Maine-bound

driving into storms
"wimple-shipers" slapping time
(the child in her sings)

she grew in this place
of grim pilgrim settlements
quaint villages now

white-steepled churches
in wild terrain or in towns
blueberries and god

rosehips and seaweed
pidgen-speaking lobstermen
ancient new english

we breathe salt, eat fish
admire authors, work hard
and keep to ourselves

we were bound for Maine
and to it, and then away
too restless to stay



 

 


 
 




 

Totality

I was born three weeks late on a full moon.  I mean, it was full if you looked at the sky.  But it wasn't quite full.  It was 10 degrees shy.  

Shy, but luminous, imminently full without attaining the real deal, existing in that state of anticipation just before you step onto a stage, when your heart is in your throat, and time stands still.  I don't have to perform yet.  I don't have to abandon a secret joy or cope with a disillusionment when everything's suspended like this, in suspense, pending.

I like it best when the gift is in my lap and I haven't yet pulled the ribbon.  I like it best when the roller coaster is about to crest. "There's more to this story" is music to my ears.  Ambiguity is at the heart of all my favorite poems.

Shy is the neutral ground between performing and self-destructing.  Anonymity is the refuge, until I see that I haven't ever been seen, that I'm disappearing (without a trace). 

At 15 I wore the cigarette and the flannel shirt with unlaced boots of the girls who weren't good, but I was good.  I hated Aerosmith and pretended to like them.  I knew every Joni Mitchell song by heart and feigned indifference.  I was ambivalent, and I could become anything, for anyone.  I loved a guy madly, secretly, but I was eclipsed. 

Monday I will celebrate turning 53 during a solar eclipse.  I like how this is a new moon, and maybe I'm coming full circle with this one.  Maybe I can imagine being full finally, and holding onto that fullness.  Until then, I will make shadows here.






 

different

He might be all of 18, my slave.

You think this is another dream.
It's something different.

He has something to say, something to sign.
My arms are full but I happen to be empty. 
So I'm already listening before he speaks.
Today for no reason this stranger is different.

You seem so different he says. 
By different, he means kind. 
Kind is different (though they're antonyms).
I'm kind of different, for my kind.

Write your number down right here he says
pointing to a line on his petition.
if you want me to be your slave.
?? (smile)
Oh I know you ain't like that.

This kid.

He doesn't know that I am like that.






 

The Ex

Spent an hour with the ex (and others) this week.  Remembered everything, what I love about him, why it wasn't sustainable.

He's so very bright.  He's so very embittered.  He's so very funny.  He takes up space.

But yeah, I keep seeking that out anyway, in new contexts, new faces, and making sparks with it.  That's some kind of sustainable after all.  I'm better at filling my own space now.
 

Driven

I'm in what should be the driver's seat, but I have no steering wheel. He's in what should be passenger's seat, driving confidently, as if we're in England and always have been in England.  I think we're like besties on this road trip, ever so close, and getting ever closer, with me just kicking back enjoying the scenery, him being charming and driving well, but in the next scene he says a thing that makes me completely doubt my understanding of things. 

We're at the destination, a bed and breakfast, settling in, affectionately I think.  He's moving clothes from his suitcase into a dresser like the orderly, organized, ready-to-be-present-where-he-is guy (whereas I always just keep my suitcase packed and voila! I'm also ready... to escape at a moment's notice).  I notice there's only a single bed in this room.  Yay, I guess we'll be cozy?   

"It's clear from that drive that there's no 'we'," he declares calmly.  Even kindly, like a teacher.  "But at least we're connecting."  

Whoa.

The implication is that I should not have been so passively content with being driven by him.  I'm challenged to also drive-choose-speak-steer-dare-risk and in the end *unpack* if I want him and me to be "we". 



 

omg

oh for this embrace
my listening heart dilates
god breaks me open

oh in love's caught breath
my speaking heart cursing "you"
god leaves me broken





 
 

 

Summer

I saw my father in the summertime only, between age 6 and age 12.  Those Grand Rapids summers felt like a separate timeline, as if the airplane were really a time machine.  My big sister and I would get put into the time machine just after school ended, and two hours later we would find ourselves in a different family with a different mother and little sisters who speak Latvian, in a hot, rudely racist city instead of the politely racist, lily-white boondocks of our schooldays in rural Maine.  I'd pick up right where I left off, as if I'd never left these alternate best friends nine months before: sweet, clever Beverly across Sutton SW with her geeky, curly-haired big brother and her kind, boozy single mom in the stereotypical house dress, and nasty talking Janet on my side of the street with her buzz-cut hooligan brothers and her terrifying (dare I say menacing) evangelical parents.

It was always steamy and sizzling back then, unlike now.  Are summers milder?  Or is it just that back then we cooled ourselves in front of fans, most of us, while talking into the spinning blades in that way that fragments sound, just to amuse ourselves and pass the time.  Janet's family did have a huge air conditioning unit in their living room, the only one in the neighborhood.  But their blinds were always drawn, and neighbor children were rarely allowed to enter the house.  I remember enduring a dim, chilly bible-reading in that cool, dark room one time, the price of admission.  It felt like a funeral parlor, like you could almost see a coffin, and I never went back.  Usually we all met outside, on porches and in the street, where summer is meant to be lived, and I still prefer a living demon humidity to a dead god chill because of my memory of that room.  I still don't like AC. 

Also during those Michigan summers, my sister and I attended the local pool for Red Cross swimming lessons and free pool time after.  Either the water was kept icy, or I was just very susceptible to cold.  Ever the free-range child, I rarely remembered to bring a towel or a change of clothes to the pool.  I would get blue-lips shivering with cold, being what even my friends called a "shrimp," and leave the pool from time to time craving warmth and finding no towel.  So I'd crawl to the nearest dry patch of concrete, immediately plaster my face and body against it, splayed out, cheek and chest and wrist warming to the radiant substance beneath me.  I loved that sensation no end.  I'd close my eyes, soak up the heat, and breathe in that distinct smell of chlorinated water, summer skin and baking concrete.

The poolside warming ritual came back to me in a rush the other day when I smelled that smell.  And I missed her yet again, that girl I was when summers were alternate yet endless.