repercussions II

Perhaps you simply have made us
a creature that reaches
always just a little higher
and always
just a little too far
you know we want more, and better
and we want to be more, and better
and it is our weakness
and our strength
and I think you know.

I think you know.

I am your quiet place,
you are my wild.

I am your water wings,
you are my deep.
I am your open arms,
you are my running leap.


from You Are My I Love You, by Maryann Cusimano Love

touché

Hunter wants
to fall asleep
in my arms every night now
and once he (finally,
finally) does,
no matter how stinky
he was being before,
he looks so innocent
and perfect and sweet
that I feel like I could
stare at him
forever,
even if
my whole body hurts and
my arm
is going numb.

Your point, baby.
Bravo.

redolence

I smell different now,
of sweat and breastmilk
intermingled, but it is
not unpleasant
it reminds me
of bread rising, wholesome
welcoming and warm.

respite

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Rumi

this one

This is
the one that
made it
the one
carried so long
loved at great cost
brought forth with great effort, who now
wraps his fingers around mine
who smiles
lopsidedly at me
while I feed him
whose belly I rub and
whose back I pat
the one
who is more like me
than I ever expected and yet
so wholly himself
I am in awe
I am so tired
I am proud and overjoyed
and grief-stricken
and confused (and
did I mention
also
very, very
tired?)

He is the fiercest and
most beautiful
creature I've ever seen
his adoration
the heaviest and
most uplifting
thing I've ever known
and every day I think
I am in love
with this one, this fighter
this intrepid explorer
this gorgeous boy: mine
all mine
finally
mine.

and you are

whatever a moon has always meant and
whatever a sun will always sing
is you.

for keeps

I think I would like
to sleep by your side
for most of the
nights of

the rest

of

our

lives.

out of reach

The only thing
I want from you
is the only thing
that you're

not

yet

willing

to

give.

you do not have to be good

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Wherever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


Mary Oliver

-----

This is my favorite poem. The calm it brings does not last much past the reading of it, if I am truly distressed, but when I need to I'll read it over and over and over until it sticks.

repercussions

The agony of revelation
is too excruciating for words
the possibilities, the opportunities that await
the delicious, terrible, frightening power
of will, of choosing. We understand
abruptly, profoundly, in the marrow of our bones
that we are dying, that
the very air, no matter how clear is poison
slowly killing us, each breath hastening
our own decay. Thus
in one visceral moment paradise
has become a hell
and I hope you trust
that I mean what I say
when I say that ignorance was bliss but
even as the taste of the fruit turns
to ashes on our tongues we
already

crave

another

bite.

short sentences

I'm thinking in
short sentences, in
fragments and half-thoughts again and
it's difficult to concentrate but I think
I'll go home and
run, and walk the dog
and take a shower and
clean up the kitchen a little
I guess I'll
throw away the empty bottles
and wash the plates and wonder again
whether or not I'm
broken, although
I suppose even thinking
of doing all these
things might prove I'm not as broken
as I once was, if I can
run, if I can remember about
a dog, if
I can clean things up and think
at the same time then
I am doing better than I was
two years ago, for sure
and maybe I'll be even better
two years from
now,
who knows.

this whole place is one long poem about ghosts

The notion of
ghosts is
uncomfortable
sometimes, only
sometimes
though
because
there are things
like abuse and
neglect and
doubt
and
mistrust and pain
and how

how

does
the world keep on
spinning on
and on

how

do we go on
when this thing is still
around -- even if it
has disintegrated
turned to dust and slime, it's
in the air, it's
taking shape again, changing
into something else
smaller, maybe
not so ugly, maybe
not so scary or strong but
still

there. And

the same is true
of golden things, of
happy things now gone
now turned to dust and sunshine
water
and flowers
and air and stars and
memory
and changing
always changing
into something new, something
that can't be touched, can't be
caught or kept and yet
(thank goodness)
still it's

there.

rotting

Head spinning
spinning
won't stop

spinning

hurts
and I am

overwhelmed
stuck
foundering
flailing
failing

at

E V - E R - Y - T H I N G

too big
too small
too hot
too scared
too much
not enough
out of time
out of place

out

of

touch

touch

touch

can't

touch

cannot
stay
can't go
anywhere
elsewhere
is there
nowhere, no
somewhere
far

far

far

far away

from
w h o
from
w h a t
from
w h e n
from
me, from
hell
on earth
land
sea
sky
space
time
memory
mind

Nothing
is gone
it's never
gone
it
changes maybe
takes a
different shape but
it's still there
it's there
forever
even if it looks like
it's

rotting

it's just changing shape and
it will never

go

away.


----------


(Bring to this
what you will, I
cannot tell you
what to feel.)

loose-leaf

The human race! A story
about an animal, soft
and vulnerable.

All the things we can't stop thinking about, the basics
of being alive: sex and death and love and babies...

not necessarily in any kind of order, or
according to any kind of reason. You
can't even say
sex before babies; not
if you believe
in Jesus. This
world is


unpredictable. Some things

are true. Too many things are not.
Best of luck to all of us, telling the difference.


----------

I have learned: Life is stories, but life is not like a book. It is loose-leaf, a rough draft, a sketch. Coverless.

Life is crumpled pages covered with broken sentences and half-thoughts scribbled in the dark, in the moments between waking and sleeping. It is out of order. It is random, and fleeting. It is flashbacks and memories and now, now, now, now, now. It is tearstained, and faded, and sharp as a papercut. It is uncategorizable.

A plethora of characters march in and right back out again, suddenly, without our knowing why. Maybe it will be relevant later or maybe it won't; maybe it's a whole other story, totally different but equally as important, and they touched here, overlapped for just a second. The hard truth of it is that we'll never see the end of the one if we want to see the other. Choices. We make our choices all the time, and nothing is ever the same again.

unless death

Unless death has tiptoed or
crash landed or
slipped or
body slammed its way
into your life

Unless death has
touched you, brushed
against you, gently
rested its cold hand on you while
it steadied itself
reaching for someone else

Unless death has
claimed someone you loved
more than anything else, more
than sun, more than air
more than all that is good

Unless death has
breathed
on the back of your neck while you tried
to will yourself to stop breathing because
you were holding someone
who was not breathing anymore, and who
you knew
would never breathe again

Unless you are
familiar with death
you might think it
in poor taste
to mention

Unless you have encountered it, face
to face, you might think it
a morbid thing
to dwell on and
you might not understand
what I mean when I say:

I wish we were closer friends, death
and I; Me and Death.


----------

I wrote this poem a couple of weeks ago, and I started to write an essay based on it to submit to Glow, but ran out of time and ended up missing the deadline. Ah, well. Maybe next time. The essay is still not done, but I wanted to post the poem here, at least.

Do these thoughts resonate with anyone else?

dust

I think
about burning
when it's all over
burning to ashes
dust and tiniest
bits of bone.

I think
of my body, a grey-white cloud
wafting away on a wind or
sifting into an ocean wave or
settling over a mountainside
or maybe just sitting
in a jar
on a shelf
somewhere.

I wonder:
Is this what I want?

I wonder: is the funereal fire
more holy than
the waters of the sea?

If I'd had their
fragile, broken bodies burned
to softest ash
would I
feel closer to them, or farther
if I'd seen them
wafting away on a wind or
settling over a mountainside
or maybe just sitting
in a jar
on a shelf
somewhere or if
I'd ever put my hand
into that jar, felt them
slipping through my fingers
again--oh, not again!
and wondered again if this
was a lock of hair, this
a delicate lung or this
a perfect toe.

I think
the bodies of my babies
are in the ocean (or they were)
mingled with the waters, washed away
along with my blood and my tears
but perhaps they are now
in Alaska's snow or
Chicago's rain or
riding the Ganges river, or perhaps
they are now
high, high up in the atmosphere
or maybe they are here, in my breath
gone cold and crystallized and dancing
before my eyes.

Look, mama.
Watch me twirl.


----------

I learned that it is actually illegal to spread someone's ashes. Around here, anyway. You must put them in a container and bury the container in the ground, and really what is the point of that? You may as well be buried in a big box as fit in a small jar and buried all the same. I don't know. I thought I'd like to be put into the sea. But when I think of being ashes in the sea (my first and last intentionally illegal act), I think it is not quite the same as the way my babies are part of the sea, and it unnerves me somehow. Like we won't be together the way that I'd like. *sigh* I suppose it doesn't matter much. Or not yet. Presumably by the time I die there will be others who have an opinion on what should be done with my body anyway. Maybe a husband who'd like us to be buried side by side. Maybe children who'd like to make a memorial to me, rather than the other way around. There's a first.

Just something that came up at work the other day, and has been on my mind since. Any thoughts, dear readers? What are they going to do with you, when you've gone? Who do you want to be near, for forever?

on pearls and oysters

Someone told me once that I am
like a pearl, and tried
earnestly
to explain it to me and
at the time I smiled
wanly, I'm sure
and nodded and thought it was
a nice, if somewhat empty, thing to say.

Now I think I am not at all
like a pearl, or at least
I don't really want to be
for a pearl, at it's heart
is sand, and sand
is broken rock, worn down
to nearly nothing, grey
or brown and dull and I hope
my heart cannot be described with such
dreary words as broken, grey, brown, or dull.

I hope that I am more like the oyster,
whose pain created the pearl.
The oyster, who did the hard work despite
the wounding foreign shard, who
wrapped and wrapped a grey and dull and
hurtful broken thing in
silky iridescence, covered it in
layers of beauty and mystery
and the joyful surprise of discovery and yet
will never forget that yes, there is
a secret bit of brokenness
at the heart of this lovely thing it has made.

bits and pieces

There is nothing left, nothing
but a box and
another, smaller box
which
contain

bits and pieces
ribbons, lace
cards and letters

the teeniest, tiniest
things:

brown monkey shoes
stripey shirts
a hat
a blanket
a book
a dress

all that is left
of the two of you, and
who I hoped
you'd be.

my favorite part

Thanksgiving was always
nine miserable hours in the car
through the day and long into
the deep night
but then
waking up
alone
in a bed piled high
with clean quilts
behind a narrow door that locked
in a little room at the end
of the hall
where the air was warm
and never smelled of damp or rot

it smelled of turkey
which had been in the oven for hours already
and it smelled of forethought, which smells like love
and the sound of coffee percolating
marched purposefully down that hall
soft but persistent
a call to wake up, wake up
it's today
it's morning
and no one is drunk yet
and you are safe for now
and warm

wake up, enjoy it
while you can.