Dear Person You Think You Are
Ask the person you think you are
if she needs to lie down on this couch,
still firm after so many children
threw themselves into it until they grew up
although in your dreams they are still small
and lost in cities just like child you were,
Ukrainian doll within Ukrainian doll.
Remind yourself to stop for the sound
of water. Wait for the first uptake
of a dragonfly. Don’t startle at the quick
turn of a squirrel on your car hood,
everything never in neutral.
After all, what remains in this
human-manufactured house of worry after
the wind take it, like it takes all houses, down?
Dear person you might actually be—
a lake, an ocean, a pond over the horizon
as the next storm builds its house of sky
—what are you writing to your life?
What is your life writing back?
Back on Earth This Morning
The light is weak, milky
with a haze of stars barely visible
through the fog across the drive
but the glow is something: a sign
like all things of what was,
what is to come after so much
blocking the view: snow, sadness,
the long absence of a clear path
to the sun, the tired regret of so many
mistakes and stupidities, steeped
in not seeing correctly, which means
not looking in the right place,
this place. You want the news?
Step outside. No matter what
the air says. Listen to the first
bird, word, branch, fallen
and falling hedge apples
or real apples just for the mouse
the cat couldn’t pin down.
Nothing is pinned down
even death. Take refuge in that.
Five Minutes After the Total Eclipse
Western chorus frogs stop
the exact moment the sun
slivers to a slip of itself
although the light, so loud
in its compressed voice,
multiplies itself across
a boardwalk in the wetlands,
a black sheen of a ferrying duck,
a rhythmic pounding of a helicopter
gone on to find something better,
everything, everyone returning
at once in arena-sized rivers
of exhaustion and exhaust
to the normalcy beyond GPS
coordinates, the almost quiet
of one crow walking back
to the house to climb the stairs,
the sky commuting home also,
having lost its new hue, skewed
darker blue toward the oldest time,
away from the shadows
of oak branches, the tip
of a hat, the reach of a hand
showing us how the world
is made of crescents.
The Ghosts of Where I’ve Been
Here is where I would have cried with Sara
after the big trees were cut down
if I had understood bigger views
aren’t worth erasing what should survive us.
Here’s the lawn where I lost the stone,
I had found 1,436 miles west and carried
in the pocket of a long-ago jacket to remember
how much I loved him after he died.
Here’s the field I walked angry at myself
for failing a friendship, ignoring all the signs
obvious as the milkweed thriving among gravel
long before this road was tarred over.
Here’s the curb I sat on at twilight, cursing
the yellow lilies for being too beautiful
when I was heartbroken by a man
I didn’t trust myself enough to leave.
Here’s where I stared into my dark eyes
in a mirror somewhere in Vermont
when I was half-way through chemo,
my pupils scared at how tenuous
the hold of breath was and still is.
Here is the night of the Perseids
fire-throwing themselves down
in green-tailed streaks while we lay
on a bedspread on wet grass, giggling
because of how many stars kept falling
without being stars at all.
The Waiting Room in Scan Land
All of us are puzzled by the faux bamboo
and brilliant poppies wallpapered around us
in happy fields seasons and lands away,
so we go back to our phones, pointer fingers poised
for the memes and messages of distraction
or just an update on whether the day will rise
above freezing. The inane elevated TV promises
renovation of the body or house into beige
or black quietudes far from danger.
A technician gives me a bottle of water weighted
with a heavier substance to trace the trails within
so that what we’re calling all can be revealed.
I don’t, I can’t take good news for granted,
but why assume bad news unless it plops down
in the cushioned chair, striped like rivers
ferrying silt and mud toward the dam?
The broken grandfather clock stares down
the mostly white-haired among us, the too young,
the scared middle-agers as we check our phones,
tap orthopedic shoes, moon-patterned cowgirl boots,
brand new white Keds until our name is called
and we go to the seer of the machine.
Later, the call, the visit facing the oncologist
who wanted to see us in person, or the letter
proclaiming normal results, we will breathe,
gasp, cry, laugh, or simmer down to sleep.
But for now we are miniatures of ourselves,
waiting for the future.
