trying to find the right rocks for big jumps, series of skids, huge plops, and then the perfect throw.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
coming out of the closets
Friday, September 10, 2010
How do I say “I love you” to the one not on the path?
In tenth grade we learned about the way electrons
float in the outer shell of the molecule.
That these negative particles wander from the nucleus,
searching for a positive force that will pull them in.
Then they attach to the empty space on another’s atomic orbit.
A whole new substance is created in this bonding.
Ionic, it’s called, I think. It’s hard to remember,
I was so taken by Pam Robertson’s curly blond hair.
And, while I never had any reason to use that information
in the ensuing thirty years, tonight it is the thing I need to know.
There have been times when my electrons huddled
as close to the core as possible. I had an internal entropy,
and did not need nor want to wander, looking.
And there are other times that I was just a fired up particle,
jittering from one person to another, looking for
anyone and anything to coax the sting from my charge.
I groped at respect and security; I flirted with admiration and approval;
I made love to achievements, making it nearly impossible
for others to not douse me with high regard.
How hard I could hit the ball, how far I could hit the ball,
how many skip I could plant in a river stone,
how I could wind the words around a fictional story,
and how I could mesmerize the children in my life.
How the photos culled out the spirit of the person,
the mountain, the praying mantis. But all of that
was just a string of a million minuscule electrons
leaching out of every cell trying to find comfort.
Tonight, when Nikki asked me to ask the question again,
I realized that it is different now. I am willingly in the far reaches
from my nucleus because I finally know my own nub.
And this part of me that is longing for belonging
does not have a quivering within at all. My electrons
are on a purposeful pilgrimage. They know the proton they seek.
And while I know her, and could transfer my self to her self,
creating a whole new being with its own
atomic weight and strength, I will wait.
And I will say I love you to everything I see until I see her.
I will say I love you to this cold cup of coffee to my right,
I will say I love you to the keys clicking under my fingers,
I will say I love you to the red thread wrapped around my wrist.
To the red car that just drove by, to the man driving it.
To the street under the wheels, and the earth under the concrete.
To the rock now forming from the pushing we place upon it.
The grains in the sediment. The tiny shining within the stone.
I will say I love you to the sky that holds it all,
the things seen and unseen, the things known and the things revealing.
I will say I love you to all that is here
Then I will say I love you to all that is on its way.
Waiting for the deer
It’s far more satisfying to see them,
hunkered down on the woods path,
than to walk the path trying to spy
a patch of brown, a flicker of a tail,
the worn heels of horns sticking out
from the mix of branches.
Tonight I went to the river’s edge
to find another miracle, and
what I found was a locked garden gate,
a dog, unleashed, weaving between gravestones,
two school buses and the herringbone
flash of a falcon moving from a nearby tree
to the deeper part of the woods.
Even the sycamore tree who held
our worries and wishes has been chopped down.
The leaves are beginning to turn,
and the vast landscape of the northern shore
looked more like broccoli stapled to the earth
than anything spectacular. It all made
me think that miracles are wily
beasts able to chart their own arrival.
And tonight they are tending to someone else.
I am sitting where the nuns walk after dinner,
yet no one, this evening, has come
to enjoy the wilting light. It is just
an ordinary plastic picnic table.
a patio made with Home Depot molded stones.
A place of this world and not the other.
There once was a woman who loved the sound
of my feet crunching in the snow,
and tonight, I know she would have
heard the way the dry acorns shattered
under the weight of my steps.
I can see the way she would have smiled.
She is three miles from here, though, lost to me now.
Another is ninety-two miles away. And the last
who loved me because she knew I needed to be loved,
is resting in her bedroom seven states away.
How do I say “I love you” to the
one not yet on the path?
By walking it? By staring down into
the woods for anything familiar?
Do I hinge it to a word, just one,
seeing the way it shines inside out,
as if lit by the western light?
Or do I walk away? Knowing the deer
are grazing elsewhere and in time
they will come out, hungry for what
I can feed them from the palm of my hand.
Monday, September 6, 2010
History
The football coach was my history teacher in high school.