I used to love you. . .

I used to love you
With a kind of frantic breathlessness
Every hair follicle screaming

My hands would tremble when
I saw you on Fridays
I would lie

on my office floor in the
Dark feet on my chair
Talking to you on the phone for
Hours

My day ruined if I didn’t hear your voice
In my ear At least four times
Now the soles of my

Feet
Love you
I love you with the patient resilience
Of the seasons I

Love you even when I know I’m
Disappointing you
Or splitting my infinitives
Or when the world we imagined
Breathlessly
Screaming
Is not the world in which we find
Ourselves.

It seems to be, really that I’ve always
Loved you. Al
ways.

so true, so true

Wonder when this stops making me tear up a little.

Son #1 would probably scoff at my sentimentality. Maybe someday he’ll understand. . .

 

ENTERING THE KINGDOM

As the boys bones lengthened,
and his head and heart enlarged,
his mother one day failed

to see herself in him.
He was a man then, radiating
the innate loneliness of men.

His expression was ever after
beyond her. When near sleep
his features eased towards childhood,

it was brief.
She could only squeeze
his broad shoulder. What could

she teach him
of loss, who now inflicted it
by entering the kingdom

of his own will?

MARY KARR

russian novella

russian novella.

 

That’s all.

ah, autumn

Drove home this afternoon through a gentle “rain” of golden leaves. The whole world seemed to gleam with them.

Wanted to stop and stand in the middle of the street. It was a busy street, and I had 25# of carrots to buy (don’t ask), and, well, it was a busy street, so I didn’t.

This made me kind of sad, how living sometimes gets in the way of enjoying those moments. I have a friend who is a pretty fantastic photographer who takes his (really really nice and not all that small) camera with him everywhere, and is often posting photos he took of the fog catching in the branches of the tree across from his house or the snow drifting across his back field and I always think “Wow, these are beautiful” and “Doesn’t he have to get to work on time?”

Alas.

It did remind me of a poem I wrote for my BFF J____ once a really long time ago. It’s a bit juvenile, I think, and I remember I was experimenting with a kind of chanting rhythm, and the first part is kind of confusing regarding “who” I’m actually talking to “when,” so I’ll just put in the last bit:

. . .I want to stand arms lifted
in fall’s golden shimmering shower
face and eyes and hands and breath in
fiery splendid autumn air. . .

Maybe I’ll drive down there tomorrow, when the streets are less busy, and stand in the middle of the road with my nice-but-not-that-fancy camera and my broken foot in my delightful little “boot,” and take some pictures.

Maybe.

a journal of an event too long to chronicle, with none of the dates right except this one

this will be way too long to be a poem, probably
can’t be bothered with the pentameter or the rhyme

five years ago
or so
on my way to see mom after her second cancer surgery
wearing green pants and red sneakers
only daughter asked
you’re not wearing those shoes with those pants are you?

be careful what you wish for
(a girl in my house,
someone to tell me
if my shoes went
with my outfit)

not what they thought it
was
but a “glio”
and then
bc#2

and mascara on husband’s pants
from crying with my head on his lap
(he said he didn’t mind)
(I believed him)

then
DVTs and oxygen

today restacking the long shelf of music
unbending the scores to stand them up against the
shelf above
reminding me of shifting mom in her bed,
nurses at corners counting one two three
while I “mind the feet”

crying in the tub as the water climbs

I am her
her disappointments and her defensiveness and the fact
that what I say is rarely what the world hears
and my attempts to order the world
just
so
without ever ending up really knowing
how I feel
about anything

****

 

just found this in my drafts box

from May 22, so not even the date is right

am not going to edit it, so here it is, in its raw form

time, and truth; from “Aubade,” by W. A. Auden

. . .But Time, the domain of Deeds,
calls for a complex Grammar
with many Moods and Tenses,
and prime the Imperative.
We are free to choose our paths
but choose We must, no matter
where they lead, and the tales We
tell of the Past must be true. . .

yes, they should

“When I look at nature — the way a sea gull spreads its wings wide as it hovers just above a meal, the way the tide rushes in, bringing shell sparkles and lost treasures, the way the sun rises every morning even when it is cloudy, the way a tree stands proud even when it is wounded, its roots deeper than the trials it endures — I see truth, a truth where there is no need for anxiety because things are as they should be. People should stand strong and say what they really feel, not what they think others want to hear. They should flow with their emotions, like the tide, whether they be happy or sad. They should rise bright with possibility into every day and hover gently near what they want instead of aggressively taking [it].”
~Alexandra Heather
“Surviving the Pain at the Roots,” NYTimes, Sunday, September 16, 2012

After Twelve Days of Rain, Reprieve

I posted a link to this once, to RedamancyLit’s page, but I don’t know how many of you actually follow those links, especially when all I write is something like “Exactly this.” or “Yes.”

I have read it over and over, and have a little frisson every single time, so decided it was worth posting again, this time in its entirety.

After Twelve Days of Rain

I couldn’t name it, the sweet
sadness welling up in me for weeks.
So I cleaned, found myself standing
in a room with a rag in my hand,
the birds calling time-to-go, time-to-go.
And like an old woman near the end
of her life I could hear it, the voice
of a man I never loved who pressed
my breasts to his lips and whispered
“My little doves, my white, white lilies.”
I could almost cry when I remember it.
I don’t remember when I began
to call everyone “sweetie,”
as if they were my daughters,
my darlings, my little birds.
I have always loved too much,
or not enough. Last night
I read a poem about God and almost
believed it–God sipping coffee,
smoking cherry tobacco. I’ve arrived
at a time in my life when I could believe
almost anything.
Today, pumping gas into my old car, I stood
hatless in the rain and the whole world
went silent–cars on the wet street
sliding past without sound, the attendant’s
mouth opening and closing on air
as he walked from pump to pump, his footsteps
erased in the rain–nothing
but the tiny numbers in their square windows
rolling by my shoulder, the unstoppable seconds
gliding by as I stood at the Chevron,
balanced evenly on my two feet, a gas nozzle
gripped in my hand, my hair gathering rain.
And I saw it didn’t matter
who had loved me or who I had loved. I was alone.
The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty
of the Iranian attendant, the thickening
clouds–nothing was mine. And I understood
finally, after a semester of philosophy,
a thousand books of poetry, after death
and childbirth and the startled cries of men
who called out my name as they entered me.
I finally believed I was alone, felt it
in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo
like a thin bell. And the sounds
came back, the slish of tires
and footsteps, all the delicate cargo
they carried saying thank you
and yes. So I paid and climbed into my car
as if nothing had happened–
as if everything mattered–What else could I do?
I drove to the grocery store
and bought wheat bread and milk,
a candy bar wrapped in gold foil,
smiled at the teenaged cashier
with the pimpled face and the plastic
name plate pinned above her small breast,
and knew her secret, her sweet fear.
Little bird. Little darling. She handed me
my change, my brown bag, a torn receipt,
pushed the cash drawer in with her hip
and smiled back.

~Dorianne Laux

My hair gathering rain.

Heard it echo like a thin bell.

All the delicate cargo they carried saying thank you and yes.

As if nothing had happened.

As if everything mattered.

What else could I do?

All of it. Exactly this. Yes.

rainy-night_2406.gif

All of us, paying attention.

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

- Henry Miller

Thanks B.R. Hope you don’t mind that I “stole” this from your facebook page.

from Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson

“. . .Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves, and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on. . .”