The guy in the red Jeep at my back bumper roars GO FASTER and I try, within the limits; arrive to the woods in fight-or-flight and breathe; on inhale, my jacket, on exhale, my phone; OUT OF THE WAY! a dude in a spit-shined Range Rover guns MOVE OVER so he can park HERE here where I’m breathing despite 8 other spaces HERE, HERE! another man yells to a bitch too far ahead, two men now and two dogs four times as loud COME HERE! STOP! I don’t know, don’t care don’t stay leave and park at another trailhead where an old Retriever waits sweet and ghostlike until an angry voice bellows, makes us startle GET THE FUCK OVER HERE! she bows her head greeting, prayer, or a mutual understand that the woods would be so much quieter if we could beat back the invasives just a bit.
The turkey its wings fanned like pages in a book left open spine cracked a hundred stories prostrate in the the road as we passed one lone feather floating silent asking to be told.
I’d forgive the poet her 15 words requiring definition right on the first page and might even humor her pretention if it weren’t near midnight lights dimmed, phone charging downstairs, the hardbound dictionary shelved nearby, and I, up here, the comfort of pillows and sheets and a blanket to weigh down anxiety that swells in my chest from the strenuous reading required by this book, a soothing mantra to remind myself about cups of tea and imposters who might invade what had otherwise been such a nice day; if I owned the book, I would toss it across the room with take that satisfaction, instead I march it downstairs put it in the pile of books I’ll return to the library, feel somewhat appeased, try not to remember the rogue poets who argued for ululate and lacuna in my own poems with such insistence I erased the lines all-together, life is hard enough these days to suffer the conceit of others.
I’m peeling hard boiled eggs at the sink, my soft round belly pressed against the cool steel cold water splashing over fingers when I remember that noise he used to make
that noise that said I was using too much water
or talking too loudly
that I had applied too much perfume used too much lip gloss
that there was too much food on my plate that I’d gained too much weight
that I took too long to find pleasure in things he was already, past tense, done with
it was a noise, a grimace, a groan of displeasure, distaste, distain
that seeps, sometimes, from a faucet running hard and with great abandon, cascades through my fingers down the drain with dregs
The space isn’t that big, really. Large enough for me and the cat and sometimes a guest. A human guest, that is. We have others who don’t take up much room and are more like residents or seasonal visitors.
Just the other night, I watched a spider arrive and make his way, quite confidently, past the television, around the reading lamp, and up the stairs. He was sleeping in my bed when I found him later — the three of us startled at once.
He is not the first spider, nor the last. We have kitchen ones and cellar ones and the orb weaver who cured me of the phobia many years ago now.
I remember once, a small wren spent an afternoon on the screen porch the summer the hornets lived here; and there’s a family of mice who visit each winter, scurrying about in the space above my bed.
We make accommodations as we can, the all of us, with the accepted guidelines that This is my dance space and that is your dance space. The mouse in the kitchen was promptly directed outside. That spider in my bed? Eaten by the cat.
We’re all sharing this small space, it’s best to have manners and compassion…and ground rules.
The robin ahead on the trail dappled in sunlight looks to me like a gnome, and I pause, remembering the time a gnome came to me in a tent while my family slept, and I want to believe for just a moment that somewhere in this wicked world there’s still magic like that — still gnomes and fairies, still hope and things we can believe in — then just like that, the robin flies off deep into the woods of this last protected space, and I think it’s magic just the same.
At night, while we dream I climb up and into the flowering tree to tuck in the fledglings before they tumble, sing soft lullabies while the Mom sleeps, caution them stay east of the hedge and if they must fly high and up no matter the bee-line temptations, watch the rain and the wind and the random cat and I, my darlings, will watch you like a prayer.
Tonight, by the quarter moon, I will visit the Pemigewasset lie down my tired bones let notch waters churn run the course of my body pin me to the smooth roundness upon which I rest until neither of us notice the stranger’s stillness how all that seemed out of place once was, once wanted is no longer anything but this river flowing.
The moon said Get Up! And while the cat and cardinal insisted I had some purpose for the day, I was not convinced.
I AM not convinced.
This slow and useless plodding on floorboards that hold now nearly 30 years of footsteps seems circuitous.
I can, of course, enumerate — if you were to ask — point out the notches and plaques, consider the possible one heart, one life, one pain but those are slow to come at 4 when the soft known comfort of sheets and dreams seems the best I can hope for these days, when even footsteps have become formidable.
I wake up with a start realize that I am, myself, the April fool still thinking I have control (or hope) of making it out alive all these years swimming against a tide tilting at windmills chasing wild geese pushing boulders up hills when in reality I am just the monster at the end of the book silly old silly, old me
One coyote howl wakes us at 4 and we both, the cat and I, move around blankets and curtains hoping to see the creature cross the road ask each other why? and for what purpose? laugh at our inside joke before falling back into dreams neither one of us can translate — coyotes and gunman, snap traps and mice, the violent world outside.
I’m dreaming about the man in the field its autumn backdrop oddly out of place with the spring cacophony that filters through my nighttime window; he’s talking about collective trauma — the seeping-in of our wild world on jet streams and ethernets on brainwaves and internets — a scrolling litany of the everything we were not built to absorb and the everything against which we are powerless; a continental, monumental shift beneath our feet in a landslide brought me down epic crescendo sort of way I’m sure Stevie never imagined.
It is No Kings in March and a one-man King Lear opines from a makeshift stage in a Union building on the bank of a river; he is boisterous and profound, a shapeshifter come to teach us again about the failings of ego and power here in this space that smells of picket signs and hard-won fights, placards of victory line the walls while outside, the wind has changed as bodies are counted to move the scale of battle more.
I can’t keep throwing books out just because I’ve lost patience with words, even the ones meant to console my wintering spirit; there is little consolation these days where hope is a burden of expectations I want to stab violently with a fork that instead finds its way into another slice of cake I keep hidden beneath my bed, its sweet, sweet comfort savored between the puzzle of dreams that have so many layers, and so many meanings, one might think I was fucking Jung, a rabid affair that keeps me trapped in this godforsaken space analyzing and processing analyzing and processing analyzing and processing still here again always… a bonfire stack of books by the door my Plan B should the promises keep failing.
Earlier this year, 95 poets were selected to randomly exchange their poetry books with other participants. As part of the exchange, I received a copy of Atmosphere by Michael Friedman — a collection of poems that explores the elusiveness of death and loss to the living and the interplay of ritual, science, and spirituality.
And a copy of Sleeping with Ghosts was sent to Kendall A. Bell, whose book The Contortionist, was also included in the exchange. Her book, which was sent to one of the other 95 poets, includes 16 poems inspired by the album “Portals” by Melanie Martinez.
Huge shout-out to Rick Lupert at Poetry Super Highway for including me in this project! You can see more of his work on his website here.
John Lennon sang about peace when I was only 5 but then he was shot in the back four times, a few years later imagine. we all kept singing though even after that gave the peace sign to each other in a wink-wink someday sort of way like we were in on a big secret; it was coming, any day now, 2,000 years of peacemakers and peace preachers had told us so before they were killed, too, point-blank or otherwise; told us, told our parents, told their parents who kissed in the streets when John Lennon was all but 5 imagine. and so it goes, peace dream pipe dream pish posh.
When the painter on stilts calls to me from above to talk about color and time, I hear only the whisper of a lover past, blue eyes and soft curls his warm brown skin against mine practicing words out loud as we drank spiced rum from paper cups, pointed to constellations laid out on the ceiling tu nombre es mi cielo, mi amor your name is my heaven, my love
I can’t seem to get my coffee right it’s too strong or too weak burnt because I forget half-brewed because I’m impatient and none of it tastes as good as a hot cup on a cold morning when I was young and hopeful — romantic even; somehow everything now in this wicked, hobbled world is just not right, and I wonder if whiskey might better suit the mood, neat with a long, hard drag off a Marlboro might at least allow an exhale now and then.
wondering if the surgeon replaced the poem lobe with mechanical parts as well the kind that seize up in cold work or don’t work at a whim inflame from lack of use or too much use or just so much use that whatever — ow! it seems the poemflow is missing its synovial fluid like my knee that I must pump back and forth swinging (without the whee!) until it decides to perform; perhaps I must swing my head shake it no nod it yes agree to some higher power to let the poem in YES. NOW. PLEASE. It’s been sitting there for a week waiting to move waiting to become waiting to transform waiting like me waiting
In the Library of Dreams a Poet stood at the front of a room lit only by amber candles dressed in velvet robes and a crown of laurel befitting the most seasoned bards, a hint of a smile lifted on his face familiar as he pulled from his pocket a round red ruby and a sparkling white crystal explained to all of us about life and death the immortality of words tells us we are given crystals two apiece at birth red like an apple for life and living white for the wisdom of sages like himself a wizard of words enchanter of stories sorcerer of time.
The warmed blanket offers as much comfort as the ghost who held me in dreams said all the right things too late to even consider a new lease fucking cliché at this age find myself wishing I were the type to waste away in bed where dreams at least offer promise.
As one ghost lies dying from heart ache, another suffers tragic loss, and a third fades quietly into the ether, she is reminded that always, in the epic final battle, everything resurfaces: there are fires burning, smoldering moments of despair, a defeated arch nemesis, a warrior waning and
AND
a heroine — walking wounded — considering the sunrise its event horizon the point of no return from all of this and all of them these lost souls her poetic impetus
By the time I can walk freely to the backyard again, my summer friends have flown, their brightness replaced by soft subtle grays, and I can’t help but wonder about the cardinal, her wing askew, who spent the season managing her brokeness as deftly as I navigated my own; she moved about as best as she could, stayed strong; found her stride and her song. I miss her now, these cold mornings more quiet without our shared infirmary, and I imagine her somewhere safe, like myself, moving without limit.
*As if on cue, I saw my cardinal friend in the backyard just this morning, the first time in a month!
Do the birds know I am not myself moving gently towards them seeds in one pocket water in the other barefoot in the cool, damp grass tticking to call the cardinals tticking to say I have not forgotten you I have been here all along just moving more slowly finding my way to solid ground done with the flitterings of grief and old limitations — so what of loss? these leaves had to fall it is the natural order churning and churning everything changing the leaves, the river, and time tticking too
The 8″ battle scar explains the retreat in glorious, punctuated detail so no apologies or all apologies for having been absent from duty absent from craft absent from self our tactical strategy required split-second timing a vanguard deployment of the strongest self armed and ready for the battle of chemical warfare and severed skin, of breaking bones and hammered metals; while the correspondent self held the flank, taking cryptic notes to send by wire later, when the haze cleared.
a poem inspired by Stranger Things, post-op drugs, and him again
The meditation takes me to the Upside Down — a crossover of dreams and Spielberg memories, where muses suddenly appear with the Next Great Idea! on a dark plane of black water, the beaming light of What Comes After This; but he is there, too, and I say the goodbye I never get to say except in dreams and poems I want to fold up and leave in secret places, like the Upside Down, where maybe he travels sometimes, this kindred spirit who is so familiar I am always certain we have crossed paths in some other life… or is that just this rich, deep darkness of conjuring? the magic of a poet turning things over to see what might be, maybe, substance for another poem?
A bird in the privet suddenly sings and without evidence of prey I can only surmise that she is dreaming. It’s a morning for dreaming, crisp-cold and clear, the moon and Jupiter still dance while constellations shimmer to the rhythm and she is singing in her sleep, a sweet but startled sound as if she feels our spinning, senses the sun’s fast approach wishes for one more hour of peace before the day begins.
It’s 9 o’clock my time barely three for you but it’s no matter we’re decades apart — not hours — only ghosts here in the library where I race to find the book I need you to read before the alarm goes off and I wake to the day where it’s just a fine gold thread that connects us now.
I pass long tall stacks of coffee table books and the bust of Blackstone in the halls of recorded memory — yours and mine — and you seem not to notice the immediacy of the moment when I approach with insistence, your retired posture almost welcome were it not for the clock ticking next to me in the bed we used to share,
but by then the words have disappeared from the pages in your lap and in exchange, a collage of nonsensical images fall to the ground at your feet rendering me speechless in that dreamworld way, paralyzed by all I have left to say, gasping for moonlit breaths.
In the dark you whisper your worst fears made manifest by explosive lights and sounds you conjure in the woods outside our room, specters stretched tall along walls the shadow of what comes, but I am not afraid of your ghosts nor you of mine — we’ve never been — it is why we find ourselves here again partners in crimes of comfort and concoctions; I leave my dreams to curl into yours, stroke the broad arm of your embrace, lie in the darkness of silent understanding, this midnight love come round, the long wide bed, moonlight and stars our afterlife dreams.
Resisting the urge (for the seventh or eighth time in two days) to hoist the parking lot flag back up to full mast in some alter-ego Fuck Donald Trump ninja subterfuge, I remind myself to breathe in the gorgeous late summer afternoon there in the shadow of Ikea — monument of consumerism — gorgeous, except for the Spotted Lanternfly that crosses my path begging me to squash its red polka-dotted guts out; more death on these days of infinite death I cannot bear; it might be feast for the songbird trapped in the cafeteria throwing itself again and again and again against the ceiling-high windows, their pretense of sky; it does not stop seeking what it remembers, the poor thing, but is that Futility or Hope I wonder as I read signs about food waste and recycling, the 3,920 solar panels on the roof above my head, feast on Swedish meatballs covered in slick red jam.
You are legend suddenly made flesh but no comparison to the mythology I have constructed for you. its scaffolding felled akimbo by your presence, poetry strewn in incomplete sentences across the timeline; mere mortals are not made for this; we fail by our very nature, destroy the sacred altars of memory, light fires to its sweetness, and burn down walls of forgetfulness; best put you back in the box, close the lid tightly before even Hope escapes the happy ending I wrote on our behalf
Maybe it was the full moon or just the occurrence of these days of ending things crashing around us the long slow molting I want you to know I tell him in case I die… but I am no longer sure if that was real or something I said to a ghost
They all come to visit lately by happenstance or dream by the cosmic dust that connects all of us or through airwaves as cluttered as our atmosphere
Last night I walked with one — a ghost — along a woods road up into a wide field of apple trees and goldenrod laughing like old friends
And it was so good to see him again that I burrowed back into sleep in case he was still there waiting
Sometimes when they hover like this converge in dream spaces whisper in dark corners I think I must be dying And this is our mea culpa our chance to set things right finally or again
I never could see it in myself, that origami fold of accommodation, beautiful in its grace and considerations, but the creases wear thin after a while;
I see it in her, this kindred spirit across from me; offer silent permission with a glance and watch as she unfolds just a little, reconfigures her angles to her own liking, sets things right, sets things free.
I stayed too long in dreams so much the day seems flat and one dimension; in my mind, the sander still polishes the leg of the man who said “the body always feels pain” as sawdust coats my throat too much for words; a crystal-blue rain falls with wicked gold lightening against the wide horizon somewhere along I-90 in South Dakota, an angel floating in the back seat laughs at what we forgot to say, urges me to Drive! Drive! Drive! as if I am escaping something; all the while my mind ticks, like a clock pacing time, thinking how to slip you a note handwritten that says 808.81 and nothing more, you’re the Sherlock Holmes, you figure it out; all these years, the conversations in my head and you, deaf and blind or just resigned to dreams like me, this morning, wasting days away before the knives cut out pieces of me again, remember? Like the last time you were here, the both of us relieved to hear “she made it.”
The friend who found me after I lost you died and so I lost her, too
there’s a long list of others lost for various reasons since then
by default by accident by misfortune or miscalculation or by the eventuality that all things change and nothing is certain
certainly not love I’ve lost that, too, too many times
so many times I’ve stopped counting one, two, three… out loud anyway
do you ever wonder why we find them again? in hallways of dreams, in lobbies of random buildings doors opening and closing and time passing on all sides everywhere except where you stand momentarily lost and found and lost again
there will always be more to say a one thing I didn’t mention a question I needed to ask a reassurance or gratitude or words I never, ever spoke out loud a messy, beautiful bouquet things I’ve gathered for the next time we meet by chance or happenstance petals dropping even as I walk away a meadow of words at my feet forget-me-not nor I you, ever
His smile was Errol Flynn from the get-go, and he made no apologies for the affect — the tight jeans and cowboy boots, the crisp white t-shirt sleeves rolled, suntanned arms, the hair done up and over, the cologne as alluring as the charm he used to catch your attention. And once he had it, he’d reel you in slow and steady, until you would agree to anything everything and never look back, not even now, all these years later, where he remains as legendary as he was those first early days when you rode the high seas together, stared up at the wild stars and knew you would never ever forget.
how the ants know it’s coming before the rest of us realize, how they announce its arrival in a parade across my kitchen counter, their appreciation of the small morsels of sugar I’ve misplaced, the renegade crumbs
how the mosquitos are consistent in the hum-hum-sting of their assault at the backs of my arms, my legs, my scalp and at the sweet tender skin of my ankles, how assertively their bites manifest as persistently-itchy welts long after the union of proboscis and skin
I love the sharp pungent aroma of bug spray its perfumed plumes of offense that linger on clothing and linens, its placebo effect that lulls one into thinking a stroll in the grass or evening walk is not the suicidal effort it inevitably becomes how calamine, all these years later, still has little effect
I love how the sun is brighter and hotter now, how it sizzles in the sky and scares off cloud cover, how sun begets sweat that trickles down my neck and back and armpits and the crooks of my knees so that everything is damp and humid and sticky including my sheets at night, and the pillows, too no matter how often I wake and flip them to the cool side, no matter the window unit chugging along the fan blowing luke-warm air and irony
how humidity hangs in the air, keeps everything summer moist swells up my fingers, makes mock raisins of my toes in their constricting summer sandals that bind and dig-in, leave criss-cross marks like tattoos that say Summer Was Here
I love the incessant noise of lawn mowers the ARRRRRR ARRRRR ARRRRR beat of blades the tease as they fade around the corner but return for another stanza often accompanied by the RRRRRRA-ZZZ-ZZZ RRRRRRA-ZZZ-ZZZ of the weed whacker
Oh…all of those summer noises! the startling shock of motorcycle manhood as it revs its engine just as it passes my open window, the cigarette boat in the harbor insisting no it is bigger and better than any motorbike the backing-up beep of the landscape van, the beat box boom box bass of radios blasting music nobody likes, the violent scream of the chain saw against even more trees, the fireworks erupting to celebrate their own percussive noises in an ongoing summer competition of what the fuck can be louder than this?
I love the busy-ness of summer: the ants and mosquitos mere poster children for the weeds, the outside chores, and the inside chores, the long and sprawling list of Things to Do and Places to Be and just how many carnivals, fairs, markets, and outdoor sweaty buggy get togethers can one fit into a two-day weekend that requires hours of slogging through touristy traffic crawling along at 20 sweaty, noisy miles an hour
Perhaps, though, what I love most about summer is that tortuous steamy day in August, as heat forms in waves off the macadam and gossip spreads of eggs frying and Lucifer rising, when the air conditioner coughs its last breaths of what passes at that point for “Cool” when you look, then, to the heavens to beseech god up above to make it stop and you see what appears to be trees aflame… and know, intuitively, that soon it will end graciously and gloriously end.
I am back on terra firma, sound rushing through my feet and up in a cacophony of thought, worry, consternation that somehow fades on the coast, transitions into whitecaps and whale song, a quiet not to be found among these common conflicts at home, the roar of traffic, the flight plan overhead, the bells and buzzes of business.
How is the sound of the ocean and all its occupants some two miles deep meager competition to the loudness of this day today? The ever present noise of them and us and this…even here in my beloved woods.
I awoke this morning feeling rudderless alone and adrift so I partnered myself with sheets and pillows in a meager attempt to stop the sway to right myself between swells of defeat and despair but finding no equilibrium I moored myself to the day and got on with it albeit without commitment or fortitude floated aimless past noon and afternoon grateful for the sun’s setting the welcome drift of deep deep dreams.
It is often effortless this charge a light somewhere a word a phrase a road highlighted on an internal GPS how to get from here [ thought ] to there [ something written ] with little but an invisible arrow a compelling a compulsion an understanding that it’s fleeting unforgiving fickle if not me and mine then someone else somewhere else will get it catch it in whatever way they have learned to catch mitt, net, rain barrel
I prefer mine organic open a door a window my arms let the words come right in no ceremony or formality no place settings and certainly no roughhousing (live and let live, I always say)
you wanna be a good poem or a bad poem, one anointed with laurels or just doddering in the margins? come on out with all your slick juices scream and wail and take that first breath, baby!
and then there it is whatever it is good, bad, mediocre
I don’t mind them any of them, really they’re warm-ups stretches practice runs compost
take a deep breath
because the good ones? Mmm, yeah, the good ones, they glow! preternaturally hum and buzz and vibrate a little so you have to keep reading them over and over pinching a dream is this real?
You just birthed an angel, mama — a wild wondrous angel — watch her fly!
Hindsight is 20/20 except when what you’d been seeing then, back then, was larger than life, grander than anything you could imagine and so enormously out of proportion that… now, hindsight is microscopic requiring broken circles of glass — that you try not to bite down on too hard or else you might bleed even more than you already have — to see what was right in front of your eyes all along how minuscule you had to make yourself to fit into that space that small mindedness that box with clearly defined edges (and no imagination) but these are things you don’t see through rose colored glasses their purpose only to color inside the lines with one conforming color the vision of what you were programmed to think you wanted that small sweet girl and her dolls playing make believe building castles out of miss-matched pieces instead of telescopes with which to see the much bigger picture.
Radar shows the storm purple and red and gold but all I see for miles are shades of Cape Cod gray pale where the sky should be a graphite-thin horizon line its boats like ghosts and a graduated green-gray ocean punctuated by the occasional wild white cap making its way to shore even the trees are gray this morning their late spring effort almost forgot inside this passing storm whose endings promise blue.
Bring me here, darling, the day I die. Let’s hope the seals bob curiously at our folly and the black cap gulls make us laugh along with them.
Let’s manifest giant waves — the kind little boys scream into — and a full moon that plays hide and seek with the setting sun behind billowed clouds and tall green grasses.
We can celebrate whale spouts and whale tails and the fine thin lines of birds come back — that life goes on and a moment of joy can last forever, here, a laugh, a dance, and love worn smooth with time.
We’ll hope for a cold spring day you and me alone on the dunes and that one final breathtaking breeze to push me forward into oblivion.
Her Algorithm has teeth fangs, really like the kind you see in nightmares, and its fur is black and sharp like a worn carpet tread in worry and fear, with small fibers that pierce the skin and stick like burrs.
Her Algorithm has firm, strong legs and claws that dig in and hold fast to a path she didn’t even realize she was walking down, until she’s so far deep and running at such a clip all she can see is the hot steamy breath of her Algorithm, the gates of hell like a flaming blur.
and there’s nothing a cute purring kitten or craft project can do but watch from the sidebar and wait their turn until the Algorithm catches sight of something more interesting and follows its scent down a rabbit hole of obscure poetry, trendy dance moves, and weird fashion from a 1970s JCPenney catalog that turns her Algorithm a shaggy, avocado green.
Heart-shaped rocks underfoot all around on the grassy path and sand dune from here to the shore and at the water’s edge
(dare I say even in the palm of the Garçon at the pâtisserie whose smile needed no translation)
Hearts!
There was a time I would have come home with enough heart-shaped rocks to border a banister, fill a bowl and basket, lined them up to show the Garçon in the morning with coffee and croissants
but I am content now to find moon stones instead translucent round and easy love in the stars, the sky, the universe enough
In a persistent effort to weave a web the spider imperceptible casts her silver filaments from the uppermost spire of a wintered beach plum one thin budded branch from which a hundred casts arc and fall arc and fall her small labors shimmering in afternoon light prayers of possibility glittering
There is a slice of ocean outside my window and in it the world from a view just above a confluence of birdsong and whalesong the mechanics of the day juxtaposed to sweet, sweet silence.
There’s this photo in which he stares at the camera and I remember we’d already begun by then; made plans, talked for hours, fallen in love, even by the look on his face; I remember that day, our chairs pushed together, sharing our lunches, scribbling notes to each other like school kids; but we were hardly that, hardly so fresh to all of it; I wish my camera had focused more, had adjusted its exposure to show the shadows, the rough edges and hidden details, to find the nuances in the full picture I see so clearly, now.
This is Reverend Scott on the valve in the belly of Poseidon. Quint in the jaws of his worst nightmare. Jack and Rose at the Titanic’s stern. Eowyn and the Nazgûl. Harry and Voldemort. Bruce Willis on the asteroid careening through space.
This is the battle scene. The climactic moment. The death scene.
This is before the denouement. Before the resolution. Before the credits roll.
This is the moment that needs you. That demands faith. That requires courage. And sacrifices.
So hang on tight, baby, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride…
Grizzly Bear and Goldilocks (that’s not my name, she says) are discussing the merits of cinnamon applesauce and whether or not I would eat her, instead, barbequed with ranch dressing but before I can answer in my gruffy harumphing voice we’re off to gather sticks for our make-believe fire pit and the s’mores we’ll eat later because right now she’s making breakfast pancakes with maple syrup? bacon and strawberries I love bacon! which we eat while she laughs that the syrupmakes my fur sticky so she cleans it off my hands thank you then we pretend-read a book before going to bed and I snore as loud as I can until she wakes me up ten seconds later to sit by the fire (just one more round, she asks) so I can’t possibly leave and why would I ever want to? there are s’mores, after all, and a backyard afternoon that is just right.
I have seen her one hundred times since she died in crowds and corners when I least expect and last night in a dream again looking fabulous and forgiving all my tears waited until I was done so we could step into the space of time allotted that glorious dreamspace where everything is as it was and we do as we used to do for hours unending until I wake no longer feeling quite as alone.
If these walls could talk these shelves and set-aside spaces you might think I love her and I do one hundred times I do and have for so long I no longer remember first glance, first conversation first spark of friendship but this and this and this tell our story — part of it most of it the sum of it — easy to turn pages in this space and remember the miles we traveled, the endless stories, the memories gathered in pockets to take home for safe keeping.
The morning thick with sound spring sound a humid hovering of birdsong and flowersong buds on trees whispering and soft soil separated by anxious green almost ready for the ministry of bees and butterflies soon to be tending and tittering a symphony of what is this moment and what will be at any moment soon.
Sleep has been merciful these past three months, arriving early from exhaustion staying late in fellowship with the dreams that wax nostalgic for simpler nightmares and harmless ghosts.
But this morning, I’m awake at 3, my familiar and I like old friends sharing space beneath the spring moon, waning in its sixth phase, while one lone peeper keeps time as sharp as the second hand on a clock.
We have not been together in this way — the moon and morning and me — since the monsters took over, since their cacophony of destruction, the sinister palpitation of days, and all of us wondering what or who will be next.
This morning is a gift of quiet comfort, the marsh frog a beacon which seems to say Here! Here! Here! over and over and over, it reminds that even in the age of monsters, once can find solace in the soft, dark edges, calm in the promise of cycles and phases, of spring and worlds ever spinning.
sit up straight the napkin goes on your lap elbows off the table tines down tines up left hand, right hand, tip the spoon away don’t slurp don’t shovel don’t talk with your mouth full
To the Starlings who have moved into the Privet Hedge on Short Beach Road,
Welcome.
Please stay as long as you like.
Help yourself to the bugs and slugs in the front garden. Enjoy the spread of sweet clover and violets in the lawn, but watch for the mower who arrives every two weeks on Friday.
There’s always shade under the boxwoods, if you need, and rain water in small pools along the mossy brick path.
In the back, you’ll find a bird feeder loosely tended, but often full of seeds, and an endless dance of bees among the honeysuckle by the old dogwood.
We have resident squirrels, a family of five jays, and a chipmunk who resides just south of the bird bath which we keep filled all summer long.
The pond out back offers the companion of frogs and turtles, crows and owls, a flock of your brothers and sisters, and at least one hawk for balance.
Pay no mind to the cat. She never goes outside, but does love her spot on the screen porch. Feel free to watch her watching you, that could go on for hours!
Now mind you, I do have one request.
What I ask only in return is this: please do not cross the wide wild way, west of the hedge. It’s fast and merciless. If you, out of instinct, fly that way ever, please stay high and alert.
It occurred to me this morning, while I held tight to old dreams, that someone, somewhere was also waking to this day, but opening eyes to a present they recognized: the familiar sun though curtains and the routine of Sunday laid out in front of them with no need to pretend otherwise; the photos on the shelf of old friends smiling, the bucket list taped to the refrigerator door, the piggy bank promise of new adventures somewhere and someday still shimmer in the early light of their morning, there; should I tell them? remind them to hold fast live in the moment for god’s sake everything is fleeting, tomorrow might already be a memory.
Thoreau, she tells me, was tended to by women. Meals and laundry — a side of the story I’d missed, hadn’t even thought to think about; his cabin in the woods? his solitude and simplicity? my dream! my escape! my alternate ending! and who considers practicalities when we’re having a transcendental crisis? I am disheartened and disappointed and then…delighted! The solitude of the woods? The simplicity of sojourn? And a community of women to soothe and support? Life Goals times one hundred!
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