a light capable of change

Sometimes, it's just the slant of sun the morning, or a reunion with an old friend. Sometimes it's just good coffee, or a compliment a stranger offers ooking your way. Whatever it is, you realize you've had enough. The fine focus you keep giving your little frustrations. The casual fuming you fan out about your bank account, your job hunt, the condition of your body. All of this adds up, or rather, subtracts into, a flimsy existence, a half-life, an embattled, embittered center of disequilibrium. How can the world not suffer under your dark cloud? How can the bathroom mirror rid itself of all those grey smudges? How can the lemon tree on your back deck not plummet from neglect? Arrows in your foot, at your back, in your heart. Something loveless and uncertain clinging to your neck, dragging you down into the mud. Enough. The light is changing. You are a light capable of change. There is a glow in you hungry for air. There is air in you fiery and free. The street you have been walking leads to nowhere in particular, to a dense dark wood that is better left unknown. Do not mistake that darkness and density for opportunity, for eventual renewal and your ultimate heroism. Turn around. Look up. A sky awaits, an impossible, possible blue.

with the wineglass almost empty

I am looking at the moon's slow rise
above this city, this windswept hill,
this winding block, this square house,
this little body breathing, unselfconsciously,
into the final stretch of evening. I want
to pray correctly to such a gift, fold hands
together with discrete reverence, bend slight as a breeze
to the window and send a soft song through the glass.
I want to remember how fragile and perfect time is,
how the world's furious moments can fall into a lake-calm,
how clouds like flour can dust even the dirtiest passage,
how the heart can curve into a conch shell,
echo wetly and warmly the ocean it came from.
Love, your fingertips have been here, your lips
a stain of easy welcome, something of my body
imprinted with yours, our various surfaces colliding.
The way we cup around each other like circles.
The duvet of cheek against cheek. The giggle of eyelashes.
How I have begun to taste you even in sleep,
a single bud-drop expanding on my tongue,
sweeter than anything that came before it.

in the last (possibly) last summerfor Margaret Atwood

1.
I want to love as if I were dying.
Even if you don't know, touch my shoulder
indiscriminately, like an accident
or a small error of space.
I want my heart clawing the air,
gouging into your neck, your
soft eyes, your anything,
devouring what it can.

2.
Broken into, dissected, flayed on a white platter
with blue flowers, the tomato is not greater or less than
the cucumber, the carrot, the yellow pepper.
At the first mile, I had to remind myself
I was not alone. By the last,
I had forgotten aloneness.

3.
A spider in the bed, a spider in the shower,
a fly preening itself on the bedside lamp.
A beetle doing a slow shuffle near the pillow.
They don't know from my morning rituals,
my nighttime reading, the mattress
where my body will slide into sleep. Still,
I want to get a Kleenex, initiate
disposal. But they can't help themselves,
and I know that if I wait a little,
they will move on, perhaps find a way
outside. In the meantime, the house alive
with legs, moving and resting and moving together.

managing the return

Of course, everything has become a little less lovely, the bananas
ripening too quickly on the kitchen counter,
the pile of mail precipitous and wasteful,
the deck paint cracked and peeling.

Climbing the stairs, it is evident
a molting has taken place here, too, but it isn’t the same
at all. Instead, a fault line, a recession, the body of the house
gone soft. The air needing windows and more light.

The first morning is a rude awakening, an insult
of disproportion. Someone is demanding a refund,
upset with their breakfast order, screaming
from their car.

It continues. Urine trickling from planters,
Trashcans pregnant but neglected. An arrogant blaze of neon.
The city is graceless, unforgiving, full of ways
to go completely wrong and pay for it.

Love, too, has headed a little south,
kindness, forgiveness, awareness, thanks –
it turns out these were rafts to hold onto in the flood,
but here the dirt is parched and wanting.

So here’s what’s left: the moon,
her bittersweet face gazing from above,
something in her eyes saying,
Yes, I know.

freedom

The courts here said no to certain marriage, but maybe 
love is always a matter of time and this isn't the season just yet.
I'm imagining a day when pronouns won't matter except for "we"
and "us," and the protest lines will disappear or better still, unite.
Until then, bibles trotted out, pronouncements made, sides defended,
and a flurry of reasons why matrimony shouldn’t be bestowed on those
who can commit to it in earnest. But when the dust settles, and this battle ended,
love will be an outstretched hand, a proffering of peace that has no foes.
And we will understand the state of this more perfect union: 
Each new morning, a fact of freedom. All that sunlight tumbling in.

dayenu

if only for this plank of deck.
if only for this arrow of sun.
if only for this cup of flour, this couch cushion, this arch in the foot.
if only for eight in the evening.
if only for a measure of drumbeats.
if only for a dab of cold water on the face.
if only for yesterday.
if only for never.
if only for “how are you” and “come here” and “please”
if only for an hour’s nap, a scattering of birdseed, a full rotation of gears.
if only to remember the letters of my first alphabet.
if only for the deepening lines in my forehead.
if only for scars, for errors in judgment, for leaps of faith, for intuition, 

for fresh footfalls on an old path.
if only for a river of insects, electrified by early summer.
if only for the outline of mountain, the sketch of a word, 

the thinnest suggestion of moon.
if only for pound cake, for a flat of strawberries, 

a stiff wedge of cheese, a glass of pink lemonade.
if only for thirst.
if only for sleep.
if only for death.
if only for a climb to the waterfall, a clutch of fur in a pine tree, 

a story, a fable, a dream.
if only for the pit of one mango.
if only for a splinter.
if only for a soft hand on a sore shoulder.
if only for a purple shawl over an old bureau, a box of yellow tablets, 

a haircut, a hiccup, a headache.
if only for a dim but precise memory.
if only for lost and tragic language.
if only for an unsent letter, or too many letters.
if only for a late-night dance.
if only for a lie.
if only for the long and lonely walk home.
if only for a clatter of seabirds, the first bubble of coffee,
if only for drowsy, for hungry, for can’t get enough.
if only for love.
if only for stones skipping across a pond.
if only for a narrow light in the hallway at midnight.
if only for a single, slippery yes.

I must offer myself.
whole, shattered, fleshy, full of disaster and ache and fury and spectacular neglect.

here is a thing of beauty. I must take it.
here is a thing of sorrow. I must take it.
here is a body in all its innocence and failure. I must take it.
here is a raw heart, breaking but alive.

I must stay close. somewhere a piece of music is buried in the rubble,
a steam of fresh bread is rising from the oven,
a sliver of dust is flying toward the stars.

instructions upon waking

Ignore the balls of dust on the rug, the laundry pile metastasizing, the reams of mail spilling from the kitchen counter. The blanket on the couch does not have to be folded into four perfect corners. The dishes from yesterday can stand another soak. A shower is unnecessary. Overlook the uneven, mismatched topography of the living room, the coats you have cast off on your writing chair, the knapsack of dirty gym clothes, the books you haven't read, the wrinkled inserts of magazines littering the coffee table.

Turn the heat on. Make coffee. Look out the window. Consider the contours of your body. Put socks on. Know that someone else is thinking of you, as they dress and gird themselves for the day. They are thinking, perhaps, of your lips, or your hands. They are thinking of your warmth, your long limbs, your smile, the way you know exactly how to touch them. They are not scanning the house for crumbs, urging you to vacuum. Imagine this a day of no fault-finding, no derision, no pulverizing ache to do a better job. Make breakfast. Eat until you are full.