Kamri & Kelley, Kamri’s Birthday Party

This place flattened
And stretched
The trees and their shadows
Into one long dark path.

They used to run
And plod
Through this brilliant grass,
Now combed and pinned tightly to the ground.

Silly tradition,
Moving that tassel
And flashing I Love You’s;
Flashes snap; smiles fade.

This place used to be
Filled with you,
Stomping, shouting, whooping,
Climbing these trees and their shadows.

The grass longs for your feet,
The trees long for your weight,
I long for your little emergencies,
Your collective eyebrows, Your elbows.

I miss your bruised knees,
Your endless complaints,
Your excuses, your wild voices,
This place is flat.

It stretches the trees
And their shadows,
Pins down the smooth grass.
I’ll sit on the steps and wait.

Frustration

We came with notebooks and pens.
These are not weapons.
Not on purpose.
We came with our ready hands.
Not to fight,
But to talk.
We came knowing you.
Knowing you don’t listen,
We came anyway.
We stayed to watch you:
Make a phone call.
Change your mind.
Wander off to get cake.
We stood when it was our turn.
You stayed seated.
We watched you draw a bell
And delegate our feelings to the edges.
Between bites,
Your corners stained with frosting,
You told us to love you.
You told us we are appalling failures.
You told us you cried.
Someone asked you for honesty.
And crumbs fell out of your mouth.
We left knowing you.
Knowing you didn’t listen,
Unclenching our fists
And sweeping our laps
With our palms.

Spring Makes Me Happy

Strangers

When my mother closes her eyes at night, she is visited by the faces of strangers. Her mind relaxes and faces appear and slide over, smiling faces; sad faces; all of them new to her. She watches their eyes as they drift by. They watch her back. In the morning, they crowd around her before fading into the deepening red background of her eyelids. The light seeps through her window shades and the strangers laugh, or cry, or turn away. My mother wakes up each day with company. She never faces a day alone.

Spring

New. All new. Leaf, bud, shoot,
Trillium closed like candles,
Sizzled sideways until three flames
Arched from the center
Atop three broad leaves;
A stem floats this symmetry,
Like fingertips holding a
Champagne glass
(The Marie Antoinette’s Breast Kind).
New, the resurrected dance, bubble, gurgle
Of our little creek.
Attus’ warm breath
Lifting the hem of my dress
And tangling my hair.
New as every morning,
But especially in Spring.
The blossoming trees show up
Wearing wild bonnets,
New, with the fragrance
Of promised fruit.

A Song For a Dear Friend

Or, as Edna St. Vincent Millay Titled it,

“To the Wife of a Sick Friend”

Shelter this candle from the wind.

Hold it steady. In its light

The cave wherein we wonder lost

Glitters with frosty stalactite,

Blossoms with mineral rose and lotus,

Sparkles with crystal moon and star,

Till a man would rather be lost than found:

We have forgotten where we are.

Shelter this candle. Shrewdly blowing

Down the cave from a secret door

Enters our only foe, the wind.

Hold it steady. Lest we stand,

Each in a sudden, separate dark,

The hot wax spattered upon your hand,

The smoking wick in my nostrils strong,

The inner eyelid red and green

For a moment yet with moons and roses,–

Then the unmitigated dark.

Alone, alone, in a terrible place,

In utter dark without a face,

With only the dripping of the water on the stone,

And the sound of your tears, and the taste of my own.

(shudder)

Fairy Godchildren

Allena

Akian (Brand New!)

Hollis

Everett

Snow

My Tree

A trick of light that only happens in autumn, late autumn, sets this tree on fire, every afternoon as I get in my car to head home. The sunlight completely ignores the other trees and hits only this one with it’s high beams.

It is good to pause and stand in utter awe after the day bruises us with it’s ridiculously tiny fists. It is good to stand transfixed in light and color, shaking like branches off the frustrations that make life so beautiful and so silly. Shedding the little things we shouldn’t worry about: Those shattered pieces we pick up every day; those streaks of color that fall just outside our vision; the stuff we can’t keep intact and shouldn’t try. The things we cling to, hold up, compare, rename, classify, judge and collect.

Today, even against the stark snowy backdrop, the tree looked cement gray.  I am reminded of Bukowski and Hinton and the reality of magic.