They want to mess with time.
They want to take it and wrap it
around some idea or other.

They want us to be more productive
or less—no one knows.

They want the mornings brighter—
or is it darker? It depends on who you ask.

They want the nights to hang in the wings
letting the day make a later exit from the stage.

They want to move things over there,
over here or under that or over this.

They want it earlier and later
and better and better.

They will never be happy because, like a pubescent
neurotic, nothing is ever pretty enough.

They fidget, they hem and haw and grit their teeth
in the effort to move the rock up that hill where the
view is so much better.

They exhaust themselves because they don’t know better—
the poor things.

They will prostrate themselves before the god of
never being happy with what is.

They will extinguish themselves, sadly, predictably—
before their time is up.

Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
~Patti Smith
_______

We know, of course, it belongs to them.
But remember how it used to be ours
until it slipped unseen through our hands?

We had our fun you and I.
We drank and danced till the busses stopped running.
And now apparently it's all theirs.

How strange, when you think of it, that such a thing
could be possessed, given that it’s right there in front of us.
How could it ever really slip away?

Now the question is: How do we get it back?
What do we need to do to claim it even though
we know that it supposedly belongs to them?

Let’s meet again. What do you say?
You there, me there too. Let’s take hold of
all that slipped through.

Let’s possess it again, feel the heat
and the rhythmic pulse the way it felt so long ago
before it belonged to them.

There it is— Do you see it? Right there—
Touch it. Taste it. Like the sweet tang of fresh mango.
This time—let’s agree—that we’ll not let go.

—How are you?
—Gettin' by
—Good
—Yep
She was on her third bourbon as they exchanged texts. The smell of it wafted in her face as she held the snifter up to her nose. The sweet syrupy smell of cheap bourbon. She dangled a cat toy in her free hand while the black and white and tabby thing watched the feather sway back and forth in the air. Head turning with each pass like the cat wall clock they used to have when she was little. The clock's eyes glowed in the dark. And it was really dark at night back then when they lived out in the middle of a farming settlement in western Pennsylvania. The interior of the single-story ranch house was decorated in classic fifties kitsch: braided rag rugs clashing with the Oriental lamps, green leaf wallpapering, and glow-in-the-dark cat wall clocks. She took a sip of the room temp bourbon then set the glass down. The cat had lost interest in the dangling feather cat toy so she set that down as well. She got up and walked down the hall to the bathroom. She peed, washed her hands in the sink, then steeled herself for the obligatory glance in the mirror. What she saw: an image of a woman that didn't immediately plummet her into an abyss of self-loathing. She would settle for that. She reflexively opened the cabinet door: hair clips, tweezers, baby oil, alcohol, cotton swabs, dental floss, Zoloft, Estradiol, acetaminophen, double-edge razor blades, no razor. She closed the door then said to her reflection: "We should get out of here. Dontcha think?" She looked away, then back again, flounced her hair, and said: "Or dontcha?"

Aware of the games the mind plays
coming out of quarantine.
The “Yes, I feel a lot better. The sun is out.
I should go for a walk.”

And then “Yes, but it’s not absolutely necessary
that I do that. Staying inside, given that I am still
testing positive, would be a service to others.”

And reflecting that this last is also in support
of a life-long agoraphobic tendency.
And the acknowledgment that one has been honest
in admitting that to oneself.

And the rehearsal of sharing—if ever speaking
to another—that insight as well.

And the release, like an unclenched fist, of the whole
**** affair. Stepping back, like a spectator at a chess match
or a game of blackjack, letting the sides focus on each other
while knowing the decision will be made either way
by the end of the day.

And allowing all of it. Resting with presence rather than
being reborn in each decision to do or not do,
to move or not move, this thing chosen or not… or that thing.

All of it establishing a land claim on shifting sand
or a particularly pleasing cloud formation.

So poised she is sitting there in the arbor of the Palestinian Café in this oh so cosmopolitan New England city. Small by city standards, but close enough to a city that it labels itself so. As she sits there preparing to write in her journal she is reminded of an earlier work of hers that was published in an online zine in Santa Cruz. She makes a mental note to return to that piece and post it on her own website. She has so much to do... but time runs… no… time doesn’t run… it doesn’t even exist. Life runs out the clock and thus by the end of evening there is only the lying of the head on the pillow and then the rollover and then the slow sink into semi-unconsciousness—then oblivion. "Oh, unblemished oblivion! How seldom we visit. I love your featurelessness, your lack of glitter and lights, your abundance of nothing. It’s what I love about you—the emptiness."

Back and forth, gone then here—never lasting.
There is progress then none. There is going
And then coming. There are words then none.
There are thoughts, then none. Onward.

Keep going, keep on, keep on. Why? Why not?
Why not why? Not why. Try/try not.
Yes, not trying, but trying nonetheless.

Do it, just do. Forget all, forget none.
Be by not being. Try by not trying.
Think of nothing. You go, so, because
You can’t stop. Can’t go unless you stop.

Live by dying, die but live. Be there for
Others. Be there for yourself. Open, close.
Be closed by opening. The heart contracts
Then opens, opens then contracts.

Wake up, then sleep. Sleep, then wake.
On and on. On and off.
Whether moved or not, keep moving towards
Or away, but move at all costs.

Born every time I form an opinion. Born every time I open my mouth. Born when I stand. Born when I move. Born when I eat, drink, shower.

And so born as I write this. Born in the choice of pen. Born in the choice of paper. Born in the decision to do write at all, trying like hell not to be born with each word. Trying like hell to get out of the way, to become empty, to disappear. Trying to be porous as the air itself.

And so it goes transition after transition, frame to frame, step by step. This is only now, after all. It’s not later. It’s what is occurring now, and one must be OK with that—the facile assumption that what is said is worth saying, worth sharing with everyone.

Born again. Her look at me—brand new born. Squiggling, squirming self arising from all that ink and muscle memory. Each word dripping with amniotic fluid. How uncomfortable it is—to be.

Whenever I speak, I feel as though
I’m on stage or on the witness stand.

My testimony has someone’s life
hanging off every word.

Each syllable is like an in breath taken just above
the wave’s crest before going down again.
Speaking in order to save a life, my own life.
I must convince the jury that I’m
a credible witness to life’s incidental happenings.

This happened—
Yes…
This way, and at that time—
Yes…
In that order—
Yes…
With those results—
Yes.

For a very brief time, A. & E were like
a diphthong, sitting side by side on the
bench outside the meditation center,
meeting secretly at odd times and places:
7:13pm in front of the library;
2:32pm on the cliff overlooking the Pacific.

A. wrote poems for E. and sent them on
kitschy postcards. E. was introduced to A.’s
son; A. met E.’s former spouse.

For a very brief time their pulses synchronized.
The rest of the world retreated like a
chorus line moving upstage, letting the
two of them stand alone in the floodlights.

Then, one night, alone on a street corner,
they got so close that each of them disappeared,
vanished like binary stars in a death spiral.

E. was frightened by this, and so they agreed to unhook
their limbs, letting the gravitational vortex fling them
to opposite ends of the story. No longer singular,
but plural once again—each.

Bow. Bow to it all: the loss, the deluge, dams broken,
lives buried in beds of mud, square miles of charred forest,
all those for whom those forests were home.

Bow down to the loss, let it fill you. Their loss, your own loss,
each loss emptying the world of its having been. The ever-flowing
waters carving out new routes from higher ground to the depths.

Nothing is lost, only changed, reborn as a new sapling here
by the edge of the receding water line.
From ashen forests floors oaks sprout.

The loss of loved ones filling multiple hearts with compassion.
Where there was the touch of a hand memory serves up
sublime moments. Sitting, talking quietly on a brownstone stoop.

You remember her last words. She was in her wheelchair and it was time for you to leave and as you said goodbye you asked: “Is there anything else I can do for you before I go.” And she turned to you with that deadpan expression of hers and said: “Yes, take me with you.” And you laughed, hugged her, and left her there with her husband and cousin – her dear cousin who called you the next night and said: “Susan died today.”

You sob, then later that night you begin remembering the
sublime moments with her, each one filling you up again
as you honor her request and bring her home with you.

What is this? It feels vaguely familiar.
Is this Solomon's "Noonday Demon"
establishing residence again?
Melancholy? The dejection
of a scolded child?

I am carrying my sadder twin
with me wherever I go.
My shadow has finally caught
up with me after a long while.
Like an unloved cousin, it has
tailed me all day long.

Coming close enough to murmur
in my ear. What it is saying is
unintelligible—whispered sibilant half tones.
The lamentations of dying mollusks
stranded along the sunbaked shoreline.
The grieving call of an un-mothered fawn.

What can be done? Is there anything that
should be done? Are we in danger here?
Is it possible we could drown together?
The two of us bound as one like
Paolo and Francesca in Dante's underworld.

Me, making the motions of trying to live a life;
it doing the only thing it knows how to do—
clutch my shirtsleeve and groan in tune
with the cicada’s last few bootless
serenades to the empty woods.

She takes the young boy’s hand,
hurt by the wagon pull, and holds
it in her own. The day is hot, muggy,
a typical western Pennsylvania summer.

She comforts him. Wipes away the sweat
and tears, looks at his hand, recognizes
the wound, and then his eyes, so much like
her own.

A dizzying feeling arises, the way one feels
when standing on the edge of a subway platform
and looking up, the first butterflies-in-the-gut
when coming on to a hallucinogen.  

Tripping once in the Santa Cruz Mountains, he
was convinced that he’d died, was killed by a
hit-and-run driver and his body lay lifeless on the
side of the road in Brookdale. She nearly died
in Felton 30 years later.

That night, he’d noticed the way the light of
a street lamp turns redwood trees into
giant, false replicas of themselves.

She hears a dog moaning in the apartment
below hers. He is startled when his cabin door
bangs open and the ******* retriever stands
there wagging his tail. No one knows who his
owner is.

The black retriever would sleep in his 65 VW
bug if he left his windows open at night. She owns
a 2000 VW and as far as she knows no one has
ever slept in it.

In Brookdale one summer evening there is the
sound of couples arguing, the crash of broken
China. He comes out of the cabin, a woman follows
behind and body-slams him into the pyracantha
bush. He lays in the pyracantha laughing as she drives
off in his car. He looks up and sees an older woman
smiling at him. She reaches down, takes his hand,
and pulls him free.

The lobelia is dying. Its tiny bluish-purple
blossoms curling inward as though they are
giving up, the stems slack, lifeless. It seems
depressed.

She would ask if there is anything
she could do—but it’s a plant—and she doesn’t
speak the language of plants.

She bends down, takes the lax stems in her
hand and holds them the way she holds the hand
of the elderly woman she cares for when they
have run out of words left to share.

She’s new to this. She has not been fully
responsible for another living thing in many years.

There was once her dogs that she finally had to
surrender that time when she was in California
and wasn’t sure whether she was going to admit
herself into a psychiatric hospital or take a last walk
half-way across the San Lorenzo Bridge.

And there were her sons, whom she left behind on
two occasions because she was going mad in
Massachusetts. When the pressure had grown
too great and her resources too thin, she fled to
California to get away from it all—and both times
discovered she’d brought all her problems with her.

The last time was her Road to Damascus. She
found the dharma at a local meditation center and
brought it back with her. Minus a few difficult hurdles,
she has been equanimous ever since.

She looks at this once resplendent lobelia drooping over
the side of the planter on her deck next to the pansies, so full
of themselves, and the indifferent alyssum, and she wonders
if she can help it live. Or—if not—can she help it die?

She slapped me hard across the face
She said: “You’re not stupid”
I was only 9 years old
But I knew she meant to say something else

She said: “You’re not stupid”
I couldn’t understand her
But I knew she meant to say something else
She seemed to hate me after Dad died

I couldn’t understand her
So we grew apart
What else could I do? She seemed to hate me
And I mirrored her hatred

We grew apart
Because she would beat me
And I mirrored her hatred—
Wished she’d been the one to die

She beat me
When I was only 9 years old
And I would mirror her hatred
After she slapped me hard across the face

She lets go of the notebook, and
of course it falls, lands with a
“pluff” on the comforter as she walks
past on her way out of the room.

Abandoned? How so?

Don’t make her say it. . . . “I left my sons, moved
away from them so,” she says, “I could find myself.”

Don’t make her say it: “I will leave you too as
I have been left. First him, then him, then another
him. I will gravitate toward you, dance with you in
twinned orbit. But you must know I will let go.”

It must be said: “I can’t be your anchor. I am
too intemperate, too much like the weather.
Having been left, I will leave. Having left, I am gone.
May I be forgiven if by leaving I cause you any harm.”

Now that that’s been said, let’s begin
again—pick up where we left off: “Your tea
is cold,” she says. “Would you like me
to warm it up for you?”

Like a time-lapse view of a melting ice cube,
or the erasure of a blackboard equation, he
disappeared from his face. All the features
remained: a head, a nose, eyes, mouth.

What melted away right at that moment
was who he was. Once a familiar relative—
now a total stranger. A being without
a story, zero associations, nameless.

She marveled at the fluidity of her
perception. The building blocks and
scaffolding of the mind just tenuous
threads, gossamer filaments.

The brain as cotton candy.  
Where others may have panicked,
raced to gather all the vanished
referents of this person, she floated

calmly in the buoyant waters of
the impersonal. She only resisted
when the reel began to play in reverse
and—feature-by-feature—this

family member re-inhabited the
body sitting across the room
from her and she could only try
in vain to forget again.

What was significant wasn’t the trails, the evergreens and the leafless maple and birch, the view of surrounding hills and the patched blue and white sky.

What was significant was the terror she felt as she prepared to leave her apartment—alone. Navigating the streets and highways leaving the city; stopping a few times for errands and entering the stores—alone. Searching for, finding, and buying what she needed and exiting—alone.

It was the anxiety of getting to Lone Tree Hill, of finding it, never having been there before. Parking the car in a vacant lot across the road from the trail head then worrying that it might not be there when she returned. It was the indecision regarding which trail to take among several, and the worry that she might lose her way.

She never stopped to question that she—an adult with decades and decades of life experience—should have these fears. Instead, she held them, watched as they lumbered about the chambers of her heart, and then, one-by-one, exited—leaving her alone again.

Who knew spring could
bring such surprises—

sparrows excavating beak-by-beak
a grapefruit-sized hole in the crabapple
that grows between two 3-family
houses on Franklin Street,

the last jab of a miracle
serum that so many others are
dying to get, and others who
have died waiting for.

And I—after living five years under
ground—feasting on the view of tiny,
chartreuse leaves on the zelkova
tree across the street;

starlings, house sparrows, blue
jays, robins, and mourning doves
strafing past my 2nd floor window
on their flight paths back and forth.

Who knew those five years of
basement dwelling so molded me,

shaped me like a recluse, a contented
she-bear sleeping 10 hours a day,
never knowing what the weather was
doing, what visions I was missing?

Like the surprise snow on April 16
dusting, then completely covering the purple
and yellow pansies I’d so uncharacteristically
planted in window boxes the week before.

Who knew I’d ever be cloaked again
in this shawl of optimism, this “blithe spirit”
that comes from living with the living,
seeing the seen, being the being?

Sitting on the banks of the
Big Sur River—a person in
flannel and denim, named and
identified, albeit uncomfortably so.

What’s missing? Fauna. No fauna
except for the small brown scorpion
on the lapel of one’s jacket.

“I thought you were a Gemini.”
“I am.”
“Then why do you have a scorpion
embroidered on your jacket?”
“Where?!”
“There.”

Scorpion gingerly removed
with a manzanita twig, flanneled
and denimed returns to the
Big Sur and gets lost in the fluidity,
flowing through identities—
first this one, then that one.

What name shall we give ourselves?
Wanting to hide all of it: the Welsh, the
Confederate president, the dreary
commonness of it all.

In an attempt to sever past
associations, we commit posthumous
patricide, jettison “Davis” . . . for what?
What goes in that empty space on the
line at the bottom of all forms?

What rings true? And what does truth
mean anyway? Why not Lie? Such a small
phoneme—Lie. Why not let falsehood stand
in for a name?

And so, standing now, walking now, back
to the tent, newly knighted, self-named, thus:
A. Lie

OK, you. What do you want? Those eyes? Those *******? Those full lips? Those pretty prominent front incisors? What is it with that? The teeth?  

Why do you want all this? The house. The car. The job. The partner. Maybe even a second house? Who made you Hera—Queen of the Universe—Ruler of All Gifts and Comely Attributes?

I see you hiding there behind your confident swagger, your calm, all-knowing Buddha smile, hands in pockets—empty as they are.

Who me?  

Yes, you. In your faded Levi’s jacket and those age-defying ****** red low-top sneakers.

Really? Moi? . . .

Who else?

. . .

I know! I got it!

What? What you got?

It’s because we were born in the wrong body.

Really? You think that’s it?

Well, yah!

But, wasn’t everybody? Wasn’t every body born in the wrong one? Doesn’t everyone at one time or another wish circumstances were reversed? “I’ll trade you my small feet for your flaxen hair.” “You give me your heterochromian eyes and I’ll give you my wide-set hazel ones.” Even royalty have that nagging sense they’d be better off in some other tale, playing some other character. “Oh god,” the king cries, “make me a cobbler! Please!”

Dearly beloveds, we are gathered today to honor the life of this Leptoglossus Occidentalis (Lo for short), who was sadly found drowned in the toilet bowl of a second-floor apartment on Franklin Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Sunday, March 28, 2021.

Little is known about Lo other than an assumed lack of discernment regarding the character of water vs land, their poor swimming skills, and that their ancestors are native to western North America, most likely California, and that they have relatives living as far west as Tokyo and as far east as Croatia. We can attest, however, to the insupressable will to live—in the Schopenhauerian sense—of this Leptoglossus Occidentalis. After being fished out of the toilet bowl and placed delicately on the window sill above the bathroom radiator Lo moved an inch or two in the span of twelve hours, using only one hind leg, which resulted in their taking a westward path where they finally stopped, either due to exhaustion, death, or lack of interest.

We will never know if, in the throes of death, Lo was trying to make a pilgrimage to their ancestral home somewhere in the Redwoods of the Coastal Range where we imagine their cousins live safely away from plumbing.

Did Lo suffer? Did they “Rage against the dying of the light”? Or, were they stoic in the manner of Epicetus? Or was Lo renunciate in the Buddhist sense?

Given the simplicity of their life style—living on tree sap and pine seeds, hence the common name Western Conifer Seed Bug—we believe this Leptoglossus, this true bug, as it were, was indeed Buddhist. And, unlike Dylan Thomas, went gently into that good night.

May they and their loved ones be at ease.

The elegance of a fawn
meets brilliant sun on a Monday.

The mother of all
who need mothering.

Grace in the face of every mishap.
Has she no equal?

Where she moves atoms part in
deference effacing themselves

before the Madonna
on a Sunday.

I want to tell you about my car. I love my car. I can see her when I look out my window. She’s right there . . . the white one, the smallest one, the one missing all four hubcaps.

Why do I love my car? Confession: I have actually hugged her, walked right up to her cute, smiley, VW Bug face and hugged her in front of friends and others who may have been watching. Her name is “Jitter” and I love her because she’s got problems. Quite old in car years, she’s got rust in her creases and joints and her undercarriage. Her brakes grumble when it’s cold and the speakers rattle, even when the radio is tuned to the classical station.

I love her because of her frailty, not in spite of it. I love her because her condition and character match my own. She doesn’t quite fit in, and yet she fits in most spaces; she behaves younger than her years, tends to go over the speed limit when she can, and has a sweet disposition.

I’m single, but if I was paired with someone, they’d have to be just like me . . . only a little better at some things, evenly matched in most other ways, and slightly lacking in the few skills I am somewhat confident in—like meditating, staying equanimous when the ***** hits the fan, making do with very little, and . . . parallel parking.

Thinking inside a box, how seldom she had done this, so not her style.

“Give me a box,” she’d say, “but make it so big I’m not aware it’s there.”

A box as big as the sky—or maybe as big as one’s native tongue.

Hers was a style so ungoverned so unschooled it was invisible.

Forget poetic forms—she outsized the confines of biology.

At birth—given outward indicators—she was classified as “male.”

“Oh yah,” she’d say, “tell that to the handful of men who guessed otherwise.”

Men whom—in the thrall of lust—she’d let lead her to darkened alleyways.

Men who mouthed her mouth, lifted her dress, probing for what they’d never find.

She would try to warn them, but they were too drunk, too possessed to listen.

She was one of the fortunate ones who didn’t end up in the morgue.

So many are lost because they can’t be kept in well-defined spaces.

When we began drawing lines on the earth borders erupted in flames.

Imagine a finite universe and it will take your breath away.

The significance of the day
on which I was born was given to
all of us by my working-class, coal
mining ancestors whose sweat,
blood, and healthy lung tissue
were sacrificed to the
god of capital.

Whose dedication and fierce
struggle for the right to
one ******* day not devoted
to god or the ruling class brought us
this Saturday on which I entered
the world with raised fists.

It may be that you
outlive any one of
your beloveds.

What will you do then?

Will you collapse like a
bubble in a pollen-dusted stream?

Will you choose to join them?

All things are possible.

What a thing this is—
living a continuous birthing
of possibilities.

Remember to turn out the light.
Remember both of your sons.
Remember your sister, and your dear friends—
those most in need first.

Remember the breath, always
the breath, as many of the
20,000 or so you
breathe in a day.

Remember to say “yes”
Remember to let go.

Remember to accept yourself
as messy as you are while asking
that you grow in wisdom and compassion.

Remember you will die.
(You are already old.)

Remember you will lose your
loved ones and all your possessions.

Remember you will suffer pain
and sorrow and half the worldly winds.

And don’t forget to remember to remember.

This is where you are.
There is no other place.
No other “You.”

Not the little boy so wanting
to be like his cousins—
red-cheeked, curly-haired girls,
all of you sitting in a circle in the sand,
your father in white t-shirt and khakis
towering benevolently above this
cousined assembly in the back
yard of aunt Jean’s house.

Not the expectant father/doting husband
standing at the window of UC Med Center
on Parnassus Street at 3am gazing
at the untrafficked street 14 stories below
listening to the in utero heartbeat of
the being already named Alex who will
make his dramatic entrance
five and a quarter hours later.

No—right now you are in your bedroom,
colorful scarves draped on the walls,
dresses in the closet seldom worn anymore
due to pandemic circumstances.

You are here—breathing, reclining on
your bed wondering if there is any way out
of this besides a decorous curtsey —
a bow to the muse of time and the
“ineluctable modality” of change.

For Eric

Still as likely to call
you on your faulty reasoning

To add philosophical asides
to any conversation

To create something from
other things:  words,
succulents, driftwood,
found objects, and
arcane bits of wisdom

To dig up treasures where ever
and when ever possible

To delight in uniqueness of character
and a choice turn of phrase

To both insist and demur,
challenge and encourage,
to penetrate and repent
(on rare occasions)

To surprise with a soft word,
a kind gesture,
a wisp of sentiment,
and a steadfast dedication to
lasting friendship.

Permanence is an illusion--
he would argue--
But some things, like the
arrow of time, remain unchanged.

After Abie falls asleep I drive home
and leave him in the car long enough

to take the groceries in, then
come back out and carry him

upstairs--noticing, as I lay him
down on his bed, that somewhere

along the way he's lost his pacifier.
This is serious. It could be

anywhere. And he needs it.
I remind myself to look later,

to retrace my steps from his
bedroom door, back down

the stairs and outside to the car.
I go to the kitchen and begin putting

groceries away. The spice rack falls
off the wall. A partially open jar

of cayenne pepper spills into a bowl
of shelled pecans. As I throw

the pecans away, I stop at
the kitchen window and look out

and there, lying on the black
asphalt tongue of the driveway,

I see Abie's pacifier... Small...
Pale... Soft... Like a newborn ear.

You talked about touch,
how it is different now
between the two of you;
how it meant one thing once,
and now something else.

And so you hug goodbye,
carefully monitoring the quality of it,
attentive to how much you give
and how much you permit
yourself to feel.

Sometimes you can see in the faded
tapestry shapes and scenes that move
from foreground to background and
background to foreground.

Other times you only see the tattered
granularity of the weave and nothing else.

Is it the ocean that sounds
like traffic or the traffic that
sounds like the ocean?

As you ponder this question,
what you are holding slips
from your fingers and your mood
stabilizing regimen scatters
across the dusty floor.

The way a devoted fan
refuses to wash the hand
touched by the one they admire,

I recoil at the thought
of thoughts that may interfere
with our most recent talk,

close my eyes so no new images hide
the sight of your smile, your lips
pursed in thought, your thin fingers
brushing the wind-blown hair
from your face, your leopard print
sneakers, your hands in mine....
Or was it mine in yours?

This is the dreaded foretaste
of suffering. We both know
what harm can come
from holding on too tightly.
We have learned by now
that all things are impermanent.
Nothing, not even this,
should be clung to.

We have wisdom
on our side, you and I,
and this is why we
should survive this unsettling
flood of love we feel.

A middleaged woman walks into a hardware store and begins looking down each of the aisles.

Clerk:  Can I help you find something?
Woman: Rope?
Clerk:  Aisle 6, all the way down, on the left.

A few minutes later the woman returns, lays a coil of rope on the counter:
   52 Ft
   3/4 in
   Max Wt 135lbs
   $19.95.

She seems edgy, despondent. The clerk begins to ring the item up.

Clerk:  What's it for?
Woman:  What?!
Clerk:  What are you going to use the rope for?
Woman:  Oh.... Nothing.... (She looks away.)  Just target practice.

When my sister played Clair de Lune
I’d go into her room and sit on the floor
with my ear to the side of the piano
so close that the sound would fill my mind
with the image of the long, coiled strings
vibrating, glowing golden in the darkened box.

I could hear my sister’s feet dampening
and undampening the pedals, muting the
strings, then letting them ring, resonating,
one note overlaying another, could hear
the creak of her piano stool and smell the
smell of wood dust, like old sheet music,
and my ear would pulse, almost hurting
from the sound of the hammers striking steel.

And I would begin to imagine things,
different things each time:
my aunt in a blue flowered house dress
standing in her kitchen holding a jar
of homemade pickles, her thin white hair
always in tight pin curls.

Or I’d be alone, in a long, softly lit hallway,
the walls covered with wainscotting and
lavender striped wall paper yellowing
near the ceiling. At the far end of the hallway,
a solarium, and beyond that a balcony
glimmering in sunlight.

Or I’d be in a field with small, white flowers
bowing with the weeds rhythmically
and sensing that I was
loved by someone.

And it would be that my sister’s
fingers were pounding deep into
my chest, and always, always
by the end of the piece
I’d ask her to play it one more time.

The day she woke up with the worst panic attack ever,
the kind that threatens complete mental collapse,
an implosion into the uncharted territory of insanity,

she recovered enough to rise from her bed, make tea,
stumble through her usual routine, all the while
feeling the powerful effects of an emotional hangover

identical to the sort one has after a heated, one-sided
argument between lovers or a parent and child.
Part of her felt sheepish, apologetic, wanting

for all the world to undo what had been done;
the other part--wounded, skittish, like a mongrel
in a shelter kennel, an untold history of life’s atrocities.

She sits—left leg upon right,
right hand resting in left,

eyes closed, watching joy drift
among sorrows; up one minute,

down the next; a Ferris wheel
of fear and loneliness, then

moments of letting go;
the brows furrowed and then

a smile on her lips—the way a
cellist emotes herself through Bach.

Others have said to her that she is
lucky to be so groundless, to be

free of any misapprehension that
life is perfect or that it will be easy.

She knows better than that.
And because she does, she can take

the crests and the troughs as they come—
a part of the ocean and not the wave.

You forgive everyone
for not knowing,

or understanding,
or even caring,

because you know
this is the way humans are.

This is the way, at times,
even the one you should hold most dear,

the one who goes by your name
and lives in your skin, behaves.

It was as if you’d handed me
the most delicate thing in the world—

a lotus blossom made of moth wings;
a newborn's first breath;
the heartbeat of a sleeping humming bird.

And I shall do my clumsy best
to hold it with all the
tenderness that it deserves.

Like the first crocus in late winter,
the bicycle on River Street,

buried under four feet of snow
since January, begins, in March,

to reveal pale pink plastic roses,
vines of ivy and purple violets

dangling from the wire basket
attached to its handlebars.

Once fully liberated, she rides her antique, three-speed bike down the small hill from her campsite to the:  RESTROOMS – SHOWERS – PAYING CAMPERS ONLY. She dismounts and goes into the well-kept, recreational facilities and takes a hot, 50-cent, seven-minute shower, arching her soapy back against the white tiles, rubbing her soapy front in the same spot, up and down and up, and then, rinsed, she stands, dripping wet in front of the first full-length mirror she's seen in weeks, gyrating her hips, mocking pin-up poses to herself and all god's good-looking men with a sense of the absurd, then she wraps her towel around, tying the knot between her *******. She stands outside in the sweet, Santa Vidian air, finger-drying her hair and imagining, unabashedly imagining, guys in the campsite above, eating fresh-cooked meat and ogling her. Then she takes off down the road, pale green nightgown fluttering against the rear spokes, past Bonnie's trailer where from sundown till 11pm you can hear the best country music: Randi Travis, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Sr. She pulls up to her sweet “Bleu Belle,” shushes the dogs reflexively, hops off the bicycle, and turns, eyes closed, face upraised into a rare shaft of redwood forest sun.

You are ambushed
the very second you awaken
by a rabid animal trapped inside your skull.

It drags its claws across your brain stem,
races down your chest, past your heart
to your stomach where it begins
gnawing on the fleshy parts.

Every muscle contracts, holding tightly
to what you know you should let go of.

You turn on your side, trying to hide,
knowing wherever you turn it will follow.

You plead--What have I done?
I didn't ask for this.
I swear, whatever it is, I am innocent.

You take deep breaths:
rising, falling...
rising, falling....

One of you begins to calm down,
you can't tell which. You take this
opportunity to let go just a little
and the animal scurries up to your chest,
holding your heart hostage.

You focus on your breathing again:
rising, falling...
rising, falling....

Once the palpitations stop
you muster the courage to take a peek,
to look the beast in the eyes.

It's OK, you say. *It's OK.
I'm not going to hurt you.
I promise.