I's

What happens when I's blur
        and then dim?
The clarity of the world shifts and
moves towards the heart

Inside

a deep longing to be lost
in the absence of lines and sharp details.
      I soften and the world disappears
the darkness now a haven for designs
I've never seen.
                Wake up! you say
                 Can't you see?
I's see alright
    in the dim light --
    a night 
to you
         not me

"Red Hills and Bones"

                                                                "Red Hills and Bones"
                                                                Georgia O'Keefe, 1941
                                                                                The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949


It's soft here on this desert floor--
the first time I've felt soft
in my life.
       Maybe it's the non-doing
because I was undone
      and reduced to my elements
I gave a terminal sigh which was
                   caught in thin, dry air
                            and breezed downwind
                        carrying dust particles as my
                                        memory.

             I lay here,
             just bones,
             and I don't have to
            do. Anything.
The chase is over.
     I don't even remember
     resisting.
  Was I taken down
   quickly?
Or did I die throughout the night,
painting the sand auburn
  inch      by       inch,
the pool of my life spreading beyond
             my form?

Words are Not Lost

As I sit to look at my manuscript for the first time in quite a while, I am hearing words through the lines I have written. A work that seemed so important for me to write at one time is quieted by the immensity of what is happening in Japan and by the powerful experience I am having reading Reiko Rizzuto's book, Hiroshima in the Morning, as these events simultaneously unfold. I surprise myself. I do not give up on my manuscript. Instead, I write a few lines, change a few words, and start to notice: reading and writing is my sun and moon. The celestial weight of the yearning is what I glean from Reiko's book, beyond the beautiful language, the palpable honesty, the courage of this heart-endeavor.

I realize I haven't been writing. Since my friend took her life, I have done what I could to float with what I had: multiple jobs, a new relationship, a sore shoulder, living with my parents in the house in which I grew up. Yet, submerged in Reiko's words, the rest of the world becomes silent: water around my ears, slight pressure, the sound of my own breath. What do I want? This is a question Americans get to ask. And not even every American. This questions absorbs in itself the needs and wants of others. If I want something, then someone must provide it for me. If I provide this thing myself, it no longer becomes a want, but a piece of me. It becomes who I am, who I always was - some sort of recognition of self rather than a want of other.

What do I need? I do not know anymore. The things I thought I needed have slipped away these past years - some violently, some without so much as a struggle, only perhaps a small sigh before leaving, marking the spot they occupied once in my fabric. My fabric is shifting. The strings pull apart to create more holes, more space. Which is better? Holes or space?

The relationship ends on pain of knowing too much.

I am back with what I write. If I were to claim one need, it would be this: to find the words and the beauty that is required to write something of substance that creates, as Reiko's book does, a raft of sorts for people floating in their own experiences. I want to build a raft that is made of the pieces of my corner of consciousness, lashed together with strands that grow out of something deeper and broader than who I am. Without these words, I have yet to see how I become whole.

These past months were an unintentional experiment. To say I dropped what I loved in the service of mourning would be a lie. Let me explain.

A death. A service. A collection of lines of poetry attempting to capture a life lived and ended.

Before these days, I woke with a dream that I would write in that month between classes. A life. A death. A service. And I knew, that if I began writing, I would not stop. I would write across the boundaries of time that defined schedules and classes and where-to-be's and when's. I would not come back if I left for that well-journeyed place. I closed the computer and pulled out the pile of essays to grade. Easier.

Reiko writes her way back to herself. Though the courses we have charted through the high waters of obligation are different, perhaps even opposite, I ride on the same yearning. She, a wife young before maybe even becoming an adult. I, in my forties now, sealed inside a chrysalis of having made it this far without my mate, never having wanted this to be the case. She, a mother without wanting to be one. She, loving her children and still not wanting to be what mother meant to her - the mother she had yet to define, a simple glow in the future she may not have seen flicker back then. Me, always wanting to be a mother, mothering other children, sometimes resenting other people's children because I gave to them that part of myself I thought was finite.

It was not.

But the impasse is the same. How does one write for oneself and for the world and still give (the best) of oneself to those nearby? I return to my manuscript. Some day, this book might buoy a swimmer for a little while. I hope so. For now, I am grateful for the reminder to keep writing. I dip my index finger into the salve of your words, Reiko, and touch the wounded places.

Thank you.

Distance

The pelagic sky touches you and me
Simultaneously, a column of shifting
breezes makes a cloud feather
 and disappear
a string of stars pounds rocketfire
into a darkened sky like a heavy metal band
the sound of stars is not a twinkle, rather
an explosion.
But we knew that.

On New Year's Day

This is what I will read tomorrow at my dear friend's memorial service. I have no words for the longing that will take place afterward when the crumbs are swept from beneath the tables and the pictures are taken down and wrapped up to go. 

“Love you lots,” Christine would say at the end of a regular conversation. She had this way of making sure people knew how much she cared about and appreciated them. I felt she was magical - a light shining even when she struggled. Her essence was so clear as if she were holding hands with the deepest part of herself. I knew I could trust her with my heart.

To me, Christine was a work of art- an immense splash of presence, a moment captured with the most vivid colors or the greatest amount of contrast. Black and white on grey or a sudden swash of emerald green. What is it like to be truly heard? Seen? I felt both when I was with her.

When I walked beside her, I saw the branches sparkle in winter because she saw them that way. When I spoke with her, I felt the heft of her listening – a gentle presence on the other end of the line urging me to know myself more.

She had that wish for herself, as well – to be known deeply and in the most abiding way. The week before she passed, she spoke to me of having experienced true love. She said she felt so lucky to have known that kind of love on Earth in her relationship with Rita. Rita, I know that you were a gift to Christine and she told me so when we spoke.

In many ways, we all realize this is an impossible task, so with this poem, I wish to approximate her beauty. My hope is that you will recognize some of your experience of Christine in my own.

She shimmered.

Emerald green on forest floor

A brightness so natural that

she became tree, riverbed, carefully worn pathway.

To see her was to listen closely to the ripple of laughter

she bathed us in when we’d tell our stories.

her heart wide enough open to gather our spirits together

and huddle like children in the mystery of life,

exploring yet another idea, another path, another round-the-bend.

And she, with her floppy hat at the pool’s edge, shaded from the sun’s fierce rays,

watched as we swam in cool water and bathed in warm light and told her of how it felt to move as creatures in another element. She sat, sun-glassed, and hatted, long-sleeved in her chair like she was perched upon our moment, never needing to get her feet wet really in order to understand and care about what our experience was.

And then she’d tell us, long and deep into conversation, how she

Knew the beauty of this world

And that the heart was made for diving into

Long before reason had its way with us.

And how every moment was precious

and how she lived to taste each morsel. 

Christine, love you lots.

We will miss you.

The Truth of This Illness

Some benevolent force is reorganizing
me into its own
image
I am being paginated,
and broken into stanzas,
rearranged in the blank space of parchment
 in order
to make more sense.

Urgent Care

I am fevered skin

The object of my desire, myself.

How does the afternoon sun burnish olive curtains

making the dreary window frame glow?

And the good sun’s announcement

as if to usher a glint of the outside

world into my sickbed.

It is moments like these

of utter stillness

determined by the body’s very own halt

that I feel the weight of bone

muscle

skin

organ.

A body

conspiring to dig its way down into

the soil beneath this house

pressing, more than releasing, down

through bed, floorboards, and foundation

in order to taste a future burrowed soily home.

I feel the dumping of memory

and the

Shy discovery of something hidden

Within the folds of words.

I feel a baby’s skin creeping 'round my body,

wrapping in tightness the in-between places of

tendon and ligament.

The street lights are out,

like midnight in Santa Fe,

the only thing visible the ancient breath

of stars.

And I, fevered child, lay still awake
and dreaming

The interstitial space between me and the

Unseen, disappears.

And what comfort this sensation

of doing nothing

and still sinking.

A sun bath persistently

scrubbing my face and

flickering loudly on the screen

of my closed eyelids.

I close,

patient

as if the screaming sun

and deafening gravity

would tear me apart once and

For all      
          The ember and shine of the day’s last light

leaves a blister on the bed where I lay

          The language of this poem perched

where a body had once been.