After The Tornado

Perhaps like a woman seated at the kitchen table being interviewed just a few steps away from the tree that has recently fallen through the ceiling of her living room, the sound of annihilation is something you never forget, I explain. Even as bathroom walls collapse and parts of the roof blow off into the yard you will continue to experience the thunderous ripping and splitting off of structures that once contained you long after the upheaval has gone.

Maybe while triple-stepping to the cha-cha-cha of your accelerated heartbeat, pain from the shoes you've outgrown will further fuel your inner thrum and pang of personal loss. Feeling as out-of-place as chicken wire hanging from a power line or a bathtub in a tree, your survival speaks the language of a cautious belonging. When the noise of disaster dissipates, the litany of who did what to whom and what went wrong so very long ago abruptly stops.

What One Remembers

Perhaps when I was seven, I first heard a murmuring. The murmuring grew into music as I stood there, puzzled, looking up at the slow drifting clouds to see if they were the music’s source. A sweet melody featuring violins, horns and drums filled my mind, a song as true to me as the sweltering sun. The notes continued until all the clouds moved away, leaving nothing but sky. The song was gone as mysteriously as it had come.

Maybe what one remembers is a clue to what one wants to be. As the only daughter of an only daughter, I struggle each day to build an inner warmth toward myself, asking questions of a familiar story I don’t always understand the answers to. This reminiscing is a bit like singing. The words make sounds, and the sounds keep other thoughts away. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a form of telling by forgiving, but after a while I stop wondering what it all means since it has all become a part of me.

After the Flood

Perhaps in a dream a community of people dig in mud to unearth large pieces of mirror. Children assemble the fragments over soggy ground in a jagged advance, reflective side up. The community gathers around the glass and gaze across the watery expanse. Their collective faces reflect the vaulted heavens where clouds and tempests gather; where thunder and lightning are produced.

Maybe upon waking, I climb down stairs soft with mildewed carpet. Weather-ripped draperies lie bunched on the floor and a fallen chandelier jewels the muck. In my mind where all possible details have been combined, sentences spin off in unsuspected directions and there is too much to point to all at once. I turn the landscape into language, and that’s when I finally wake up.

Personal Seismology

Perhaps though we wake, sleep and eat in a warped habitat of plastic-bagged bread and artificial light, my body is a divine spark. When I blink the stars flicker, and lightning strikes each time I clap my hands. An exhale of breath pushes clouds across the sky, and the movement of waves rolls into and out of shore with the rhythmic beating of my heart.

Maybe every time I miss you there’s a silent earthquake inside. Lying on a bed of cold pebbles with cool water washing over me, I am a leaf floating lightly away, drifting and twisting along a winding river into a vast ocean, becoming one with the world's greatest flood. Night and silence. The wind dies down. Stars go out one after the other as houses along the edge of the road quietly fold in on themselves.

Blue all down the wall

It seems strange, but possible, to use your troubles to take your mind off them - Mary Ruefle

Perhaps in my relationship with you, I passed through it like a net passes through water, passively snagging whatever happened to drift inside: a patterned white kerchief to wrap around your head, a dish of jet black ink left over from a calligraphy lesson, a drawer full of soft orange towels, your favorite red sandals, a couple of colorless books tucked beneath your pillow, your green, jingle-jangle voice.

Maybe, as you now know, I have kept no souvenirs of our relationship. I don’t want to be a tourist in my own life. No recordings of me weeping very softly at first, then loud enough for you to hear. No journal entries detailing my sleepless nights waiting for you to die, which might be at any time. No more wondering about it. No more walking around with a frown. No memory of you playing my Chim Chim Cher-ee piano music on your violin. Is it possible? I would have liked to have asked you. Yes, since they are both “C” instruments, you no doubt would have replied.

As a Flock of Robins

Perhaps as a flock of robins emerges from the golden leaves of the autumn vineyard, their airborne bodies fleck the sky. Dark at a distance, ashen forms follow my eyes dis- and re- assembling.

Maybe from below as I gaze up straight the flock washes overhead, chilly air coming to life with the electric wind of wings. Is it not the same with us?  I marvel at the brilliant red of their breasts streaking by in countless similarity.

Event Horizon

Perhaps the grandfather is frail and old with hair so white it might be made of snow or whipped cream. He speaks a mixture of cloud and wind and tells stories that all end the same, with him sitting on the rim of a very, very deep pit that emits a gravitational pull so great as to make his escape impossible.

Maybe from the children’s point of view, the grandfather is always waiting for something to happen. Some days he is waiting at the window for a new pizza parlor to open across the street, other days at the door for someone to come back from the store with a gallon of milk. Whenever the grandfather brushes his teeth, cooks a grilled cheese, or tells a story he does it in a half-hearted way, as if to show this small action is only a diversion from the main business of waiting. A hole in the ground on earth is only a hole because of gravity, he explains to the children. But beware. It's also a thing you can easily fall into.

Strange Matter

Perhaps when you enter the home everything is there – furniture, clothes, laptop, piles of paper, coffee cups – but it has all been inverted so the that the floor is the ceiling and the home is upside down. You enter the home through a small doorway called The Title.  At first glance, the home reads like an M.C. Escher-esque installation of words, with stanzas of phrases forming staircases that don’t actually connect. On the second floor of the home there’s a cozy balcony with a couch and Scottish blankets, which appears to be an ideal place to view the home in its entirety. Then you realize that you’ve been tricked. What you imagine you see below the balcony is just a reflection of what’s above.

Maybe you will find the circularity of the home surprising. Since much of the navigation of it is in the belief of progress – that the point left behind when venturing forward is fixed – a feeling of having committed an error when moving through the home is virtually guaranteed by the fact that all sources of natural light have been concealed by angled partitions and that the route through the rooms is almost completely dark. As a visitor, you will only ever know where you are at in the home once you have arrived. Yet for all its strangeness, this dark, inverted home is amazingly stable. Above and behind you a fire is blazing at a distance, and at the end of the tour when a gift is presented you will be ecstatic when given dirt; less so when presented with flowers.

Untitled

Perhaps poets are liars obsessed with cereal. Take for instance, Fruit Loops. No bitter edges to disturb the sweet, sugary curves. All sharp corners of love replaced with nonexistent simplicity and colorful nuance.

Maybe as poets create something parallel to what they know there is always some progress, even when things are at their worst, because at least they don’t have to do over again all the negative things they’ve already done. Is it their point to show us how it is possible to do something by undoing it? As everything is disappearing more than once, once more, sometimes one has to dare to give the final brushstroke that makes everything one has done up to a certain point disappear.  Some like to imagine a cosmic mother watching over us from the night sky the poet writes as she places six quarters in the vending machine and a can of root beer tumbles out like a body falling from the stars.

The Inner Life

Perhaps when zooming in on a leaf jagged patterns that seem random are, upon close inspection, predictable. So it is with the inner life. Deer move through it, of course, as do the wending paths of birds and the roughness of sidewalks.

Maybe every evening as I very gently tell myself to sleep, thoughts inside seconds and minutes escape as do feelings, both briefer and longer lasting. Don't be afraid of a little chaos (they say) as you are moving things around in bits and pieces. As long as you keep things moving you will be fine. Spiraling from one beginning to another ending may get to feel vertiginous. Inhale slowly, deeply as evening breezes fill all rifts and splits with the crisp fragrance of pine.

What if This Were Enough?

Perhaps anything and everything we say is a curse that encroaches on someone else’s experience. Words only set us up to have conflicting stories with everyone. With our words, what should come across as an inclusive, all-encompassing account of what it means to be human, is instead a tale that presents only one version of our fractured, tough, protected selves.

Maybe this ongoing story of the intersection of my life with others, constantly recorded and updated, can be checked at any time, much like an email. And while the creative act introduces me to a pleasurable place where I am able to strive and at the same time forget myself, what if each new word I write contains the same message that has come before, so in a way my own words continually come back to me instead of ever truly being sent out?

Swipe Tap Love

Perhaps while sitting alone at the café the brightened screen of my phone reminds me that a catastrophe is unfolding somewhere in the world. As I savor the first sip of steaming peppermint tea, my mind momentarily calms its draw to the rushing stream of world conflict spanning moments, months, and millennia that remains forever at my fingertips with tweets, pings and alerts yet to be received that I can’t and for some reason feel powerless to ever wish to control.

Maybe as I quietly strive to meet the demands of my digital existence with taps, swipes, and scrolls all around me people chat or quietly read books. There is a pleasant smell of baked goods, full of warmth and life, and for a moment I pause to enjoy the golden peace of a world delivered between the crisp layers of a buttery croissant.

Last Favor

Perhaps after waking to the smoke of fires burning thousands of acres of dry tinder hundreds of miles away, blotting out the sun, my mouth thirsts and my hair extends at high frizz as I reach for my appliances: hammer, chisel, gardening shears. Floor and ceiling fans stir up a roar of wind and make me dizzy. The air is angry. I grip the bookshelf. Later you’ll say, that’s not unusual.

Maybe one or the other of us shifts and I lose you for a minute. Moment to moment, much of what’s inexpressible between us gets worked out, but it also gets worked in. From out here, we can only imagine how to untangle the space inside. But we can, at least, begin with the simple notion that we are all composed of relatively pure things such as salt, air and calcium. Do me a favor, I ask, while continuing to carry the tune of a slow, deep breath. Tell me how to hold the overflow back. You shrug, and as creatures that do so much with their lips, ever watchful, you lean close to let me know I am still wearing my apron over my nightgown.

Words become water

Perhaps when the weight of things is written in a brisk tone that disguises its destination, the presentation, shifting back and forth across the years and events, may conjure a tactile, messy, complex and mysterious antidote to life that sheds tears of more than one grief at a time. 

Maybe as I approach each tapestry of gray skies, neglected pain and dark moods into which people disappear, my words suggest the world and yet they are of something else. Attempts at communication are set into a meandering grammar of shimmering, transient matter which allows yesterday and tomorrow to flow together into the present time as thoughts and feelings pour back and forth from one glass into another.

After the Storm

Perhaps, after the storm, our skin resembles fluid-filled blisters. In our eyes pooled with rain, everything dissolves. As the earth becomes one dripping soaked mass, blue commingles with yellow to form spiral streams into which any evidence of dryness slowly sinks down.

Maybe after the storm we continue to feel the wetness – a gleam that skims along the top of each grey cloudy week, legible yet discreet. When venturing out of our homes, thoughts of the rain at once soak through our coats and clothing, thoughts built of clouds stitched together by lightning. Something has happened that has closed the space that was lingering between a question and an answer. We walk in silence most of the time, eyelashes dripping, skin tingling, deaf to the voices of birds, breezes and insects carpeting the hills and grasses that flourish along the steep sides of the valley, focusing only on the full force of rushing water framed within this tumbling curtain of gentle sounds. 

swiftly astray

Perhaps by connecting words humans create sentences that inflate in unique formations depending on the mind and time. Evolving slowly and intuitively from a starting point, containing the memory of a certain quality of light, the words build in a process that moves toward an elegant unity and sense of purpose.

But maybe a poem without a reader is just ink, for as we watch the sun slide under the ocean we are reminded that reading the menu is different from eating the meal; that all is actually each -  colorful, energetic, and emotional - the river of living in full flood, and that even as we pause to scribble in wavering lines while fumbling for a foothold this haunting of eroding forms continues to assert hope and the possibility of survival.

Memory's fading memories

Perhaps each day as we wander through a new series of faint rumblings, evocative somethings, and mysterious sounds we wonder if we should have expected this unexpectedness all along. Shouldn’t we have expected this sad birthday, this nagging rumor, this storm threatening, this missed parade, this unlit sparkler? This baby walking, this animal stirring, this meteor shower, this kettle on the verge of boiling?

Maybe, though each unexpected encounter is quickly knit into a terrifyingly complex tapestry of seemingly indivisible noetic cloth, after a time we find so many of the moments we have collected have unraveled and turned to dust. Some will have quickly disappeared, like breath on a mirror. It’s a bit like losing a glove – you still own a glove, it’s in your home somewhere, but you can’t ever use it. And what if you don’t even know it is there, then you can’t even call it lost.

Roots, legs, wings, and fins

Perhaps the entire planetary system is a set of patterns. Whispers. Spokes of thought. To and toward containments, vivid and soft. A constellation of dots. Perhaps we refresh our perceptions each time we sharpen the pencil and make connections; each time we tie individual points together in new configurations using a series of stems and vines, fine gossamer laces, cerebral filigree and stretch marks.

Maybe our new creations will emerge as images of shared aspirations. Or maybe in order for us to embody the lightness we witness in the jumping of a fox, our lone bird of purpose, who draws a straight line with her flying body, will stir the leaf of our utmost elegance in shades of green and undulations of coolness; sunk deep, always in the shade. Maybe, with lit eyes and attention lengthened to its limits, we will drink from the brilliance and invite fish to swim along our borders. Trees will bend over us.

Vertigo

Perhaps at times my thoughts disintegrate before I can fully grasp them. I feel cerebrally queasy, as if sitting on the edge of the bed, shocked by the sight of my own shoes. At times like this I liken my mind to a glass which is so easily shattered. One wrong move is all it takes. Yet I resolve to regain my composure and find a way of comprehending the situation. While preparing my escape, I call the waiter over to the table and ask for the bill.

Maybe, preoccupied with the ever widening and contracting circles of my thoughts, I have a sense of being completely surrounded by water. Before me a thousand thoughts are waving, as if aboard a great ship sailing away from me, and all hope of them ever seeing dry land again is diminished by each crest of turquoise wave crowned with snow-white foam. A mounting sense of unease takes possession of me, as if in a moment immediately before a disaster. With barely half of the pizza eaten, I grip the table edge as a seasick passenger might grip the ship’s rail.

Sleep

Perhaps my drowsiness smells of heat in the dry grass. I sink my hands into the summer stalks and tempt bugs to wander up my arms. Lying on my back, I shut my eyes as warm drops of sunlight drench my upturned face. Sleep is falling steadily. I could go out and gather it in my hands. My hands would know what to do. I could leave my life. I could change completely. Is it time?

Maybe everything I love is made of it. It is beauty. It is mystery. It has a blonde smell. I bury my red-hot face in the pillow of it knowing the lullaby of its company doesn’t anchor me anymore. Light, air and leaves are moving in its breeze. There is a sweet taste in my mouth, which makes my teeth feel unfamiliar – the taste of when I was small and lay in bed, not wanting to sleep, not wanting to be alone.