriek 

and by the river stop, 

remove your shoes,

stand barefoot in cool water, 

your jeans damp with spray, feel now

too at ease to fear

all that's hell or even heaven.

Savagely I now recall

My girls swing for hours, moving, 

moving heads up, feet up, 

moving heads up, 

feet up.

Sometimes they want me 

to push them, they want 

to move faster, faster 

but I refuse, my body worn 

from life.

I do not see the clock's hands 

buffer round and round 

past our crowning 

moments.

I do not see the clock's hands 

creep below the ground to

loosen one by one 

all the bolts that hold us 

there.

Mindless, I decline to push them. 

Mindless, I read the book 

I could be reading now instead

of then.

I will follow you there....

I will follow you there where the waves break, 

where the birds play with you, there

where the wild wind scatters you 

in the scrolling surf,

on my knees, sinking into sand 

swallowed inch by inch by 

these excited waves, so excessive 

their excitement that I fear

I might join you right then and there

the way they heave and pull on me, 

blowing and towing. 

But life is so beguiling I hold on, 

dear one, I hold on 

to my own self 

and turn my back on those swells,

on you.

Forgive me, my love; I will hand over

to death only one precious hour 

at a time.

.  

How is it we are strangers?

First you crawl to me 

then your first steps 

circle my legs 

and boom! 

you are taller than me 

and you run for the plane

and vanish from 

some windy platform 

as if swooped up 

by a hawk. 

How is it that you and I are strangers 

when yesterday we lived in this world 

laced like a vine on a trellis? 

Here in this same town, same house

making the same bean and cheese burrito? 

The shrink's diagnosis: manhood.  

He says you will cross many rivers 

many times, many bridges on your journey. 

He says that's life: one day manhood 

seems so far ahead and boom! 

one day a man stands before you.

Sobered, I walk the trail home 

and meet a sweet horse that gallops 

along the gate, he eager 

to keep pace and I think 

of my boy. 

Each night comes a dream of you 

on your bike, 

you racing beside me,

the joy on your face. 

My joy. 

I guess you call it a butterfly

You watch your boy fuse with a PC, 

the boy you've picked flowers with, 

the boy who now mocks you

the one you think can't be him,

the boy you sat in trees with.

And you are right, it is not him,

this boy a humbug or whatever 

you call a critter that's stopped eating, 

that hangs upside down from a twig, 

that mutates with no aspect of 

a former incarnation.

So you repel the urge to place your hand 

on his shoulder, buck the wish to kiss

his cheek just one more time for

old time's sake, bury your need

to pull him back into the world 

you once were bound in.

You accept that world now lives 

only in your mind.

Sure, he recalls some things-- 

the pictures you show him serve

as proof, like the rings of a tree, 

when once you lifted this boy 

from his crib 

and your lives felt opulent 

and the boy looked so beautiful in blue. 

Get me out of here

The homebody bird waffles

about flying. 

His head snaps right then left, up 

then down.  Undecided. 

No breeze to help extract -

himself from shore, littered 

with taco chips.  

A few flutters of feather sends

him back onto the land. 

I enjoy his feeble indecision and 

keep him in this state by

tossing more chips. 

He seems content chowing. 

Not having to hunt then mince

bugs down his tube. 

He swallows till stuffed then

sits and stares with me 

into the air, together we

stare at this life. 

The seabird 

could do the same

but ignores the chips. 

A driven creature, ready for takeoff 

as if his tail had been scorched 

by the sun.

He must fly to live. 

He wants to work, to feel

his feathers in full sail

straining 

against wind, eyes angled 

at the sea.

I want to be like him, not me,  

always looking down, 

content with easy morsels 

tossed my way.  

I want to be a seagoing bird--

Close one eye, 

raise wide and high

my wings and hit the wind. 

 

Talking to myself

 

The setting sun’s golden shapes 

dart about the tiny fiefdom

of a parking lot

where I am talking 

to myself again when 

I should be listening 

to the blades that squeeze 

up through the cracks.

They may have 

important things 

to tell that I should know

like how to stake 

a claim to life 

in this forsaken world.

And though the night and I

just shrugged them off, 

look now how 

I remember them.

Clearing things out

. 

When our kids grew up and left, 

one at a time, with each we

wonder the same things: 

what are they eating, 

what are they wearing. 

How do they spend their nights 

without us. 

The house more silent with each 

departure. When the last one drives away,  

all of California grows still.

We still have each other to talk to,

 my man likes to say, and then we talk 

about the kids, what they might be wearing, 

where they might be going.  

And he likes to say, Come, let's have dinner.  

We can still have dinner.  

And so we have dinner and talk 

about the old dinners, 

what they liked to eat and what not 

when we used to have family dinners.

And he also likes to say, Come let's take a walk. 

We can still take a stroll. 

And so we stroll past a meadow 

where kids play soccer, 

past a playground 

with kids on slides.

The day we clear out the last room, 

our son says, Keep the yearbooks, 

the trophies, the snowboards.

All that childhood flotsam now

stacked neatly in the dark. 

Never again

The boy next to me

 eats from a bag of fast food 

without looking up 

from his phone.

I who does not exist 

now am free 

to aim my camera 

at his long curls

My thoughts simple with wonder: 

When did he become this new thing?

A little man at age 14

now precisely wears those jeans.

For years the boy says, I love you 

every time he leaves the room, ever since

the parents dropped from sight 

while he crawled like a crab 

across the sand.

Last summer I saw the man coming when

his sentences ran shorter, words flew out  

I'd never heard,  he hummed along

to Lil this and Lil that

and his hair styles grew 

more interesting.

I was not awake that first time 

he crossed the border

without me to his new life.

The shorebirds call out 

from the Bay

--more beings I cannot understand--

And I  hear a small voice, 

a distant foghorn at dusk,

 I love you grandma.

If I don't raise my voice

 He gives me one eye, one ear

but only if I raise my voice.

I don't want to raise my voice

but if I don't, his mind drives off

into the backroads and hides.

At some point, I ask myself

should I let him be a gamer, fail

school, pay his dues? 

His cat would starve if 

I don't feed him. He says

let him hunt mice or just

return him to the SPCA.

Kids can only love so long.

Just ask the cat and me. 

Tonight I pine for my former happiness

 

, 

Tonight I pine for my former happiness.

I admit there was pain in all of it too 

but I scorn all those tears--they taught me 

what gladness is. 

There was that afternoon we drove along the coast, 

Bill Evans CD the perfect soundtrack, 

we are barely talking, so at ease

with the presence of the other. 

I don't know what thoughts waft 

through his mind but I see his calm, his 

contentment marks a faint smile on his face. 

All the signs of a man in love with life.  

We stop to stroll a path along the bluffs 

high above the sand and blue below.

his hands slack in both pockets

and eyes glisten with a deep joy. 

We return to the car and I want to make love 

right then and there 

but he would not risk such exposure, 

being a man who holds dignity dear

and so I merely place a finger on his cheek, 

on that amazing malar bone handed down

to him by Aztecs--his beauty cut

a wound in me that will not heal.  

If only

 

 

Suddenly we drive past fields and fields

of yellow giants--my eyes spinning

pinwheels and voice repeating,

look!  look! look!

But my boys do not look up 

from their bleeping phones because

it's just a bunch of flowers

spreading through the meadow 

by the thousands, faces to the sun

like flowers everywhere.  

No matter the giants stand in perfect rows

like China's Terracotta Army. 

They are too quiet to impress.

If only they were crowing

and butting, if only they were 

rushing toward us and exploding, 

the boys might want a better look

and lift their beeping phones to

maybe take a picture

or two. 

 

A Quiet Town A Father's Day Poem

Once I wrote a book of poems
about my father

but they do not reveal the man
with a raccoon's blue eyes

who brewed beer in the basement,
who drove off every Friday

and returned Sunday nights with
a buck tied to the roof of our Rambler.

The poems just sit up all night 

thinking how my family feels like

a quiet town with an old mystery
that no one talks about
but me.

Tides A Father's Day Poem

One long ago summer after an all-day drive from Indiana in our station wagon, we arrive at grandma's beach house on the Atlantic.

A dozen laughing men and women put down their highballs and cigarettes to hug us.

They are my father's mother, sisters and their husbands and they engulf my parents as shore birds merge into formations.

We four kids sit on the porch sipping cherry cokes, not speaking, our bodies busy sponging it all up:

this vast watery world,
the merry traffic jam of strangers
who seem to care for my father,
and the sudden levity in his body.

It feels strange in a good way
to see enjoyment on him.
He wears it well.

I like the tiny stars that appear in his eyes.
How his hard mouth breaks into jocularity
at things they say to him.

The ocean thrashes before us on the porch,
a sound like Indiana rain storms.

Suddenly in the moonlight the tide spits out waves
of giant horseshoe crabs that grope forward on the sand.

Black helmuts with 7 tiny hands and feet
barely moving but drawing closer.

The sight so beautiful and foreign
like my father's happiness emerging
from his own deep hidden tides.

For the drunks I used to love

I address you as if a chorus,
each voice silky and prized
but all
singing the same song.

Our fascinations still
move a bow across
my spine
though nothing went as planned
      and the buzz-killing
moments can't be swept
under the rug.

When you fell asleep
with my nipple caught
        in your mouth,
the gorgeous cello
of your back
      no longer mattered.

And when
you did not fix the sink
you broke with those same
       helpless hands that
flew along the metal strings
sweet as feathers
on Leonard Cohen tunes
while I paid a plumber,
the way your neck widened
at the shoulder and
       then narrowed
and widened again
      stirred me less.

I will forgive the yawning
when I read you my poems
if you
       forgive me for casting
myself head first
into life
without you.

And if my refusals still sting,
        remember
it was not they that made
our fortunes
but what we did
        next.

Let’s forgive.
The best and worst
of times now seem more
myth than matter.

At every crossroad, we followed
our own disappointing dreams.
And there was mercy
between us:
afternoons on your boat
       under setting suns,
our bellies up.

Where the arrow points

The doctor's wrinkles hide his thoughts
I cannot see what he feels as he
speaks to my love about kidneys.



The trained hands hold an image
to the light to show two dark fists
spread like wings
across my darling's spine.



A million tiny filters are failing
in their God-given duty to cleanse
my husband's blood

so a new diet is ordered,
without a hint of taste,
that must begin tonight
if we are to rescue those
bean shapes off the cliff
from which they dangle.



Only a month before, he says
Let's go to Spain.
He longs for a shaded cafe,
a sip of Tinto Fino.

In his dream, he wears a long white shirt
and a black fedora
and he admires attractive passers by
and they in turn admire
his avalanche of white hair and even whiter
teeth and that leading man jaw.



He leaves the office nervous
but optimistic.

My man does not understand
the next 2 years may be a slow,
moonless descent.



But I do.


I see the levels on the doctor's chart.
I see the arrow on the word: dialysis.
I see no arrow points to Spain.






Rising from the lawn (Mother's Day)

Because she's gone I can talk
about my mother.

I can say she was not the best
nor the worst on the spectrum.

I can say she was not really
like a mother. She was ardent

like a lover, at times
like my worst enemy.

If she were here, she would be
a 101 year old chainsmoker

with hair arrayed like a wedding
cake that would sag under her laugh.

I can say she would scold me
for being too serious and when I

complain, she’d recite an uplifting
line from a famous German sage

fortelling how people cry out
for their mothers

once they are gone
and then cast her eyes to heaven
like a wounded bird.

She would remind me how much
angst she endured for her children

and tell me again to spade her
beside my dad and to visit her there

often because it's the only way
she can rise from that silent lawn.

Avelia's 38th birthday

Our oldest little girl just turned 38.  

Once her beauty
took our breath away.
A rare gift
to be so lovely.

Alas the gift comes with
strings.
Some life-enhancing skills
failed to thrive.
Like speech.

Damn Aphasia.

She entered the world fighting
gravity--the fate of kiwi birds:
Rising above the ground
a forever struggle.

We tried to help her fly but
no matter how often she flailed
her hairy little wings, she could
not rise.

Not built for soaring
like seabirds.

And one day she burrowed
with another kiwi
and behold,
a baby boy.
A seabird.

Imagine.

The kiwis panicked.
Gravity again.
Too much gravity.
One waddled away
in his direction
and ours went
in another.

We do not know what
her days are like

and frankly
we do not want
to know.

The kicker is she’s quite content,
More than many highflying
seabirds we know,
including me.

What luck.

I never imagined
this outcome but
it deserves
some measure
of gratitude.

New anthology by Maya Stein Grief Becomes You

Four of my saddest poems have found a home in this just-released anthology featuring poems, essays and other narratives and images from nearly 60 contributors.

"Grief Becomes You is a tribute to loss, an offering made on behalf of a desire to give voice to the quieter, more shadowy, more elusive aspects of grief’s landscape. The work in this collection reflects the breadth and depth of that real estate, and my hope is that it provides the kind of navigation and comfort we often need most when we are lost in our grief: to know that we are not alone."
--Maya Stein

Print and download;oadable versions available here:
www.griefbecomesyou.com