bound

 

i want to tell you about the dog in the longwood complex where my grandmother now lives alone, editing her book and cooking chickens from the russian butchery. it knows what floor to get off. we stood in the elevator together, shivering and wet, december, its dopey eyes looking up as if, i thought, in need of guidance. but when the elevator doors opened, it trotted out onto the turquoise carpeting  without hesitation and at the end of the long line of doors i saw one open, a child standing in a blanket with a smile. i don’t know my way home so well.

don’t get too busy to take walks

walking uphill gives you perspective.

walking downhill makes you feel your back, and knees.

walking backwards takes trust.

walking in the street makes you appreciate people who pave. 

walking in the moonlight there is always further.

walking in the starlight can mean you're stuck in love.

walking in the darkness is dangerous but you may

come across a fox.

walking in a city can make you hate people

or see them for the first time.

walking on trails makes you

think about moving stones.

walking on sand makes you grateful for ankles.

walking on water makes you a prophet.

walking on fire makes you quick.

walking through trees makes you

breathe.

walking to figure out problems changes

how you think.

walking without a problem in the world

makes you sing.

walking and singing scares the birds away.

walking and listening to birds reminds you of your grandmother.

walking around your grandmother’s house

is a way of protecting your family.

walking away from your family’s house is hard.

walking to a friend’s house is always easy.

walking at work means 

your feet and eyes have to move at the same time.

walking in Malden, smelling sweet popcorn of cremation, makes you

thankful for places other than Malden.

walking in the snow can give you a fresh start.

walking in the spring makes you want to have children.

walking in the summer means you like to sweat.

walking in the fall can help you accept endings.

walking on Rosh Hashanah, you can see the world for the first time, again.

walking on yom kippur can help you apologize.

walking with your brother makes you

listen to your brother.

walking by yourself makes you

fluctuate between where you are and where you are not.

walking where you are not is hard, let me know when you figure that out.

but walking where you are is something you can always, always do.

the moon outside 152 walnut.

oh god, the moon i said, an old woman

peddled her bicycle closeby and looked up.

there was a red light flashing on her basket.

it’s the frontier, to noone in particular,

where love goes to die. and then comes back.

crazy. massive black borderlands, where no quarter is given,

not air nor water,

where light travels home, where we go

and come back from always.

leaving home on a journey home.

we all have someone whom we wish to show everything.

even if it is just the moon outside 152 walnut.

i wish it were only the moon i long to tie close to me,

blistering cold and bright. it’s so clear tonight.

as the old woman circles back around, she is checking out

what is salvageable in the trash. aluminum glints from a cloth bag

hanging loose off her shoulder.

many things can be seen in the moon tonight.

i have a memory of the moon from inside each of my lover’s rooms

where we used to sleep. i remember rising

as the snow quietly piled in the half light of morning,

looking at her arms coiled around the pillow,

the great darkness of the tattoo on her back and all its corners i would kiss

thinking how lucky i was to rise in these wee hours to wait

the morning’s tables and get drunk off their cheap champagne.

and then come back.

i don’t know what is salvagable or how to get away from love.

planet to planet, gravity pulls. always we are travelling home.

moon in the front yard stop yelling about what we used to feel like

young, confident in love, all the secret writings

we’d leave to remind each other. yelling about the moon

when the fans at night could not keep us cool 

and the noise outside was too much

anyway. hold on there, almost full. so almost empty.

something’s in that trash.

you can’t throw away the moon.

each small thing in my new home brings the past with it.

even if i wanted,

i cannot seem to close the door.

9 nights dreaming

what’s the best way in?

the window as it rains, the legs of it,

dashing this way and that, all over

starting and ending, dazzling, dizzying,

dripping everywhere entering and exiting at once, 

clean and distracting, i,i

rock back and forth holding, shivering,

black cotton cleaving something.

is it joy, finished, crackling,

thunderous stamping, the stampede

of bodies, eager eyes snipping the fabric,

vodka tonic ice, red faces, hands, shoulders,

smiles? one hundred fifty ready to fight, shouting. its so short

sometimes this too. history. i,i 

if i could lay my head down in her lap as the night ends...

when do you know it’s too far,

been too long?

you’ve sat with a cool glass of water

waiting on a meniscus

and the embers beneath have ceased

burning your ass at all, now

it’s a glacier.

drip. drip. drip.

better in a month? a year?

there is no handbook

when they come for the lesbian electrician

with her shaking hands, who struggles, genuinely struggles,

with mental illness-- will it be clear then

through the muffled door, or across a hall of young mothers

just wanting a raise and to go home?

why bother with this?

she would soon retire anyway,

(you think of her dog she used to bring to the office before

they closed her office, black scraggly obviously spoiled and) 

why risk it all you’re 28 and at the beginning

there is no handbook for loss

for the questions, for love of course

i am learning the lesson of sitting with for now--

with at least the grief of want;

with the absence that makes the something grow painfully clear.

but how can it be standing to?

we all must live together, meaning

be kind and be challenged. on one foot,

and as yourself.

when was the last time you did something

you know could cost everything? 

for my love without hands to touch or lips to speak,

for my union sister when the workplace goes quiet and tense:

desperately, fervently, with strength

when we know, we risk it all.

turning season

Summer is gathering momentum,

almost as tall as wide,

in these weeks of July when even

the ocean starts to steam 

and predators grow bold

and we prepare for Teshuvah, the turning.

My mother is singing Hebrew melodies

over the white water, words swallowed by wind.

Black cranes gaze unmoving

into waves cracked by light.

A haze holds these sweeter scenes

in preparation for storms, or in their aftermath.

A film of sand on our feet means

we never leave this ground.

A one armed man in grief over divorce 

built the bones of the beautiful bungalow in the inlet

by the sea, now overtaken with weeds,

where we yelled and then ran for shelter,

where the stars first appear at dusk

and where the two of us suddenly made love

with nothing,

with the end,

and begged god to witness.

Back at the house the family is stretched out 

like a once full ballon

sitting quietly at this dinner table

less laughter, less air without him.

Come back to a place long enough

you begin to think it is only

full of endings.

But, when i pull the car onto the gravel

after days of drinking, and it is late, 

later than anyone can stay awake,

and i roll down the window smelling salt and cedar in the humidity--

a low engine starts up

in the gut of my heart.

A short field and then ivy and pines, hydrangea, 

beach plums and roses, blue jays

and cardinals with their eyes closed and beaks

tucked beneath their wings, bouncing

twigs and pockets where rabbits sniffle silently

below, where coyotes pad and prowl,

yip and scatch and skunks waddle home

with dirt on their snouts and roots in their

teeth and oh god the human beings,

tight bellied, buzzing electricity and prodding, 

the heat coming off of them, the way they stay just so close

and far, their skin with all its history, their strips of cloth 

all around, their complicated patterns 

of color and speech and memories they love so much.

How could we believe only in endings?

.Here.

I have loved and she is gone away.

And I have unlearned many lessons that now

I’ll suffer to learn again.

But down the hill in shadow or

bright green day, kicking up dust or clumping

mud, crushing spiders’ legs or carving ditches

to house new creatures, with great cacophony and splendor

or quiet as the sharks sleep,

we are rolling on

with every imperfection you can think of

growing strong and weak at times

but always on,

accustomed, new, rhythmic, strange

dozing off at times thinking it’s all done

or all the same and then, sometimes predictably,

sometimes suddenly,

waking up to it all.

This season

you are not ending,

but turning.

Wake up!

learning

Evidence covered with a carpet of grass,

Network drawing slowly without ever

Taking away, dark and scattered home

In the corner of your arms, whenever

I visit, kiss your eyes

Perhaps the old maple from my childhood spoiled

Me for human love, that

Ebbs and flows, responds thunderously,
That expects

And needs.

It is not pretty, this view of me

From high in the bows.

We get stuck wanting to only grow.

Today is a cold sun

And warm wind, flags

Waving their arms planted over tombs

Of men infrequently remembered. they

Enlisted young

And it does not matter much what they did

To their descendants.

We who examine every project

Like the foreign thrum of an unseen beetle

Could never be so brave nor so young

Nor dead in quite the same way, though all

Things are not in exactly the same way.

I remember vaguely:

10 or 11 i took off

My shoes and wandered

Over hot pavement,

Mica shining

Like stars, until

Reaching a cool

Hill covered in mossy

Grasses, leaves all

About. I was late and

Could hear the dinner bell

But reached out a hand

To a knot of roots

Standing upright,

A thick rope of

Coils arising from all

Across the cemetery

It seemed, like many

Tongues of a fire,

And i looked

Up--

We have seen many

Restarts together, as the moon,

And a job, a love, a home,

A friend disappear, through it all

All hurt and poison,

All shimmering heat and flood, all

Pleasant and simple days, we take

Slowly what we can hold,

What we can use, and we

Incorporate what lives into our life.

Make a crown.

Then we incorporate what is gone but still lives.

Curl around it like a wound

until we do not.

Old friend, how do we accept Jung’s turning,

That we will never be

Any taller and i wonder

What are you drinking now

From beneath my feet?