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?
On the top shelf of my closet,
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.
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.
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.
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.
To the heart ....was it ever less than treason ...
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.
I just read about a convict
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?
