The car I grew up in
Was a 1960 Pontiac Star Chief
Four-door sedan hardtop
In a color my Crayola 64 box called Flesh.
Even at a time when most cars
Came in a wide variety of vibrant colors,
This one stood out.

Mother needles & threads her way into conversations,
as she does with everything,
tacking here
& there, piercing
the cotton weave of our family, her place secure.

last Wednesday night
on the phone
you said
I want my kids
to know you
as you leaned toward
the darkened future

How do you keep on getting out of bed each morning?
A bed that is half empty since the day your husband died.
A life that seems like a flight of stairs missing a step
and you always seem to trip on that one.

Poet, you mama’s girl, so bad at volleyball, first dates, job interviews, your albatross of asymmetry flung floorward like an eloquent glove, ironic as that yellow pedestrian yield sign on Chestnut Street, permanently pavement-flattened.

When he’s eight he envies neighbor/buddy Bobby his airline pilot father
who drives his eye-popping harlequin Ford Thunderbird
with gears-a-poppin’ engine roarin’ to and from Idlewild
before and after taking off into the wild blue yonder.

I don’t expect
a soupy river to steal you away.
White blood cells explode into whitewater,
filaments of breath sweep
downstream.
A confounding disappearance into
the thundering confluence.

Bound on some skillful retreat,
a long march
north and west;
cut off from the rest
we end up foraging
in some scanty orchard,
the two of us.

I.
Purple delosperma frozen on stone cliffs
windswept granite.
Permanent calligraphy on blue canvas
only tides change.

II.
Carved into a driftwood bench
three names now forgotten.

oh physics
of warped gluons in the matrix chromosomes
molding children with necks and knees

disjoint and attenuate physics of the transport
of chlorophyll far more certain
than law or reason

and the stopped blood of embryos

The flutes of those
who live
with,
not just in,
nature,
mimic windsong.

Even accidental noise
blown by untrained lips
echoes the haunting, ethereal
whistle of wind
through limbs and grass, crops and structures.

something settles. Next week’s
oatmeal eases into simmer,
the wide slow mouths of the first
few bubbles no longer startle
and pop as the surface smooths,
heaves with the humility

of normal mornings. It’s a chore—
the boil, filtering through
what I know, what is new.

Propped on three pillows, another
under my knees, I am following
Natalie Goldberg as she travels
to Japan and France, sits zazen
with her students, through walking
meditation, writing longhand
in a café, always in a spiral notebook
with a pen that lets me write fast…

the time for grieving ends
grief does not

so I unfurl what is no longer and smooth out the
wrinkles
my soul loosens and leans in to the unwanted hereafter
the before murmurs just beyond my hearing
my heart skips in a dissonant rhythm
comfort strikes a truce with disquiet

compensation blankets
barrier the solitude
cold air :: we are aware
that skin is unsuitable ::

we are a perfection :: the mass
of an ego returns
#DIV/0! :: and we understand
we are not portioned ::

it was the way you stood in the dark kitchen long after
the oven had already cooled, slurping
just out of date yogurt but also because the first
time we talked, you listened, swaying me gently
in constant commas shifting slightly
(while everyone else played poker for crisps)…

My new thing is to look up the final scores
of baseball games before I decide whether
or not to watch the highlights because
who wants to follow a game you know
your team is going to lose anyway.

This is not a statement about my age; it’s not
even about having the luxury to piss away all
the idle time I have left. It’s about recognizing…

It was lonely having
An anorexic mother
Who was often more concerned
About fitness and image
Then tending to the ache of my feelings
She exercised all the time, and ate light
She strove to be light,
And perhaps thought as her daughter,
I shouldn’t have such heavy feelings

I read somewhere there’s an
orchid whose flower is shaped
like the female of a long dead
species of bee.

Big, bitter fruits that no-one eats,
drop to the ground and rot

I almost fold your laundry, the numb air
of garments settling, the last breadth of the dryer,
call to me to care for your hot things

Marie Condo says to ask the clothes
how they should be folded
to listen to the fabric, go with the seams

I’m driving through a fog.
Home to public school, I
travel up and down hills,
the 45-mile-stretch
like an obstacle course
to test resolve.

I need this cloudy patch,
not as a puffy mattress,
but as an iron shield

I thought of you this afternoon,
laughing with your entire body
slightly curling over as you let
yourself lay bare its expression
of unconfined happiness. You were
intoxicated with life despite not having
much.

I read somewhere nature doesn’t matter
to city dwellers—not so, did you know
flowers appeared 140 million years ago

Tulips out-valued gold in some places
Orchids draw their nutrients from thin air
and flowers, they really do have powers—

Once, in an angular concrete hotel in Antibes,
you stood before the black curtain
with the massive sunlight on the other side
and a heartbeat in your chest.
You reached up, then dropped your hands.
You tapped your hands on your naked hips.
You reached up again and pulled the curtains wide.