The most useful lesson
conveys itself in the shadow of your words,
hidden,
waiting for me to catch on

I want impossible things.
I just want to make you believe.
But I’m hardly even here.
And day will always break.
And pay checks don’t make themselves.
And I hate how much I love people
That humble my tiny fears.
I’ve rattled the gates at the top of your driveway in the cold of night,
Waiting for you to open,
Too many times.
I say I get taller by breaking down,
But quietly I wish we both believed in the same religion.
So we could stop arguing about it.
So you could think I was a genius.
So you could bask in it all like I did.
But I digress,
I learn to say.
I’ll learn to pray
Another way.

I started to learn when I was a baby
From my father, from my mother
I learned how to eat
I learned how to drink
I learned how to hold a toy
I learned how to smile with joy

Now that I am older
I continue to learn
Many things about life
No longer about the subjects in school
So, I would become wise,
and not a fool.

i would love to
be able to identify
a bird from its call
or the shape of
wide-spread wings
as one flies overhead
in theory
it may seem impressive
but if i were to
successfully distinguish
a chiffchaff from
a willow warbler
based on the patterning
and colour of
its plumage
or the shape
and length of
its tail feathers
i struggle to think
of a single person
who would respond
with more than
an indifferent
mocking or
pandering "oh"

If only the little animal could
understand everything
no questions unanswered
when it dies

It does not live long enough
and flying is the time
of hundred wonderful times
of playing to die, the time

of asking again and again why
thus, this or that, and how
curiously cutting and pasting
knowledge, screaming

and throwing away angrily
lying down exhausted
and cry, but still
starting over once more

rearrange or discard
the half answers
and go looking
for new data

always ask another question
principally blind
full of confidence
that there will be an answer

Children ask questions,

and they learn a lot from that --


Just like adults do.

Lisa and I went to a reception, yesterday evening, for students who’d landed summer fellowships at a particular hospital in Boston. (Yeah us!) It wasn’t formal, so I wore a crimson cropped sweater, a beige circle skirt (with pockets!) and beige Sarto soft-leather ballet flats.

I’ve disparate feelings in these situations. I was excited - this was a goal I needed to achieve - that next notch - and my mom might even smile.

At the same time, I felt like an imposter. ‘If these people knew the trouble I’m having with physics this year,’ I thought, and ‘I know my sister could do this - and my brother - but can I?’

I try not to let my nervousness show, because the stories you tell yourself can hold you back.

The reception was small, there were only four students, their mentors and a few hospital and Yale people. As we signed in, we got name tags and tote bags with the hospital logo containing fellowship info. There were picture posters of the hospital all around and an intro video looping on a large screen TV. They took some snaps.

Several tables along one wall had coffee, sodas, water bottles and finger snacks - which I guess you’d call canapes - and melon ***** of all colors. The centerpiece though, was a big silver, smoked salmon with a lemon stuck in its mouth and a wreath of parsley about its neck - all on a bed of lettuce, surrounded by various crackers and French bread rolls.

I was working my way along the tables, because there were honeydew melon-***** and they’re a personal weakness. Honeydews aren’t in season now, so I was full-on, honeydew foraging. I’m sure I looked like a starving homeless girl who’d somehow gotten in and was trying to eat for the week.

A slim, attractive, black lady in a very stylish dark-gray beaded jacket & sheath dress, had stopped as if transfixed, staring solemnly at the salmon. As I drew next to her, my plate half full of honeydew *****, she said, “It’s a fitting memorial.” That hit me as so funny - I laughed embarrassingly - spitting half a melon ball under the table. She started laughing too - we were like two sillies at church. Her sad face, the way she’d said it - you had to be there.

After a few minutes, the hospital administrator gave a little general welcome, ending it with, “Now it’s time to meet your mentors.” The fish lady turned out to be my mentor. She was still standing next to me - she turned, offered her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Rebecca.”

Her voice made those simple words seem warm and inviting. She looks to be in her early fifties (but I’m a bad judge of age), her short black hair was peppered with gray and white like she had just come in from the snow. We became instant old friends, cracking each other up.

Dr. Rebecca’s (again, I’m not doxing anyone) specialty is neurological surgery. She’s a Baltimore girl - born and raised - who attended Johns Hopkins from bachelors through medical school. Of course, I mentioned that both my siblings went to Johns at some point - Brice being a sophomore in med school there now.

Besides four years of medical school, Rebecca completed seven years of neurological surgery residency (yummy). “A doctor never really finishes school,” she said, “things constantly change and there are new specialties to master,” but I knew this from my parents.

“The plan is for you to shadow me this summer,” she confirmed, “and gain some clinical experience.” I nodded enthusiastically, saying, “Yes mam.” We talked for about thirty minutes and, as we parted, she gifted me a copy of ‘Skandalaki’s Surgical Anatomy.’

“If you want to be a surgeon, you’ll need to know anatomy better than God.” She’d said. “So start now. I made some notes for you in the index - we’re going to lean into this,” she finished, tapping the book, and giving me a wink.

I was walking on air as Lisa and I made our way back to the residence.
It’s going to be the BEST summer.

I can howl  in words but
I say it gently instead, no, fiercely,
first to myself and to him and to her
to you if necessary and to them
for as long as it takes
why and how and what
 how come and when and what for
how is my mind, I ask even the wind
this is what I usually play on repeat
why these thoughts images feelings
sensations movements words and deeds
everything is together but not always apparent
cause we are trapped inside the curvature of  mind
evolving in tunnels unexcavated trenches
breaking loose on wider routes only when there is time
our thought trapped on certain orbits of habit
on the available energetic level at one time
the same way as our well behaved atoms spin their wonder
the same way as everything is evolving into its waterfall

imagination is the way I play with myself,
with you and them and the world
for destroying the habit of seeing hearing interpreting
we play language games everytime
we don't use the right thoughts for emerging bulshit
straightforward bullets deepening confusions
deceptions limitations judging&comparing
seduction of half truths and easy routes
or inventing enemies
so ask questions get answers
ask the same questions get other answers
I allow my mind to flow in unknown spaces
only because I learn from those
who attempt true learning
I am really forced to listen rather carefully
to the music of thinking
but about this in another poem
for now I'm listening to these feelings
and it might get unbearable
to recognize the disintegration of the night
information everywhere you look
you can wear your thoughts as your shoelace
or you can envision perhaps this poliphony of meaning
cause thought is no other than a form of relating everything to everything else
there are crystals of meaning cause we need more facets
they need to be smashed and reinvented
don't be afraid the riverbed will stay pretty much the same
it's fine to know what you know and there
is so much that we don't
we are not innocent creatures in not knowing
only sometimes perhaps
we need to listen to our deeper thoughts
who is the dancer who is the dance

what about this pain, always this pain
I don't know if you know
that turns the marriage of body&mind into
the marriage of heaven&hell,
as Blake put it

some don't believe in the Gulag of the mind
so the fate of the unconscious is to repeat itself
when it is just the psychoanalytic bulshit
they don't need they don't care they protest against
you see there is also this sweet sweet desire for not knowing

perhaps I am waiting for my mind
your mind/the collective mind
to embrace me
to embrace you
to embrace itself