Cicadas

 When facebook flashes pictures 

I posted 10 years ago, or 7, or even only 4,

an ache crawls through me with claws.  

My thumb and finger 

go in for a closer look 

at this precious being, lost. 

Not dead, grown. A kind of death.

The soft child feathers shed. 

It makes me weak to see 

that funny expression.

So in love we were! 

A child grows noiselessly, 

as if by a spell—

all in one night pulled 

into the mystery. 

The force is in them, 

making them tall & hairy 

& hooded--making them say mean things 

and then apologize.

 I wish babies would hatch 

—not one beauty at a time —but

like cicadas—by the millions.

Not just one grinning, toothless boy-- but 

millions exactly like him 

all springing from the earth

every few years, 

high singing, buzzing.

The school reports

The school reports my teen man 

missing again.  I wonder 

what am I supposed to do 

with this new bullet of hurt? 

Peace with him now as brief 

as a traffic stop before 

the next bad news.  

Is there any use to sit 

on the edge of his bed to talk?   

Or to grab his stack of curls and pull 

him to the floor like my mother 

did to mine?

In the beginning, he never disobeyed 

or snarled or cursed.  

I thought it such a blessing 

but now I ask the thin air all around, 

was that a clue I missed--

some kind of secret suffering? 

Who knows why his future 

shows up like this—the days 

of sweet behavior giving way to vaping 

and mating in the back seat.  

Surely that good-kid blood still 

flows through his veins. 

All that light of heaven he 

once shared freely 

he may share again—

tho less evenly, less often—coerced 

by the dictatorship of

life.

In a poetry workshop

 

The poet to my right coils and uncoils.

Flattens her chest against the table.

Crosses and uncrosses her legs.

She just can’t contain 

herself in a single form when she

speaks of her mean lovers.

Not her on my left with a penchant

for all the other hard things in life, 

which she reads to us with 

spine straight as a rod.

Her whole body pleading,

Please don’t hurt me.

Another sits deadpan. 

Life has scraped her clean. 

Taken her apart bone by bone.

Washed and dressed her

and set her down across from me.

Her poems fidget. Search 

for a place for the pain to start.

She asks, Can someone help me?

We writers model courtesy, self-control. 

There’s not one carnival vibe among us. 

We don’t even blink when our teacher

tells us he will soon be dying.

On command we pick up our pens--

our rescue—

And write down his prompt—Mercy. 

And then beg for it 

shamelessly.

Corporate mergers

Microsoft buys Activision; Kroger buys Albertsons; AT&T buys CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT; Warner Bros, Disney buys Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox; Google buys smaller things, Comcast buys everything else

Another merger, just as the prophet 

Marx predicted.

   

Capital never sleeps. 

In continuous motion, sucking all 

its forked and flicking tongue 

can bag in this craving 

 for omnipotence 

over nations, over new planets.

 Soon over Black Holes.

And we the ruined shops and souls 

are just their fuel.

And we the stars that twitch

then vanish over their event horizons, 

are torn into indivisible bits

where once we were whole beings 

who created all manner of angels and spheres

to save us from all manner of hells 

but who are so frail

before a force

that swallows light itself.

What's ahead

The old warned us there’s deprivation

up ahead 

that worsens with time.

Parents, pets, friends--all we love--

carried away

and our own sweet bodies 

a shock in the mirror.

They did not mention a sunset on the Bay 

could bring more peace than a

striving young heart 

could know 

just by placing one foot after the other

along the pebbled beach,

my friend laughing beside me;

a picnic of lamb chops and mango waiting 

in my backpack for a shady spot. 

Everything needed provided.

But on this sunset my friend turns her face 

from the glow and says,

 I‘ve got 15 summers left, 

if i'm lucky. 

So she plans her summers with care now.  

Each a precious stone kept safe from thieves.

I was angry at my mother for not coming

that month I lay pinned to a hospital bed.

But how could I know it was her last summer?

A summer of curated movements. 

I wish I had not argued with my man that June 

he tripped on the sidewalk 

when it took precious summer days to heal. 

We did not know it was his last June. 

How could we have known that in October 

the sun would set at six and not rise again?

One by one they walked out of this house—

or were carried out. 

The oldest daughter, then her sister, brother

my mother,  

……..my husband, my dear, my man, my angel.

And now the final leaving--our boy's packing   

and this house enlarges as with every departure.  

It's a castle now: ceilings sky high, hallway 

a cavern--the whole place a relic, 

unsound and useless. 

Selfie

If only I could live wide awake, 

every moment clear between these

ears and eyes.

So time would quiet down, 

so it would move slowly on hands and knees. 

If tasks, news, many silly things

did not hold me in a drowsy  trance

where time zip-lines away

so it is always the  past.

 

How to keep this mind tuned 

to the shapes of clouds, 

to the skunks that nibble from the cat’s bowl, 

the struggling camilla, 

chimes I hung above it

and after read a poem out loud 

about why there’s nothing to be sad about 

then write another about the worm

glistening on the deck 

and mention all the things I'm grateful for

and so turn time into my own loving friend 

 rather than this foe

who steals all I love. 

Acrobatics

A machine keeps him alive 

now that his kidneys can't

and he endures this 

without a mother 

(She would have nursed him 

like no other). 

He has only me, wife, and the machine, 

both second best but we keep him going

on this tightrope, we keep him swinging,

rebounding—we keep life on its tip toes.

On his bad days, I tell him:

Just look at the weeds shooting up from the patio 

pushing through the odds.

Look how the blind bats catch a meal 

in the pitch of night, 

how the mushroom explodes overnight 

in the junk yard.

Life abides. He likes to hear this.

So I repeat: Life goes on by the grace 

of some generous force.

It stages comebacks, abandons reason,

and drags on stubbornly, 

flying in the teeth of it all.