Fierce Blessings

The nights I couldn't sleep

I went looking for you

in cool grass,

searched for footprints

in the slant

of green blades.

That whole summer

I followed the shoreline

of memory,

listening for your heartbeat

among whispers of reeds,

the wash of waves

against ancient contours

of rock.

But I never heard it,

and on the other side of the lake,

far from the children's eyes,

I reached into

the invisible cracks

in our loyalties,

let them engulf me,

the way shadows swallow sunlight.

I recognized the lapses

in loving,

heard the eyelid of owl

move up and down,

the voices of insects

begin their night-time chatter,

until finally I could follow my own footprints

to our side of the lake.

The children had abandoned a bucket

on the beach

and fraternities of frogs jumped from captivity.

In the trembling air;

our shared dreams grew wings

and joined the exodus.

The last night

I lit driftwood on the beach,

watched the embers

exhaust themselves

in the night air,

nestled in the warmth

of fire

and of children.

As I drove back

into civilization,

the pines still clung to me,

their scent entering my pores,

carrying what remained

of summer and the lake.

City lights illuminated the horizon,

their expanding glow a giant moon

of forgiveness,

setting up small explosions

of fierce blessings.

Letting go

Letting go

1.

a fragment of foreknowledge,

the grief before grief --

how it began,

on a night when a full moon

leaned into the car,

illuminated the familiar features

of your face,

your hands on the steering wheel,

and your foot slipping from the clutch

for the nth time,

and we refused to believe

it was anything but your shoe,

the carpet, or the wetness of the day

that precipitated the sudden

disappearance of feeling --

a vanishing.

Sclerosis:

"a morbid hardening of tissue

throughout the body"

We banished the word from speech,

excised it from page 1109 of the OED

along with scissors, scoff, scold, sconce.

On the reverse, we lost scoot, scope,

scorch and score,

the diminishing of our vocabulary

a necessary evil.

2

Describe pain --

on a scale of one to ten.

You conjured a slide rule;

the measurement required accuracy.

Pills tilted the room on its side,

windows disappeared into the earth.

You were falling into an abyss.

"Better the pain", you said.

Seasons slid past the tongue --

harvest moon, hunter's moon.

Wordless, we followed the phases

as they waned, waxed,

the eventual fullness a burst of promise,

ephemeral as forever.

At night the television remained on;

voices curled, like old friends,

inside your half-sleep,

substituted for remembered body warmth,

the casual weight of arm

across your thigh.

Inside your recurring dreams,

it was always summer,

and you were always running.

Outside, your legs were two white fish

beached on the shore.

We allowed denial to prop our days,

wrapped it round us like a blanket,

prayed for dreamless sleep.

3.

Each night your voice unstitched me,

your need so acute

I could feel it from the next room,

feel uninvited imaginings invade our nightscape,

flap like moths against a porch light --

diaphanous suicide bombers

longing for the revelation of light

in the split-second rush

towards death.

This was our lotus-land

of non-existence,

denial our chosen opioid.

We listened for each breath,

each shallow beat of heart.

Summer faded.

We skipped a season,

refused autumn's breath of decay,

the heavy scent of earth returning

to itself,

fell into winter's hibernation,

the creak of frozen twilight,

car headlamps bisecting the dark,

tires muted by snow,

their trajectory tracked by a waning moon.

Speechless,

we dreamed the cold alliteration

of snow and silence,

tried to sink into the feathered softness,

listen to the sizzle as cold tempered

despair's candent heat,

attempted an alchemy

which could convert pain

to understanding.

4.

Defeat came with sudden speed.

Denial crumbled.

I heard your absence,

your wingless flight

to where I could not follow.

You took language with you,

left me mute in now familiar silence.

Forever was the lie

that no longer sustained us,

the one learned in the safety net

of the womb,

the one inscribed on the bones

of the ribcage

in the sealed darkness

of life before life.

5.

They say black holds all the other colours

in its heart.

but I couldn't find them.

I became blind as well as mute,

fingers searching for a way out,

a way to forgive

the shattering of the promise of forever,

made before we grew into ourselves,

before we learned imagination

could not capture forever

any more than the mind could compass infinity,

the moon could stop waning after fullness

or our unspoken solitudes

could bridge the gaps between us.

Is it air that connects us when we cease to exist,

when words vanish into a forever vault?

A door shuts.

With words you wrote yourself into me.

I have found no words to write you back out.

Through dark water

There was your death,

and then your second death,

the second an endless haunting:

its web of lies wrapped round me

until I drowned

under the weight

of revelation.

There were years

when I couldn't surface

from the ocean floor:

I lived amidst other wreckages.

My bones began dismantling

as surely as my life story.

My skin grew pale

as the white underbellies of fish

who avoided me

as if I exuded a poisoned elixir,

as perhaps I did.

Perhaps this contradictory grief

leaked from my pores

as toxic contagion.

Bubbles rose from my mouth,

and I supposed I had learned

to breathe under water --

how else could I still exist?

Or had I really drowned

and limbo was not a suspension

on the periphery of heaven or hell

but an attempted journey

to a distant beginning?

Thoughts rotated counterclockwise,

the backwards movement disorienting,

and although I sensed time passing,

I always arrived at the same place,

with the same wreakage about me,

the same fish exploring the same brokenness

on the same part of the ocean floor.

I don't know if I will surface again:

the need to see in this altered world

is more than I can bear.

But this is where I will stop,

half-way through the telling.

I have heard we believe what makes us happy.

I cannot yet decipher that claim.

For now, this water world embraces me

like an ancient womb,

allows the long gestation I need

to grow back into myself,

though the outcome remains uncertain.

But more frequently,

I hear a single thread of song

whisper through dark water.

Forgive me

This is what I meant to say

before thoughts stumbled into incoherence:

I am surprised by the flood of memory

pouring through my head

when I lay it softly down to sleep.

There is no stopping it;

past, present and an end-stopped future

tumble in a whirlpool of white water,

breaching previously impermeable flood gates.

I failed to anticipate the chaos

the gift of years would bring.

We live and remember life backwards,

try to imbue each moment

with wished-for meaning,

even as we continue searching,

sometimes in sad despair,

for the something we feel awaits us

in another of the hundred lifetimes

we imagine we could have lived.

To say that all poems are about loss

is an act of rebellion

against the smallness of a chosen life.

But we never move beyond

that fleeting pulse of hope

where there is a falling to the knees

in wonder, at untrodden snow,

the tenderness of dusk,

the sky at night and the stars,

all the stars inviting our long-distance touch,

at the memory of a child's tiny fist

latched on to finger and heart.

Oh, never let me go!

What I wanted to say is

all poems are about love,

but love is an end result,

after expulsion from the warm belly

of conception,

after the innocence we need to shed,

after all;

love is the reward for endurance,

beyond the grasp of loss.

Enigma

I have written nothing in the year since your death:

words elude me, as they did so frequently during

our time together.

It is a complicated grief, one

I don't wish to explain --or

cannot.

An emptiness exists where my body

should be, my feet cannot find the

reassurance of solid ground, as if I

am being tugged after you.

When spring arrives, the

garden needs me.

its work tires me with its physical demands so that

sleep comes easily, while writing - writing, I argue,

exists only in my head which is already over-

burdened with inconsistencies.

It is a short argument, for writing too exhausts me,

as if I have climbed a high mountain and perch, for an

indeterminate time, on a precipice edge before

making my way back down carrying the few words I

have gathered along the way.

Summer passes. The garden blossoms.

At night I dream the scent of jasmine and

of rosemary planted by the door.

In the morning there are footprints on the damp grass

as if a search has been conducted: something is lost,

or is it someone?

Is my heart the thing sought? I know one piece

is lost forever: it flew out the car window on

the wings of revelation years before. There had

been no point in searching for it - the damage

was irreparable - though if I am forced to

drive that route again, my chest vibrates at a

certain spot on the road.

The rest of that day remains a blank

as if the compression of events into so few words

contains everything of significance.

But the period of erasure haunts me.

Summer's end brings a familiar bitter-sweet scent --

earth opening to fold me back in.

A friend joins me in the last of summer warmth.

as she often does when she feels a certain sadness settle around

her. I know it is not to burden me that she comes: there is a

sense of something shared.

She confides that she may not need to return so frequently.

It asks a lot of us, she continues, grief and this paying of

forgotten dues.

We are both silent with our thoughts.

Leaves fall, as the small shard of heart did,

soundless - perhaps there is significance,

even in silence.

When she leaves, she looks back at the garden.

It's all here, she says - endings and

beginnings,

and a strange sense of forgiveness.

Long after her departure her words

balance on currents of air.

My tongue reaches out to embrace them.

I must be mad

Thirteen and writing poems saturated

with red maple, stately elm, with air

so cold it opened a passage in my

throat. I didn't know then this could

be a description of love.

I dreamed, far into darkness, far

past the hour of waking, in

languages foreign to me. Each

morning I opened a dictionary to

search for meaning.

Others attempted to fill in words

for those I didn't know, but

meanings became lost

in translation.

I built a catafalque for words I couldn't

understand, willed them to leave my

mind in peace.

But I could not banish the moments

when thunder edged out silence, pulled

a torn shard of sky into its lungs and

exhaled, puncturing some part of me I

didn't know was in need of opening.

When I fell to my knees in cataleptic

trance, it was feared I must be mad, or in

a dream, bewitched. But no one could

acknowledge their fear, or my cry from

the wilderness,

I could not explain these

restless journeyings,

these moments when babble coalesced

into common tongue, when I could

understand, without benefit of a

dictionary, the multiple versions of

silence and of love.

This story

This story

This story might be a lie.

Then again it might not.

It is a half-story, the only half

I know, being a singular unit

looking at world before a page turns,

becomes history.

I waited,

into my seventh decade,

for real life to begin.

I thought this life I'd been living

had been bequeathed to me,

a gift someone thought l'd like,

and because it was bestowed

with love, perhaps,

churlish to reject.

It was like putting on

someone else's slippers.

My feet slid in

quite easily,

though worn sections chafed a little,

here and there,

not so much that I removed them,

rather waited

to see if they would become

really mine,

Of course, they never did

and all the people

I'd wanted to please,

died,

I am lost

Suddenly I am lost

in a landscape

I once knew

like the back

of my hand.

See,

there, at the base

of my baby finger

is Sam's corner store.

I went there once

when I was out of favour

with my parents.

Sam gave me

a pink bubble-gum,

and his handkerchief

for the tears I was trying hard

to hold back.

And there,

by the next finger,

the one destined to become

a ring finger,

were the street-car tracks

which wound down to the barn

where street-cars spent the night.

I thought, perhaps, the drivers

stayed, too.

Most people stayed home at night,

safe from the dark.

Girls had been taught

the rules about darkness.

And there,

by the big knuckle

of my thumb,

was the house where they gave

candied apples on Hallowe'en,

back before we learned

not to accept candy

from strangers

I can't remember

what was by the first

and second fingers,

perhaps one was the street

where I was chased by bats

and fell into a hole excavated

for a new house,

and one may have been

the street to the trainyards,

where a woman, with a

too-curious husband,

sewed dresses for girls.

The street-car tracks are gone too,

ripped out to upgrade

from electric to fossil fuel.

I remember my disappointment

when the buses didn't sway

the way the street-cars did.

I loved it when the conductor saw

a straight stretch of track,

opened the throttle

as far as it would go,

and I had to hold on to the bar

of the seat in front of me

to keep from falling

to the floor.

Some of the grown-ups complained

that it was unsafe.

I remember, too, the sign

displayed on the wall

at the front of each street-car:

"No expectorating in this carriage."

I looked up the word when I got home.

Sam, of course, is long dead,

and his store long gone.

He said I could keep his handkerchief -

and I did -

kept it folded in a dresser drawer

until one day it was gone:

I don't remember when,

but, by then, I had grown

a stiff upper lip

and it wasn't needed

much.

Now, it's harder to remember

the once familiar landscape.

On the back of my hand

blue veins run

every which-way

and I lose myself

among the ridges

and deepening valleys

of imperfect recall,

and I ask myself

what are these fragments

of long past life,

what are these rag-tag

collections of memory

begging to be examined anew,

what is it that will not leave me

in peace?

Sometimes I walk

1.

Sometimes I walk

in sadness,

hear the absence of footsteps

by my side,

and my sorry self weeps

for its sorry self.

Oh woe, woe.

The mourning dove chants

its saddest song:

there will be days like this,

where we travel from dawn to dark

on memory's brooding tide.

Sing, it says.

Sing into the silence.

Breathe into it

the feathered hope

you thought was lost.

2.

Sometimes I walk

in anger,

hear the satisfying slap

slap

of my shoes

against the pavement,

avoiding insect life,

but squashing imaginary foes

into flattened images

of themselves, their mouths

wide open in a version of

"really?"

"Really", I reply.

You didn't see my soul

crouching in the corner

of my protective heart?

I didn't anticipate

the burn and sting

of shoe on hard ground,

or that this would be an act

of self-immolation.

3.

Sometimes I walk

in gladness.

My feet remember childhood,

the skip, jump and lope of it,

and I want to do crazy

and ill-advised.

I want to live in the wish

of bone balancing

on the edge of possibility.

Come,

come with me;

let us live

one more time

in the joy

of being.

4.

Sometimes I walk

to listen

to the tock, tock

of world's metronome,

to the unseen tree

fall,

to the rush of wind

in my ear, fleet,

and fleeting.

I hear green leaves clap,

clap their hands,

and if you can imagine,

to earth asking if it can have

the next dance.

5.

Sometimes I walk

to meet the tragic actor

who is me,

to witness

the action on a stage

where everything is moving

and alive,

even the dead, who knew me best,

and the torn-to-pieces-hood

of all my lives

gathers in a singularity

to companion me.

Compassion

Your insistence on being right

saddens me, not because you

are wrong, but because

ancient wounds

still bleed when touched --

some wounds are like that -

the ones which severed a

part of you you thought was

sacred,

before you discovered that

every part of you, of each of

us, is holy and blessed and to

be endlessly cherished.

Lay down your head my love

and let my fingers stroke

your brow, even though I am

unsure if I can staunch the

wounds or soothe your

heart

Suppose your heart

Suppose for a moment

your heart is firmly attached

to your sleeve

would it feel like walking naked

down the street?

Would your exposed self

invite envy of all those whom you've loved,

or who have loved you?

Would parents cover the eyes

of their children

to protect them

from the unexpected radiance

of desire?

If all your inmost wishes dropped

like pennies

on the pavement,

would each passerby feel blessed

on picking one up?

If they could change places with you,

would they?

I am pissed off

Everyone wants me to be nice.

Well, let me tell you

it gets harder every day

and I'm tired

of gearing up for

yet another battle

of the good

over the implacable wills

of nature and nurture's

altered realities.

Except for my special training

as woman,

I would have said

"no more missis nice girl"

a long time ago.

But my course in

re-alignment of values,

concerns, and necessary evils,

had to be interrupted

to be good for everyone else,

available for overtime

in the garden of innocence,

to teach courses in

self-sacrifice or pottery,

moulding all those shapeless bits

floating among flowers

and carrots

into something recognizable,

acceptable to the world on

the other side of the garden fence.

No one bothered to tell me

that life on the other side

was inhabited

by an underground army

whose secret code

was a mark on the forehead

invisible to the naked eye.

But then, that's the job

of double agents

to be invisible.

I want to be taken prisoner

by autumn,

early enough that fields

have not yet

been captured

by death.

I want to pack the gold

of sun's fading heat

into my bones

and hoard it, as a miser

hoards his coin,

to keep despair from invading

when long nights turn dark

with brooding.

Can I dismiss such greed?

Or must I ask forgiveness

for the theft of something

which might warm another's hands

or heart?

Is any thing

too small

to signify?

A Memory of Light

We will let go of grief,

its uneven harmonic of pain,

or perhaps it will leave us,

though what will precipitate the release

we may not know -

only that darkness bent suddenly

into a different shape,

absence became more

than incomprehension,

and our heart settled back

into its allotted space.

There are things we do know:

that parts of the body

come in twos,

as if we started life

folded in half.

that we live

with twinned sides of brain

and heart,

two legs, two arms, two eyes,

but even so,

the left shoe will not fit

the right foot,

compensation for any loss

remains just that,

and to some questions

there never will be answers

that satisfy us.

Tides and moon move

according to immutable rules,

as love does,

in spite, or perhaps because of,

anything we try to do,

and what we are left with,

in the midst of darkness

and the company of ghosts,

is amazement

that darkness contains a memory of light

that can bend us back

into our former shape.