sitting cross-legged
on the floor
bare right foot over
left knee, tilting
the controls like
that will give you
more control as a
kart hurtles down
rainbow road—
ever the hardest track,
but the one to which
every child comes back
time and again—and
to think some of us
will live there, will love
in prisms of light with
no railings, sit
among the stars and fold
paper cranes when
people ask us to explain
our pride
as if they have never
heard of love.

when you fall off the edge
everything goes dark
but in this life the ghosts
don't float you above
it all to get your
bearings back; somehow
you have to do it without
the benefit of afar; the stars
don't spin around your
head while you count
your scars; in
this life the ghosts
are dead.

I turned off the TV,
I watched a bird cross
the street, scurrying
on its little feet
and hopping onto the curb.
It did not use its wings
once. It does not need
to see things
from far away
like I do.

In a row, three generations
of prayer; when foreheads
meet the floor, Nanu
gets a chair.

Imagine how scared
the stars must have been
the first night they
couldn't see you.
Imagine the gasp, the
wind's fist unable to grasp
the cosmic impermanence
of what it made
while you and two mothers
sway, there is mango
and honeydew on three plates
and dates to break the fast
the shadow crossing
the moon so slow,
the tides forecast.

Away from the city I see Alcyone
and all the bright things I didn't know
existed,
and girl have I missed it.
At the pediatrician's office my mother
told me there was nothing
the doctor could do about my
anxious palms, no salve to cover
it, just keep rubbing them on my jeans
and raise my hand in class
with blue dye on the sides where
other kids have graphite but
you say you like the way my hands shine.
Our fingers, intertwined.

This place, its color saturates
when you return to it.
A cosmic ghost playing
a cosmic joke, waking up,
propping himself lazily on an elbow
in bed, casually sliding up
the brightness of the universe
like he does it every day, like he
was born to it, when really
we were.

A duck flutters onto the path
and we are at an impasse;
we wait in the dark until the
sun comes back,
but the thing doesn't move.
I can see in your
stubborn shoes, laces never loose,
the unwillingness to let
this creature be afraid of you.

On the way back there are
other ducks that don't notice us,
and that is enough.

Standing at the edge of your eyes
my toes curl over the rim.
They push the ground away
I am just cold enough to breathe. I am
just helpless enough to let the water
support me and float free.

I am afraid the way I was
afraid of the mossy dark reservoir
behind the second dam.
Afraid the way I was
when I watched kids haul
their bodies onto the rocks
with their knees still shaking,
their teeth still protesting against
each other.
I am afraid the way I was
when I dipped my toes in the water
long enough to hear them scream,
afraid of the bottomless, afraid it wasn’t
bottomless enough, couldn't see.

Just afraid enough to jump.
Just cold enough to breathe.

dodging shards of terra cotta
on the ground and
shards of croaksong in the
air we crouch at the bank, half
way there, and the frogs vault
over the tops of our sneakers.
we are
scaring chipmunks and hiding
from snakes, balancing
on the pipeline with our arms raised
out like birds about to take flight.
at the reservoir people are
jumping from on high, grabbing
at stars on the way down.
when they land the cold
pries open their fists
and they surface shaking and
full of nothingness.
someone tosses an empty
can of keystone into the water,
stumble-swims away from it.
it spills over one dam and
glides toward the next,
a girl flinches from a rock
like a moth from a swat
and pulls the can to the crags, they
both rest there breathing heavy.
they both dry off.
she pulls on her clothes and
pulls herself home
in a flurry of forgot.
as more kids jump,
more stars fall from their hands
until the can is full
of a hope too heavy
to drag home.

holding everybody in arms
of a bowl to catch
what we cry.
Turning the saltwater into oceans,
mirrors still enough that we
can see, watch ourselves try.
And for those who like waves she
pulls at the tides,
rough hands smoothing the sand,
and when she thinks she can't
get it right she consults the moon,
watching and learning till she's
ready to teach.
And for those of us who don't
like the beach,
she holds her hands out to us
with palms up, lifting the salt
away and the water up,
sending our tears
purified
to the sky to rain down on us,
fresh and quiet
every one.