One day, Grace Stevenson stopped coloring her hair. All those hours and all that money spent trying to keep aging at bay, and John had gone off with a younger woman anyway. What was the point? At seventy, she thought the gray made her look refined, worldly. That’s how she wanted to feel. Like she’d arrived at a certain stage in her life where her choices should be respected.
She knew she wasn’t fooling anyone.
They say the cave offers a passage to the underworld. In ancient Greek mythology, a musician, poet, and prophet named Orpheus, son of the god Apollo, descended through the cave into the subterranean kingdom of Hades in search of his beloved, Eurydice. There are many versions of this legend and none of them have happy endings.
I see her still. Her beaded plaits, flashing smile, bubbling laugh. Temilola. She has five other names but this is the one she prefers. Lola for short.
Toronto, Canada 2019 Floating downstairs after a therapy session, I hold the invisible balloon around me, a hot golden bubble of healing light from my osteo-physio. Pain free for now, I exhale, re-enter the city.
Easy Ed’s brain was under siege, assaulted by an unidentified buzzing. His nervousness layered mystery onto its origin. He was too high and too edgy to think clearly. Everything was a vibrating blur. What he contemplated doing would either ruin his life or save it. Easy’s corpulent body seemed to shrink as the droning gathered into a whining bolt of shrillness that pierced his ears. The buzzing morphed into the tip of a drill that bored into his brain.
Angie pulled her cell phone out of her pocket to check the time. She was late. Actually, she was over an hour late. She had two missed calls both from Harold. He had warned her not to be late.
“You absolutely cannot be late,” was exactly how Harold had phrased it. “There will be press and photographers there. They do not want to wait around for you. Don’t screw this up.”
October 17, 1989. 5:04 P.M. I’d just left the Moscone Convention Center with my colleague, Jacqueline. We were exhibiting at a conference on water pollution and had just settled into our seats on one of the buses shuttling exhibitors and attendees to their hotels for the evening. And then it struck. For fifteen seconds it felt like a carnival whirlybird ride.
The windows in the buildings around us seemed to breathe in and out, until, released from their frames, these great panes exploded, showering fragments of glass, glittering in the traffic’s lights.
whispers the woman sitting next to me.
I’ve seen her here before–drinking alone,
her skin heavy with loss.
This close, the taste of her regret is pungent,
and is swallowed with each sip of my vodka-tonic.
I was nine. My parents came home hollow from the hospital.
My mother sobbed in wild animal cries, violent splotches
of purple spread from under her skin, her chest
her cheekbones tainted; my father silent
slumped in his easy chair, his neck gray-yellow
half of his face buried in clenched raw knuckles.
Teachers pat me like a loaf
especially the chalk-dusted
I learn early who has authority
Behaving is more important
than the Theory of Relativity
The length of my hems a critical topic
When I was your age
the subway cost fifteen cents
gas cost thirty-two cents a gallon
television was free
& so was Saturday confession
in preparation for Sunday communion
when I was your age…
Commuting, standing
in a half-empty
subway car, reading news
on my phone, an article
on two competing
theories of consciousness,
triggers a memory…
I remember being told to soak
myself in unreason—that words
fall to pieces because the wind
needs her role; not everything
must be a weight to grunt over.
Once we followed the others on all fours,
contributing trails through grass and brush
to favorite trees and watering holes
before our spines thrust us up on two feet…
I want to meet
night as a friend
who welcomes and comforts
offers solace and replenishment.
I want night to
become a place
I seek
to deliver, to surrender, to belong.
Last night the new moon broke open across my shoulders.
Then dawn came through the trees
in pinpoints of varying sizes
like starlight glowing among the leaves.
A sea wife,
my mother didn’t have time
to pace a widow’s walk,
searching for a sail on the horizon.
She was too busy
pinning up sheets to dry,
weeding the garden…
Two restless houseflies
buzz around my living room,
stirring the August heat on this
dog day of a summer afternoon
They land for a moment, then
take off again
My love and I drive south
For seven minutes of darkness.
During solar eclipse, the sun proposes,
A sparkling rim and white-hot stone,
We drive for margaritas, the blue Pacific,
to make love when Orion rises…
Here they come, on they go,
One by one, in a row,
misanthropic phantoms
Drifting by me on the street…
snuffed candelabrums….
No warmth to meet…
Incense del Dia de Muertos
As children we mocked
The earthworm’s ambitious move
From safety assured
As children we laughed
At their madness
Their vulnerable bodies
Called by the drumming
A hawk rises on a prairie thermal,
its diminishing black shadow below,
its eye wed in magic to a single spot.
I step in to feel promptly like the prey,
wobbly with hypnosis by gazing above
me, a disfavored adversary to a predator.
In summer months
sun and moon rise from the same spot,
a point northeast of my porch, the place I welcome morning.
I drank Merlot last night from the wine glass you gave me
and thought about how we’d met when our children were
chubby angels, marriage still appeared the answer and the
Twin Towers still raised up above Manhattan like trusted sentinels.
moose at the forest edge
cross the meadow in the sun
munching browse little trees
head up sniffing on the breeze
easy easy ecotone easy
filament barnacle billabong
troubadour trouble away…