Puberty

 It takes him away all at once.  

      Like a kidnapping.

One average day

     on a walk to school, 

 the love the child carries for you

     flushes out like milk                

from a leak in his thermos.  

The way that child looks at you 

     one evening over dinner 

is a look you have not seen before. 

     You can't be sure 

      you saw what you saw.  

The way that child speaks to you 

     is not the same tone, 

not like any previous tone.          

And for a long time, his sweet face                

    appears in your dreams on a

   poster pasted on power lines.  

 The new voice, new gaze sweeps 

     into every moment going forth.

Quiet as midnight,

     cool as that dark.      

All day I stroll with the dog in the Redwoods.    

No thoughts of him 

I raised from birth

     who now shaves his face,         

him I pampered and praised--perhaps too much 

     because, well, he was so                

beautiful,  

so tender in all God's ways, 

     and exiled into my life.     

When I return to the house,      

     it hails me again—

      the strange voice, that novel gaze

—that face-slapping loss.

After my friend entered hospice

We were up all night, 

the nurse says. 

She is  asleep now.

Come back tomorrow.

Why wake at all, my friend?.

Why face this gruesome 

dying another day?

All your horses now sold. 

The house and husband gone

Every organelle betrays you.

 

When my man understands Spring 

will not light his brown eyes again

and the ants have carried off

every trace of his last ham sandwich,

he looks from our breakfast table 

past the bowl of oatmeal into

the pod of pills.  

Shoulder to shoulder we fix 

our eyes on those ripened ovules.  

I can think of no reason for him 

to down them except to keep

with me another day.  

I would not do it for him 

as we once agreed and now 

he will not do it for me.  

The air feels stale and hushed. 

Alone we two now on this moon. 

One of us now untethered. 

When they carry him out, one says:

there appears to have been 

no struggle. 

I tell her nurse I'll return tomorrow

but I do not. I walk on the shore

and meet a mess of driftwood,

one bleached skeleton raises two 

crooked arms as if it wants 

to hold me. 

I come here because they cannot

be the fleshy one in this dream.

Because it is a gift I am offered.   

I want to receive it. 

Talking with my friend who has cancer

Next thing I know, my friend does not sound 

like herself on the phone. 

Her voice crawls on elbows through 

the tunnel between us.  

Dragging, unresponsive

as if her body's motor can't turn over.  

The musical patterns remain--a few light notes, 

a pulse of laugh, a few light notes, 

another pulse.  .  

I think of ways to make her laugh 

--it's always been so easy. 

My thoughts remain out of sight

far from the tumor hidden like a stump 

along the rolling hills of her brain.  

I am told, let the patient lead conversation. 

And so I wait for her next words. 

While so,  I recall the ceiling of chandeliers 

at Home Depot. 

Each a sparkling castle, 

each crystal nudged by a gust 

to tap against the edge 

of the body of the other. 

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.