because...

she had to face an empty attic and the fact that her mother would never be back,

she had to call two doctors, and say words that are nearly impossible to say,

she needed to rework the work and did not realize that the work was done,

she had her tonsils out, at 36, and no one was waiting in the waiting room,

she has to let go of a lover who her body loves,

she is growing up too fast, and dragging others, who are not ready, along too,

she has a pain in her flank that just does not seem to go away,

she is tired about worrying about her children's education,

she is taking chemo, and does not like the thought of poison trying to kill poison,

she is somewhere, alone, not sure that she can make it through the night,

she knows the whiskey is nearby, but not something that can really make it better,

he does not know how much her life has changed because of what he did to her,

she does not know how much her life has changed because of what she did to her,

she will never be able to say the things that need to be said.

Because she is pulling in and might not find her way back.

Because she is naked, outside as the weather ignores how cold she feels.

Because it is all as heavy and immalleable as bronze.

Because.

dallas, 5:29 pm

I forget, sometimes, that the sun exists

under the cloudy stuffing of a winter Cleveland day.

I forget, sometimes, that the sky is blue,

that the stars shine, that there is a moon

reflecting back light in a universe

that is far larger than the bowl of life I eat from.

But this night, seven nights ago, I felt the whole world.

The earth beneath me, its fiery core, the storms on the sun,

the pull of orbit, the small child scooping rice with his fingers

ten thousand miles away, a lone kingfisher singing in the morning,

my home on my street, my mother's ashes in their box,

the dented light from the milky circle of a distant galaxy,

a monk bowing to the west. This night,

seven nights ago, I felt the one pink womb of living.

Wandering in

Last week, at this time, I was in Dallas with a friend. We went to an outdoor sculpture garden. One of the installations was hard to figure out. There was something that looked like a sealed off stainless steel service entrance. Heather and I approached and, I tucked my head back in surprise. It was a door made of brushed glass. Then, upon entering, a black hallway that wrapped around to another double doorway. We opened those doors and stepped into a room with soft sandstone benches and, above us, an open window to the sky. It was a space, in this beautiful place, where we were asked to stop. To look up. To see what passes by. Just sit and see.

And when the sky rolls by like that, in this fabric of grays -- something I would ordinarily clump together into one dismissed color -- I could see it. The way the shapes shift. The way the shades evolve and fold into each other. Then a patch of lighter white. A bauble of blue.

Today I spent six hours watching a television show, the whole series in one day. Some people would say that that was a waste of time, but, not for me, today. The main character has cancer and she first turns radically self-indulgent, then she backs her way into love. Into slowing down her life. Into seeing her husband, her son, her neighbor, her brother. Her life.

I think that's way it needs to be with me. I need remind myself to see. Maybe it's slowing down. Maybe it's focusing on one small patch of my life. Maybe it's not permitting the blur.

I suspect that I am in the process of backing my way into love, too. Not like Cathy, with stage four cancer, but by just being the age I am, closer to the terminal end. It would be easy for me to lash myself for all of the time I wasted, all of the years I clumped it into one blob of gray, but all I can do is realize that I am here. On this night.

I wandered into a coffee shop to write a letter to friend, and there was a bluegrass group called "Porch" playing. The lead singer, here in Cleveland, had a star Nashville voice. Amazing. Near the end of the show, the lead guitarist's niece got up to sing a Gillian Welch song, Miss Ohio. She's sung in LA at the Whiskey-a-go-go. I really do not know how to adequately tell you of my marvel. At the music, at the ring of family supporting the group, at this young woman's voice. Her uncle's harmony. The bottleneck blues. I was smiling at the woman, and the women watching the woman, and, even this capacity to feel part of a family -- if only for a moment -- that I will never know.

I just wandered into it. This moment. Just as I wandered into that installation last week. I don't exactly what it all means, but I know it is something. Something I'm going to straighten it out sometime. For now, I just must give thanks. For that square of sky. The quilt of gray. The tv show. My inclination to get out of the house into the world that holds the sky. It all brought me here. Sitting. Looking. Seeing. Hearing a stunning song in a small beautiful box of time.

The Cleveland Museum of Art

The rooms were full of relics,

ornate boxes and vessels for holding remnants

of the saints. Shoulder bones

and teeth, tunics and corners of burial shrouds.

The people believed that if you saw or

were touched by something that had once been

part of the holy, you could be healed and holy, too.

One box was my favorite. It was filled with

sacred objects, treasures of heaven. At the top

of the box there was a hole through which

water could be poured. The water would seep

in and around the relics and then fall out of a lower hole.

People could drink this water, or clean themselves

with the water. Baptized, again, with hope.

My friend, Nikki, went to the river yesterday to

fill up a bottle with its thanksgiving flow.

Her life like the Cuyahoga, is moving to the silty sweet delta,

somehow, on a crooked path,

the same way drinking water runs to

the low spot before it can be taken in.

She makes necklaces from red glass,

she throws a slobbery ball to her dog Bill

over and over again. I collect

acorns and black stones with magic white bands.

My neighbor places her childrens' stick leg drawings

into boxes marked, "Keep."

I do not know what you do,

but I know you find small holy things to hold onto.

A peach pit, the college ID with the good haircut,

a piece of birch bark, a golden bracelet with

links shaped like leaves. I do not know what you do,

but I know that something some time kissed your palm

and your fingers wrapped around it and held on.

Held on the whole night long.