are we all that terrible, like spines and webs, like halloween run amok. and i hold my daughter’s face and gaze the purest perfection, selfless and selfish, knowing and unknown, oblivious and obliterating. my son tangles my feet in barbed wire and sings in tap dance shoes belting out a melody as if he were in the rain or a musical. i reach for her and i strain, i miss her terribly. there she, right there but i am not close enough, i have gone too far for far too long. time, time is such a vicious and relentless thing.
and there are places
and there are places where there’s peace to be found and streams that tickle the under soles of our feet but i can’t bring us there. i choose mountains and gravel and steep cliffs that threaten to swallow us whole and you said, why all this when we can have more, and i sputtered, no this is all there is, this is everything, the maw and yawn of a harsh sun, the vast open plain where the cracks never end.
stroll thru this migraine
turned 38, just like that.
first end day as 38, a dollar short and a day late,got a dog and it looks great. ach, nonsense.
but yes, turning a corner, and finding something. a lab/terrier mix, three and half month old. from north shore animal league in and out in less than 2 hours.
have we become one of those type of people? friend says, “dogs are animals that are filthy and untrustworthy and can at a moment’s notice revert to instinct and rip your face off.”
oh my.
but something about the dog, already the dynamic. in me, in ioanna, in mikey, even mari.
perhaps we needed this.
turned 38, just like that.
father’s day 2010
after all these years and having become a father myself, you’d think it would get easier: that all i have to say to you would come out naturally and effortlessly. but it doesn’t, it gets choked up. how can i tell you, i mean really tell you, what you’ve meant and mean to me? how can i ever tell you about the things i hope you and i will do together in the future as father and son? how can i explain to you in details the things i imagine you’ll teach your grand children. these are all very difficult things to say, to write because there are never the right words to say everything that i really want to say. but i want to say this, at the very least: you’re my father and i am very proud of you. i am very lucky to have what i have in front of me, but i am extraordinarily fortunate to have you beside me.
after glow
lovely, this lovely, this lovely thigh against my own in the night. spent, passion spent, wet and weary. in a good way, like after a rigorous swim. like coming out into the light, coming home from the beach. yes, like that, you under my skin, in my breath, beside me, in the after glow. how wonderful.
shipmast
the spectacle of tentacles and heartbreak and loosened teeth. i saw this. i saw this upon the hull and wept. barnacles and mermaids and sirens and bloated dead men gouged eyes strewn across the reef. did you forget me? did you finally forget? or has the wound scabbed over into the semblance of something whole and sturdy and alive. the living, ah that’s always the rub isn’t it? between the storms and longing and flogging and the walls of the brig: the choice between living and weeping, carrying on and throwing up, swimming out into the sea or drowning to the shore.
mother’s day, always
my love, my love, my love
what have you given me, what is this life, these swirls, this joy, these children
who scamper about, drive me crazy, drive my heart
what is this life, this peace, this beauty
this tenderness i see when you hold them, scold them, kiss them
you brought these children into this world
you’ve brought this immeasurable light into our lives,
into my life, into the dark sorrow of my heart
where do you find all the love that you give?
elegant universe
“If you wish
to make an apple pie
from scratch, you must first
invent the universe.”
– Carl Sagan.
from scratch, scratching, here his little scar and the constellations above.
the softness of her kiss and the volcanoes on Jupiter.
the tenor of my daughter’s laughter and the principle of gravity.
here and above, below and some-when-else.
an elegance that shatters me, brings me to tears.
twisty fate
to go on. into some vast darkness, vast obliteration. have you been obliterated? nonsense. post traumatic babble. no war time. only peace time. down time. dead time. long dead, you died a long time ago. was it in the hospital with the sweat of his brow or when you betrayed them all? when you walked away from the boy’s death or when you allowed hers?
or when you stopped dreaming? or when they laughed at you and your clothes? when she told you you smelled like a pool or when chose to no longer speak to you? how did it all happen? the wonderment. you, astonished that you are not alone. without punishment. without grief. without respite. to combat the vastness of it, the sense of hopelessness and judgment. to be cast out when so clearly in the bosom of all that loves you.