A moment with you,
my dear,
is enough.
One sip of you fills my soul
but, oh, how I wish
I could drink the whole cup.

His *****-white sneakers tied in double knots
three strides down the sidewalk and he knows they are too small
He didn’t know that your feet could get fatter too but
oh that’s right
Emily’s feet had grown with each pregnancy
People tell him that’s a lot of kids
Four - no ****
He was on the track team in high school but he’s the wrong size now
Right size?
It’s women on billboards
oiled like seals
lips puckered to meet the side of a ***** bottle
in this city and every city in America
Emily had managed to stay fit and what a miracle that was
She is one of those women
who looks good - healthy
in her element even
with a runny-nosed child on her hip
and three hours of sleep
and no makeup
and snot smeared on the shoulder of her black tshirt
Flower of a woman
People ask him how does she do it?
By his male friends he’s told how lucky he is
but that wasn’t the word he was thinking of

He is working up a sweat now
He feels each foot land on the pavement with his whole body
He watches small dogs lift their legs, demurely
They relieve themselves on statues on the Comm Ave Mall
He feels like the figment of someone else’s imagination
He sees trees he could identify when he was a botany major
before he traded his VW for a minivan
Sweetgum, green ash, maple, linden, zelkova, Japanese pagoda
that one’s an elm
even his six-year-old knows what an elm is
New synapses formed
Genus and species replaced by numbers, meaningless
They only mean something if his client is getting paid
One day a paycheck, a bottle of champagne
Another
stress, Netflix for entertainment
He’s left his iphone on the kitchen counter
No missed calls or new text messages
No music on this run
Unfiltered thoughts where Led Zeppelin should be
He remembers next week is Lulu’s birthday
Peaches and cream little girl
who is never seen without bruises on her knobby bird’s legs
Kat, older, malleable, chose ballet
Lulu insists on football
She wants to get ***** and tackle boys
The first day of practice he was mildly horrified
when he realized she is the only female in the league
He loves watching the other teams’ faces when they learn they just played a girl
because it is impossible to tell under all the padding
until Lulu pulls off her helmet at the end of the game
slow motion
as she walks off the field
shaking out honey-colored hair
throwing a wink at her rivals
Players use last names only by some unspoken rule
But not her
she is still his Lulu
her closet filled with princess dresses and football jerseys

Where I am it is dark
The light tries to find me
but I move away
I keep my hands to myself
I leave happiness
for another day

There is something to be said for a snowstorm
to be inside a living snow globe perpetually overturned
to feel its delightful sting
to watch a child for the first time watching
how the world can change before her eyes
Brutal and honest, the snow humbles you
It is not polite, the snow
It does not ask permission
In its giving, it takes
What a beautiful contradiction, the snow

And after
everything so still
like the world is holding its breath
A perfect sugar loaf
New surfaces that have never been traversed
tempting you to walk where no man has walked before
The world feels ready
Anything can happen after a snowfall

Something amazing happened last week
For a moment I felt what it was like to be young again
With my memories I can never quite get there

But I try

I’ll close my eyes when I eat a chipwich
it tastes like running back to our beach umbrella with sticky fingers
the summer we rented a cottage in Montauk
I long for the itchy feeling of sand in my bathing suit
and for the salt to sting my eyes again

That would be heaven
But I still throw the wrapper away in the stainless steel trash can
beneath the sink in my apartment
that is exactly two hundred miles and twenty three years from Ditch Plains

It hurts sometimes
to remember how much I have forgotten
When we had dance parties to the Austin Powers soundtrack
When watching mom get dressed
and waiting for the babysitter
and kissing you goodbye
and chicken nuggets for dinner
was the best feeling in the world
Because I knew I could always expect
the smell of your coffee in the morning
those days when we lived in the red house on Craft Avenue.

But last week
in the backseat of a friend’s car
driving back to Boston after a long hike
I watched the gray forest pass by outside my window
and I fought to keep my eyes open
I was no longer thirty-five
I knew the moment would come when I would be lifted out of my car seat
and brought inside
where you would light a fire
and mom would make hot chocolate for us
And later we would eat homemade popcorn and watch Titanic
as our winter boots lay on their sides in the front hall
the snow between the treads slowly melting and darkening the wood floor

I felt very safe inside that car
the kind that only a child on the brim of sleep can feel
I don’t know if I will feel that way again
But I will still close my eyes when I eat a chipwich
and wait for the smell of your coffee in the morning

I am a builder of many mountains
My bones grew with the limbs of trees
My rain will fill your empty fountains
I am the flowers and I am the bees

My bones grew with the limbs of trees
You hear my voice in the song of a bird
I am the flowers and I am the bees
I am blood, bone, sinew, fur

You hear my voice in the song of a bird
I paint the colors of the sunrise
I am blood, bone, sinew, fur
I lay where the fallen tree lies

I paint the colors of the sunrise
You feel my sting of bitter cold
I lay where the fall fallen tree lies
I am forever young and growing old

You feel my sting of bitter cold
I am the spider that traps the fly
I am forever young and growing old
My love it stretches from sea to sky

I am the spider that traps the fly
My rain will fill your empty fountains
My loves it stretches from sea to sky
I am a builder of many mountains

As I watched the cars roll down Harvard Avenue,
their tires sending last night’s rain aloft for a brief encore,
the people behind their wheels, indifferent,
I remembered when you said to me
Life goes on

And I see this is true

I see it in the puddles on the sidewalk,
the streak of blue in the hair of a stranger
But you are still gone.