June 20, 2012

Silence

A man wearing one hearing aid, which hangs

around the top of his right ear, stops.  He pulls out

the clear plastic piece embedded in his ear canal.

The robins in the yard take no notice.

The pewter color of the device does not catch their eye

nor has he walked within their danger zone.

He tugs at his earlobe, as if uncertain.

His brow creates furrows in which a layer of oil

mixed with grit, dust, and sweat create a field

where nothing can grow.  He digs his fingernail

into a small notch and tugs, exposing the silvery

battery.  One robin hops away from him.

The other does not.  The ringing sound

the man hears doesn't reveal itself to them. The wind

does not cause it, nor do the buzzing insects

over by a bed of flowers, their wings unseen.

Sparrows arrive, and the robins chirp, but the man

takes no notice.  He flips his aid over until

the small round battery falls into his hand.  He dangles

it before his left eye, and squints hard.

He sighs.  The ringing, so constant and precise it is beyond

measurement, is soon forgotten.  He sighs, again

feeling the air passing out of his lungs, warm and humid.

Fuck! he says.  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Lifting his head skyward he sees the birds scattering

into the haze.  Sweat drips down his face.

A door slams.  A fan blows.  He walks off, as we all do

one leg lurching forward, then the other

in a perfect series of controlled falls, slapping the soles

of his shoes on the concrete sidewalk,

his weight stressing the joints of his hips, knees, ankles.

His bones ache, his chest heaves.  When he turns

the corner, the blinds of many windows close. 

No comments found.

June 14, 2012

They come and go

At two, the voices – were they are own? –

came willingly, slipping in and out of our poor thoughts

and feeble vocabularies.  They had their own language

-- just you and me, they said -- and we believed

every soft word, each clamoring tone.

Later, we learned of demons and fled faraway, afraid

of red eyes and honey-combs.  The voices ran away, too.

The music of doomed ages entered into our own,

and the days of sun, dew stained grass, big skies filled

with cotton, were scrubbed off by the Chinook gusts.

Desert years, with holes that plunged deep into the earth—

what else to call them? – came and went.  We invented

our troubles from etch-sketch pads, rotating the dials, never

getting it right.  Shake and erase, shake and erase - our motto.

Kicked in the head, we spun in furious spirals, unbalanced.

We must find again those playful voices, and listen to them.

The light comes and goes, the tunnels run through all the years,

and men and the women always search for something new

in the other, in each moment that blooms, before the past

pulls the petals off that rose – and the next. 

Watches stop, they tell me, but the light – it keeps moving,

radiating into a febrile decay so far in the distance

we can only have faith that what's left will be sucked into the

expanding vacuum and come out the other side,

a newborn phoenix unwilling to contemplate endings.

No comments found.

May 18, 2012

a sensation of many things

the sky has shifted, its golden moment vanished

in a puff of smoke.  a magician is smiling

    at the trick.  & then --

it returns!  the audience applauds, & a small boy

 jumps to his feet, & then his mother,

& then a man in the back row, white and bronze flecked goatee

shining in the reflected glory of the boy, just before the crowd

  rises

  -- this is how standing ovations should be --

organically, explosively, thunderously alive to the pleasure

of surprise!

the same light once hung over a woman in love, her hair

  a halo framing her fear, the frantic lover

she knows now interrogating her silhouette, shouting

accusations, to which she confesses.  You can smell the vaporous

      anxiety

slipping out from under her skin, white, smooth, tender

 --the scent of a candle wick as it is snuffed out by

a sudden gust of wind-- she will hear no lullabies tonight,

for a black -hooded shape rises and a voice speaks.

  in this spectral form she imagines the return of her guilt

and with a reaper's blow she jumps

  and dies five stories below, broken neck askew;

perfection no more

                --her beloved too shocked to weep,

standing in the open archway of the bell tower

  no longer dizzy, but not ready for a lesson in grief.

  he cannot hear the oboe as you do, even though it has

been centuries since anyone imagined the melody

  playing over a landscape green with trees, white with

waterfalls, ever changing yet appearing the same

year after year.  a small plane flies overhead

   -- the sky spotted with tall clouds through which the light's

golden rays slip, curving against an azure background --

 its propeller noise washed away by the water falling below.

a small boy's hand thrusts itself out an open window

  & waves, so you wave, too.  the oboe plays on ...

as water rushes over the bed, a piano accompanied by

 violins -- a repeating theme -- rushes into your dreams, &

then -- that very moment -- a decision is made to live,

    to return to the boy, to bear the girl baby to term;

though the author must choose someone to die, a poor soldier

  wounded where no wound can show.  why?

oh, these questions have no answer, not even the plot

 requires the leap of this man to the street below

or the tears of his Italian wife, the imperious callousness

of doctors, the ruined gaiety of a party held

  for no reason other than the desire for festivals

among the flowers

       --lilacs, and other blossoms, but lilacs most of all

growing on hillsides, sprinkled over graves.

    they ring with the tone of bells, one solitary note following

another.

No comments found.

May 15, 2012

red shift

... the man is talking. the man is talking quickly

he injects you with the hypnotic sedative through a vein

that delightedly pops up after the vein in the crook

of your elbow

refuses the honor of making an appearance.  you are intoxicated

as the cracking noise, quite sharp,

of breaking the broken tooth

resounds inside your head, a small charge of dynamite echoing

in a canyon, a red canyon

for the west is red -- red dirt, red dust, red rock, red sun --

  & so you are not surprised by the taste of iron on your tongue ...

hours later, tongue no longer numb, cold water washes over

your cotton thirst, rinsing

a lot of bloody gauze, but that comes later

  after the crack, the explosion , the blood gushing up from the depths

   of bone ...

the man does talk constantly, and you do as well

 when able, and the clatter of dishes falling on a marble floor

is visible in the clamor of your discussions

bereft of all but trivial meaning because they are not red,

not red like the grin you see later in the mirror

  the grin of a cannibal, which is your grin

dark red rimmed teeth, darker than burgundy

    & you know

they will frighten the children & so you drink from the waterfall

& it cools your blood, washing all traces away

  so no stain remains, only the aftertaste of iron oxide

but you are sedated and do not mind ...

you are still sedated, & sleep comes--

  little men with fedoras and women in bright calico dresses

fuss over you, adjusting your sheets, placing the healing

flesh of their palms on your brow, pushing against

the side of your eye, & you see the black center

of a mirage surrounded by grey--

   a mirage that changes, the black flickering with diamond dust

dark as obsidian --

   a cartoon-ish image

not unfriendly, not symmetrical, but pleasing

  -- the shifting shapes it assumes -- shiny black and dull

black with irregular borders that form hearts, ragged

triangles, the unfinished circle that cannot round

    itself ...

in the evening the night stars are randomly present

 & and you count them, but stop because you will never

count enough--the city lights have snuffed so many out--

   and you would weep at their loss

the vast sea of shining lights upon the wave of infinite--

  were you not preternaturally calm,

as calm as red & black porphyry where each fleck inflames

delusions and hallucinations of the most happiness

  discovered in heaven or

     possible on earth, possible for mammals

with their heat engine fueled bodies, burning black beneath

the surface, boiling red with the combustion of love,

 one atom for another, one complex catalyzed molecule

after another

(this goes on for a while) ...

and then, the present that refuses to not visit you

brings you back up from the depths

     the cool waters, the pink waters,

merely at the sound of a small voice, fragile, brittle

stressed near to breaking, a voice scented with sticks

of cinnamon and beans of vanilla,

  the hushed voice, the child's voice, forever

five years old, forever lost and abandoned,

a voice heard on the air above and to the right

of your head, slow, meek, shimmering

 in the light of hollow fear.

is it your voice?  no, no, not today, and yet ...

the man calls you on the phone.  he talks quickly, he speaks

many words, not all which you can assimilate

into the fire.

get rid of the gauze he says

  & obedient as always, you do what he requests

& the conversation is brief

& the wound heals

the marble floor shines

the porphyry flickers, each crystalline shape embedded within it.

& the candles in the sky continue to burn

  the city has not snuffed them out

for the city is not eternal and will vanish long before

the stars are extinguished, the oxygen is consumed,

the red, red blood turns to dust

& you are not concerned

--the small voice may be, but you are not--

for the voice has faded, cannot be heard, cannot be

  observed ...

No comments found.

May 12, 2012

Fairy Tale

Humming birds have wings that whir,

small ruby throats, & green feathers.

I saw mine in Carolina, under the pines

next to a bush with flowers.  Blurring the air

it stopped all movement, except its own,

that flit, flit, flit from bloom to bloom.

Even the honey bees let it feast alone

its narrow beak thrusting in and down.

Did minutes pass, or were they years,

as I stood frozen, my blue eyes open

a child of six who'd wandered off & lost

herself without any crayons to document

her rare good fortune?  Those wings

I could not see, they buzzed & swept

all other sounds away from me.

I cannot remember the voices shouting

my name echoing from tree to tree,

but the hummingbird, disturbed, knowing

its fragility, vanished on the breeze, before

I understood the magic behind its mystery. 

A drizzle began and then a thunderstorm

& though I shivered, I still felt warm.

My mother found me looking at the sky,

& its murky clouds, with my dim, wet eyes.

No comments found.

A Clear View

The lone dove’s white wings brush over the blue.

The sky is its canvas to paint on today.

The fog is now gone. I remember you.

The organ played furiously.  I do—

I do.  Soft words we spoke on our wedding day—

above, a white dove on stained glass of blue.

Now it is dry, but at six a cold dew

drenched the dense grass; a thick mist from the bay.

Thar fog is now gone. I remember you.

As I grow older, my past I pursue,

but hours are fluid, and it flows away.

The lone dove’s white wings against that stark blue

are easy to see; no clouds to pass through.

Not like my lost friends; their images decay.

Yet, still, through my fog, I remember you.

It’s been many years since our love was new.

The dead do not leave us. That’s what some say.

The lone dove’s white wings ride over the blue.

When the fog fades, I believe he is you.

No comments found.

May 2, 2012

Disfigured

The rain falls under a dirty milk sky

 and I am searching for the scarred man

with the burned face, the story of which no one 

ever speaks.  So horrible, his nose eaten away,

& red rivulets that run down past his neck to

 the hidden world beneath his shirt.

I looked away, at first, the day we met

 by his bikes, mountain bikes in many colors,

but no one rents a bike on rainy days, no

 one wants the muddy tracks covering

their shorts and shirts thrown up by uncovered

 wheels.  "He's weird' says the local

wrapped in tight spandex, speaking at

 the resort bar, its unpolished pine rustic, with expensive

beers on tap -- blueberry lagers, stouts, red ales --

 a melange of heady scents and foam crushed

smiles, the laughter reaching up to

 the boundary where insults transmute into

                 alcohol-fueled comedy routines

always aimed at the outlier drinking alone

 someplace else, where other people say

that yes, it's true, he is a crosshatched man, 

 & not because of the scars, not that,

but an oddity caused by internal strangeness,

 his own storm cloud twisting upon itself, unseen

in the wilderness.  I find him outside, the rain

 running off his face, refusing to be intimidated

by water.  I am rude.  I ask what I wanted

 to ask since I first saw him, a week ago

on a day of bright sun and red skin:

 How did it happen?  He turns.

              Have you ever caught a rainbow

 trout? he asks & I say yes, a large one --

15 inches long -- when I was 13.  He smiles

 his jagged smile.  Did you let it go?   No, we took it

 home and froze it, and the fish was forgotten

and my mother threw it out. 

& so it was never eaten. Freezer burn.

   But it was beautiful once, shiny, the red stripe

and the silver and green scales & I was sad

 when it was ruined.  I cried real tears.

So it was with me, he said, so it was with me. 

  Just the same.

April 22, 2012

The Red Motel

 The red motel's parking lot was full of blob cars

of many colors, the color being the only distinguishing feature

 in most cases.  Toyotas, Fords, Kias, so many alike,

   and through the walls comes

 the sound of a baby crying in the evening as the sun descends.

You had forgotten the noises a baby makes when hungry

or in pain, or in need of a change of her diaper, or simply

 when she is tired, so very tired of all the sights and sounds

   and smells,

hungering for the heartbeat of her mother

  that one pulse to tell her she is safe, she is one

re-joined to her creator again.

The instant oatmeal was tasty, its artificial flavors of maple syrup

mixed with real brown sugar,

   dry and old, it is true, but it still melted

when you poured the hot water from the tap

over it in your plastic disposable bowl. 

   You were so pleased as you ate it

with a white plastic spoon, even though it was slippery

 and kept falling off as you ate, falling on your chin

and throat, warm and wet and sweet.

   The light through the ragged green curtains has bathed the room

in a curious shade of teal, an unexpected blessing.  You sit,

naked on the bed, wet from your shower, towel wrapped on your head,

   the sheet pulled up to your neck, the damp air

and the light and the baby's cries  lulling you into a trance, 

a waking trance, and you wonder, if it ended now, would you die happy?  

Is this what happiness means

 to have run away from home, from the husband

waiting by the phone, waiting for your call, perhaps calling you,

not knowing you turned your phone off, and now lie on cheap cotton sheets,

but clean sheets

   not caring that he is alone.

For you are still marveling at the teal light from the curtains and the setting sun,

the color of the sea by the Cayman Islands,

  an intimate, friendly light, full of charisma, full of the  voices of

an unknown future.  That light comes through the branches

of a dying willow tree, over the top edge of the red motel's sign

  straight through those curtains and thus changed,

 it has changed you.  Yes, you say, yes, I am happy!

The baby still cries.  Whimpers.  Falls asleep, just as the stars come out,

so few, so very few, Venus and those that form Orion and his belt

  and the dippers, big and small, Ursas major and minor. 

That is how the sea light leaves you -- to the stars

and the sign wrapped in red neon standing on a metal pole

by the motel office door, and street lights that buzz like insects,

  like small bees.

  You remove the towel, pull your fresh yellow t-shirt, extra long,

that you had washed that morning, over your head, slip into your jeans,

and walk out the door.

  There is a lake nearby, and a path along its shore, waiting. 

It calls, and you hear the words happy! happy! happy!

   and you know it must be so.

No comments found.

Meditations on Tom Andrews and related topics

on weather
 

The season's changing. I know this by looking
at my arms and hands because they're breaking out
into that red bumped rash that I get.

Even the palms of my hand itch.
The belly also swells. Everything in tandem,
all the symptoms. I'm a barometer.

And it is warmer now.


on self control

 

Tom Andrews was a hemophiliac poet
who refused to accept limits on his activities.
He raced motocross. Once set a record
for clapping his hands continuously. Recklessly.
 

I understand that attitude. It makes perfect
sense to me.



on my child rearing technique

 

Mercury is a planet of volcanic activity
my daughter says.

Just like the earth once was
my daughter says.

I'm afraid of it happening to the earth, again
my daughter says.

I see the connection only after tears run
down the cheeks that I kiss each night
as I put her to bed. Kiss asleep.

Antartica is melting. There'll be a flood. I don't want to die.
Said while she cries my kisses away.



on music
 

The mixture of certain sounds cannot be described.
They are beautiful and terrible

and something else I'm searching for -
but it all starts with my daughter's voice.
That's the only constant variable.



Tom's best poem

 

St. Augustine had a son with his mistress. Because
her name wasn't good enough, he sent her away
so he could marry someone more properly
suited for him and his station in life.
He never saw his mistress again
nor did he marry. Instead, he
converted to Christianity.
Wrote his Confession
and City of God.

Tom tells it so much better than I,
but then this is only an epitome.



narcotics we both have known

 

Too much codeine causes my head to buzz
unpleasantly. Too much morphine
and my head begins to swim and sway,
and spin the room into a whirlpool.

That’s how I experience vertigo. Like I'm being
spun dry.



on performance art

 

When I awake
my skin at all the pressure points
is the brightest of pinks.

I still stare each day, and
marvel at all this beauty. My skin
is a canvas brush-stroked by illness.

I wonder if Tom ever saw his body
this way - a sacrifice
for art's sake

No comments found.

here is a pome

or a poem or whatever
you choose to call what it does
of your senses

eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and lips
and more than whatever those represent
to you, or so i presume

to name you
dear,

but mean it affectionately,

for we are a pair, the two of us,
but who is the soldier, who is the leader
can you answer me?

do you dare say the answer?

can we begin again, begin
over, begin
at the beginning

shall we start over?

we shall pretend
we are familiar, we shall
dance and sing songs,

stumble when we drink until drunk,
kiss and makeup after hardships
long, long after the sun sets
over the arctic of your lamp,

in an expansive time

for kissing you, telling you
i am the one that you must remember
musk scented arms and damp
and wet under

don't disappoint,

keep reading me
lover

or should we fight, be enemies
demons and derelicts, scum
to be squashed by each other

be
eradicated, debilitated
simply O! so simply
depised
and hated

i could hate you
if that's what you need
me for

hate you cold
with a vengeance or hot
with a fury

or tepid and lukewarm with the fiercest
indifference, painted white

like a dead movie screen

but why not love
me

and
i will love
too, i will breathe

cinnamon dreams from your lungs
scale the alps, keep you

young
in the pages between my book on your nightstand,
my pages, this

poem, or whatever
it is,

just don't end me, keep reading and reading and reading
and i'll write to you, write for you, write everything
and we shall have

symmetry

No comments found.

A poem about things I do not understand

I have seen people at the beach who stare at the ocean all day long

and I can't imagine what they see, for the waves and the foam, and the shells

and the flowing sand, I know

these things do not change. The rain, yes, and storms and gale force

wind that tear apart the dune grasses, and batter the weathered piers

but that is not when they appear.  No it is the calm days with sun

or clouds or both, and that lazy rhythm of water

even when it dashes against rocks and the spray touches their faces --

that is when they sit or stand there, always alone, eyes fixed to the hazy horizon

-- that attracts them, until their skin is eroded and scarred and discolored

and their hair becomes stiff from the salt air.  The rest of us

are ghosts, imagined creatures from fairy tales, dreams they no longer care

to recall.  They may answer a question if asked, or speak and pretend

to converse, but I can tell, they are not in my world, they merely

deign to notice the possibility that I am real, if only to myself.  They look

and what do they find?  Not themselves, sisters and brothers

not that.  They are looking back, seeking what was lost, what grieves them

and cannot be forgiven, cannot be re-discovered, cannot be

again.  It's terrible to see such beauty on their faces, terrible and I tremble

when I bear witness to their glory, their grace on those long days when the noisy surf

slows time to an infinite moment of blues, greys, bright rays

of light, glistening bubbles bursting, grains of tiny rocks and silicates polished

over the millennia for this single stillness in time, when they

are allowed to feel their solitude, to know the spell of oblivion as it floods

over them, and they wallow in its bliss, alone.

No comments found.

A tableau of many broken fragments randomly arranged

I.

Equilibrium cannot be created
only destroyed which is why
I think any history of my life
would be the antithesis of creation.

II.

I ask myself as I stare
(with corrective lenses well placed)
Is my face symmetrical?
Is my body symmetrical?
 

Knowing my asymmetry,

I ask these questions
to test whether randomness
can exist, but I think not.

I think chaos is merely complex,

because I believe in patterns,

III.
 

and I believe in critical states

like my bedroom
where at some point
I must clean up all the clothes
that gather dust on the floor.

Because like a sand grain
that falls on a sand hill,
you never can tell when one tiny event
will trigger the avalanche

which will force a change in the paradigm.

IV.

It is time to do my laundry.

The revolution of the spin cycle
is compelling to me.
Soon, it will become
unbalanced
and shake and pound
like a gigolo
when he can't watch
the women he services
underneath anymore.

V.

I watch all my critical states
waiting for catastrophe.
I am passive, knowing
that I cannot avoid this fate

for it is a power law

relationship
and cannot be changed.

VI.

The dog barks. The children whine.
The TV drones. The phone doesn't ring.

This, this is inevitable,

and it really is ubiquitous.

No comments found.

The return

you are driving home, to a farmhouse, in Iowa,

through rolling hills thick with grass and weeds, and new corn

so damn green, in straight lines guarded

by windbreaks of trees, green and lush

so early, too soon, some say.  you pass

telephone lines attached to birds, small brown birds

--you know the kind--

and the wires run through and around the trees

their poles weathered and grey, dead wood

waiting for the next strong wind to test themselves

against whatever power exists

that likes to batter them.  you are so very

tired.  you still taste the coffee stains on your lips

from every gas mart at which you've stopped,

coffee cups you filled with artificial creamer laced

with the flavor of vanilla.  such a lovely smell--

hot bitter coffee, cheap and cut with spice

and that sweetness with which you are familiar.

heaven really, that warmth in your throat,

the aftertaste on tongue and lips,

the odor of the car--canvas, polyester,

vinyl, two day old crumpled newspapers, their ink fading

in the sunlight through your window, where your arm

burns red from an unseen light.

all night you drove west, from Philly, through the

forests and what they call mountains

of a wounded land, large trucks in packs

on I-80 your only companions.

you last slept--when?  you can't say.  adrenaline

has altered time.  it's that life on the road

that you cannot predict, that is always different

despite that sameness of the asphalt, the painted

white dashes and lines, the construction

vehicles standing silent as you wind down corridors

between large concrete barriers.

it's late afternoon the sky tells you, the color of it

a calm, sleepy yellow light that bleeds into

orange and rose splashes as evening arrives.

you have enough gas in the tank, only an hour more

to go. its nearly eight.

the world is not what it seems when you view it from

your seat, your hands clutching the steering wheel

wrapped in leather (a present from your wife),

and you see the landmarks you remember. you drive

right though town, past the diner, past the roman

edifice style post office that's been there forever,

turning now off the main road, a back way

to your home.

there it is, can you see it?  the deep blue sky

and the ocean of stars, and that light filtering out

from the kitchen window, and next to it, a weaker one

from the lamp that hangs down over the dining room

table, pine with a veneer of maple you rescued

from a flea market six years ago.

you turn the car into the driveway, all gravel,

crunching little pebbles and rocks into soft dirt,

passing your mailbox on the way.  the big apple tree

is blooming.  you see some petals at a glance

on the ground beneath it, a glimmer of white

rimmed in pink.  their aroma catches in your throat.

you park the pickup, turn the key, listen to

the engine slowly sputter and die, the old rusted metal

frame shuddering to a stop.  the key chain is in your hand

and you open the truck's door, close it with dull thunk.

you hear voices.  you stand and take a breath.

did they hear you?  how could they not?

it's over.  just walk through that door.

it can be done.  anything can be done.

try to believe that nothing is written.

you know the way to the front porch, how to

pull open the screen, turn the tarnished handle,

and enter in. so say a little prayer and go.

No comments found.

Weather

The day is clear of wind.

 That's what Bill said

 and I couldn't argue

for it was bearable,

 the air I mean,

cold, but not crisp, not fragrant

either, just streaked a bit

with that light one sees through

 an unwashed window.

Clouds, I told him, pointing

them out as if teaching a child

a word for the odd shapes

 she sees when looking up

at the sky.

Yes, clouds, he agreed,

the layered kind. What's

that color called?  I think

 it starts with a P ...

Lavender.  It's always

 Lavender.  Shades and shades

of it.  They blend, see?

 I stopped talking

and the sun beams hit my face

and I looked away.  The whole

 thing was painful.

That's all.

No comments found.

Vacation time

The pier creaks, the wood ancient,
its color washed away, grey as the
sweater you wear, as the flattened
clouds that go drifting off to the east,
small wisps curling away, bending to
the sea, but never touching the white-
caps, no never, not today, not ever.

No ice cream cones or cotton candy
vendors are around just the old black
man who was here yesterday, his fishing
pole lying beside his withered arm, held
tenuously by his hand. You nod, raise a
hand to him, and he acknowledges your
gesture with a toothless smile.  Back again?

he asks, already knowing your answer.
You shrug, lift up your old paperback
novel, its corners frayed, its water
damaged, wrinkled pages the shape
of waves, stiff and beloved.  Yes,
you say.  Again. And you? Any bites?
No, nuttin.  Early yet, tho.  Fish, dey
come when dey want, take da hook

when dar' time's up.  Take care heah?,
Take care. It's his standard goodbye, so
you walk to the end of the pier where
the railing's broken and dangle your feet
off the edge. Back and forth they swing,
canvas shoes catching the breeze.  Just
sitting, acting like the kid you were fifty
years ago, the sea the same as it was

back then, rolling in to the beach below
white bubbles crushing the light brown
sand, day after day, clouds or not, wind
or not, just being itself.  You read awhile
the same story you've read every year
for however long its been since you began
to return, playing pretend for a week, trying
to recapture what once was, who you once

might have been, before the boys and then
the men, the mixed drinks, weed and beds
you fell into in a haze of kisses and hands
groping for hidden treasure they always
seemed to find.  The husbands and lovers
are now gone, the children, too, and its
only you with the salt air, the clouds, an
old sweater, and the same old black men

who have always been here, sitting like you
lost in thoughts or dreams or memories they
can't really recall, or maybe lulled by the rhythm
of the waves lapping against the old pier, which
may have changed or not (you're not sure, not
anymore).  Tomorrow you leave, go back
to the place you call home, for you still have
that freedom--the right to call things whatever

you wish them to be, telling yourself half lies,
perhaps, but who cares?  You lean back, steadied
by your locked arms and spread palms, and toss
your hair, such beautiful hair, still, until you feel
dizzy as a toddler being swung in great circles,
swooping above the ground, grass or sand, your
tiny arms held by a father's callused hands
and by the laughter, his and yours, both of you

gasping for air.  Yes, like that, so damn much
just like that.  You slip and fall on your left side
giggling.  You can't stop, because it feels so
funny, falling down on rotting wood planks. Your
belly aches, but so what?  You are that little
girl again, lying beside your daddy on the beach
again, being tickled until the tears come and he
cradles you cooing in your ear everything's all

right, baby, everything is just fine.  Daddy's
here. Daddy loves you, baby. Don't cry now
cuz Daddy's here and everything is just fine,
baby, just fine. Just fine.  Don't cry. We're all
fine now.  Daddy loves his little punkin-poo
you know its true.  And he always will, baby, he
always will, cross my heart, baby and hope to die
if I lie.  Just like that, yes, it was just like that.

Copyright T. Birch

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