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Borrower

She stopped using him years ago, but she just wouldn’t give him away.

She’d leave him like an extra pair of reading glasses

and not miss him until he turned up again on the sofa.

Even when the Salvation Army would call,

she’d forget to donate him.

Or maybe she just didn’t consider him clean and usable anymore.

I started borrowing him.

For the afternoon at first, then overnight, then days at a time.

He fit me perfectly and I only had to be careful not to wear him

if I thought she’d be at the same party.

One day she’ll realize she hasn’t come across him

in a while and wonder where he’s gotten to.

By then I’ll be able to say, “This old thing?

I’ve had him forever.”

Visitation

Returning to the house he was so recently asked to leave

he waits in the kitchen,

a cup of gas station coffee in his gloved left hand.

She comes down to tell him they won’t need him today,

school’s called off and she’s staying home from work.

She offers to refill his cup.

If he has time.

While she runs the water

he stares at the down behind her right knee,

the place she always misses when shaving.

Hard already, he unsheathes his hands,

slides them under his old tee shirt,

turns her,

tries to come home.

Garage Satori

double-rainbowPulling out of my parking spot

I am meditating on whether kapotasana could be done in a chair,

whether one would feel enough pigeon-ness if she were seated,

when I awake to the chime of my front quarter panel kissing

the wheel well of my brother to the left.

Only paint.  Only paint.  No scraping, really.  I can’t handle this today.

The car will be fine.  The driver might not even see it.  I can’t handle any more.  

Out of the car, I spit on my fingers and rub along the Oregon Trail of Shame.

It’s fine.  I’m leaving.  Why should I be the only person on the planet to leave a damned note?

Drive out, heart pounding, hitting the brake at imagined vehicles.

Bring breath into belly, in and down, up and out.  Brain comes on line,

a light at a time, a Whoville Christmas in my neo-cortex.

I turn and spiral my way back up to brother Saturn to reveal myself.

Overkill

Mother’s cooked up way too much.

She doesn’t just make duck, but makes

pintail ducks, wood ducks, ruddy ducks, eider ducks, fulvis tree ducks, widgeons,

cinnamon teals, red breasted mergansers,

and on and on, a redundancy of duck.

Still she pushes the plate toward us.

Fescue fingers up the sidewalks.

Chickweed loiter at the curb.

Trumpet vine clasps the gate shut.

Profligate snails dance through their 17 hours of foreplay,

leaving trails all over.

Cottony packets stuffed with baby spiders

hang in the back of our closets until

we carry them out at arm’s length.

Bagworms wrap the redbuds and gorge

until we split them open.

There’s no end to her excess.

Dandelion blow sticks to the sappy trunk of the white pine.

Millions of sperm bulge in teenaged boys.

And babies drop into dumpsters at dances.

Nuns at Volleyball

I think nuns should be required to wear habits always.  That way when they are doing something normal, like studying in the library, they can look more amusing.

Once, while getting out of the car at a grocery store I heard a beautiful, chiming laughter nearby.  A group of nuns in grey habits were playing volleyball on the grounds of the nursing home next door.  It was an autumn evening.  The light leaned toward them.  Their veils swayed on after the ball left their fists.

Things I’ll Miss #1

  1. You and I laughing at jokes so old we can tell them with one or two words.
  2. The joyous optimism of dogs.
  3. Sitting on the back steps with Llewie on the morning of a day that will be too hot but isn’t yet, to listen to the world wake up.
  4. Green.
  5. My sponsees calling with boy problems, parent problems, work problems, school problems, or kid problems, and witnessing as they find their own brave and beautiful solutions.
  6. Dancing in the kitchen in my underwear.
  7. The feeling of wool as it moves through my hands.

I Don’t Want to be Her, to the End

A bright cake for me to deliver on a rainy day,

pinks and purples as requested,

reading:  Happy Birthday, Dorothy!

The baker asks me which birthday is it?

She’s 98 and in hospice.

I resist the temptation to say, “Her last.”

Her daughter keeps me waiting in the foyer

of the 60’s modern apartment building

with its kidney coffee tables and satellite chandeliers.

Her mouth twists as she takes the cake,

I’m sorry if she’s been a pain in the ass.

Not to me, I’m just delivering cake,

I grin, having been a daughter myself.

 

 

Sublimation

She watches the man as he slices rare beef at his wife’s table,

balances the steel knife in his palm.

Feeling the weight and substance of her gaze returned,

her longing spools out its own story.

Leaving their home she moves carefully,

as if he were not inside her,

their musk not rising like incense,

her tongue not running against the grain of his eyebrow,

his thumbs not twinned over her nipples.

At home, awake,

quickened by the rapture of her own risen blood,

she notes each step of a fly on the down of her arm.

Weaving

You have to be ready to touch it all,

to slide your fingers between the warp threads,

pressing into the weft.

You must kneel, squat, reach,

as it demands.

Leave wool alone on the loom

for three days

and it draws evil spirits.

To make the gift

you must love it every moment,

even when you are sick to death of it.

And touch it, even in the places that cut.