Fourteen years ago on this Hallowed Eve
you joined ancestors and fellow poets,
traveling through time, and into God's light.

Always one to find meaning in your days,
perhaps you chose your last one too,
even after months of summoning
all the bravery within you.

Honoring both saints and magical living
especially in our childhood,
even a velvet mermaid's tail
embroidered with shining sequins
manifested in your deft and giving hands.

You are always with us now, Ma/Patt
even as you are always missed.

Today, your long auburn hair that never turned white
tumbles over a deep blue satin costume,
embroidered with silvery stars.

Your generous, enduring smile
is so at home, beloved Ma,
in the Heavenly company
of God's own angels.

That day, something got into me.
Approaching the corner of 155th
and Broadway on the Upper West Side,
my friend and I were only a block from home.

Either we'd been on a mission for candy necklaces
or bubble gum cigars, from the place where the guy
was always grumpy, never actually scary,
and the sawdust on the floor, the real cigars
in fancy boxes, were something to wonder about.

Or we had just scored our first fresh sugar canes,
one each, and much taller than either of us.
The kindly Puerto Rican green grocer, proud
of his new shop, hoped we'd try the plantains
too, getting a kick out of our delight
in what he'd always known.

The light was red, and we weren't in a hurry.
I just got curious about this trap door on the side
of the old cast iron signal post,
and decided to see
if it would open... and it did.

Smiling to myself, an uncommon, delicious
sense of mischief lighting me up inside,
I calmly flipped a switch.

Instantly, all four lanes of traffic, heading north
and south on Broadway came to a screeching halt.

The feeling of power was intoxicating.
And unforgettable.

Had I been an older kid, had the policeman
who happened by been less lenient, had anyone, God forbid,
been injured, I could have been in some serious trouble.

Injury never entered my mind, and maybe the officer saw that.
All in all, I got away with the only really naughty thing
I did as a child, and still get to smile.
And remember.

Anticipatory quiet,
and the gathering fullness
builds upon itself in secret,
unknown ways.

Here in this old kitchen,
morning finds you in a shirt
silkscreened with one distant
cluster of stars.

Emblematic, a medicine shield
guarding a silent, wise heart
equally full of light.

Vanilla hangs in the air and dances,
Making itself at home,
Paint stains her skin and desires,
Bubbling with creativity, boiling over with dreams,
Dark demons cling to the corners,
She pushes them back, ignore, ignore,
Tingling with entrancements she trounces forwards,
Leaving her tortures in the depths,
Swishing swirls cover her page radiating a euphoric glow,
Does she paint the light to rebuke the dark?
Or does she simply wish to meld the two in a crossed road of idolized evil?

Much like roots of a tree sprout
love molds into what it desires, clinching the one
it desperatley seeks
everything that makes it
whole
one who can finish sentences before they are spoke
and understand unspoken words
never blind to pain nor needs
magic hands that soothe the wildest fires within a
troubled
soul
loving no matter how bad the storm is, or how you both shall
deteriorate
never venturing from one another, or falling into an empty
temptation
knowing the cost of such foolshness
love knows no boundaries, it shines in the darkest of days
and grows in the worst of storms