Sisters when

 

Last night my sisters called me

to the waters, I sang and asked my sisters to take me. 

I said, sisters, tell me your stories, show me charity.

I asked, sisters, where have you been? Did you go to the mountains of Egypt? 

Visit the forests of Peru?

Climbed to the top of the world at the end 

of the world?  

What have you witnessed? Who witnessed you? 

What tethered you and liberated us?  

Are you back now in the arms of our Mother?

What reward did you get for your lonely days here?

Have you changed out of your traveled garb?

Are you free now?   

Sisters, when? 

 

when is it my turn? 

Lent

1.

2.

                             If I were

to write

a poem, I would dedicate it like this:

For my brother who lived as if he

was Christ

and died

like him,

his mother

also cling-

ing to his

legs des

perate t

o save

my child

f r o

m t

his pain.

3

The last time we met, I wrote you a poem. 

This time, you gave me a poem. Fair enough.  

Justice

is an eye for an eye

line for line

everything reflected back,

the window, the table, the chairs, the bed,  

where you walked in-to 

thinking it was a way out,

of these shadows and silhouettes. 

3/24/25

To become air

(This is for my friends and hospice teammates, as we grieve for our patients.)

Each day is a kiss
 with no response,
but I know, it's a kiss.
 Like the kisses you’ve sown
 into the walls, the windowsills
for forty one years,
 the way our children crackled laughter
 when they were children.

 Each day I give myself a task.
 I count how many kisses given
 And how many received.
 I say, “Sweetheart, how many kisses will you give me today?”
And in your silence, I write down
 a thousand.

 A thousand kisses to give me time.
to catch your last breath into my body
I will keep you
as I too, wait
to become air*.

(*When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi)

3am cravings

Chased out of sleep by restless dreams
(I'm staring at a gaping wound pulsating on my head),
I wake up hungry, impatient.
I rummage through the refrigerator looking for some ready-made food, 

a left over pizza slice from Costco. Unsatisfied, I begin making dinner. 

I think about going back to bed.
I think about reaching over
your side of the bed,
pull myself close.
Out of habit, I kiss your back and
sleepily
leave my lips there.

The children will wake soon,
but there's still plenty of time
to cut the vegetables, soak the noodles, roast the onion and ginger,
start the broth. Even time
to brush my teeth again and read a poem.

(Sept 20, 2017. For B.)

It is done

It is done.
This life is done.
You don’t need to worry anymore,
though she is your life.
I know.
With her you’d tasted homemade apple pie
and fresh okra from the garden.
With her too, you saw sunflowers hung
heavy with seeds,
firm yellow petals radiant even at dusk,
how you imagined love
to be.

I know.
With her you’d found your burial ground,
finally stopped searching for your birthplace,
laid down your loneliness,
like a child waiting for
his mother’s return
for so long no one came except night
wailing
long and deep.

I know.

I know you worry,
but she will be fine.
She will find a way to change the light bulb. She will pay the bills on time.
She will know what to do with your books.
She will get help cleaning the house.
She will make it to the doctor’s office.
She will go to sleep and wake up on your side of the bed. She will sometimes
forget what day it is, but she will remember that she has a hair appointment.
She will laugh and tell stories about you, her witty, charming Abe.
She will grieve heavily,
and she will be beautiful,
because you are beautiful—
you and her,
this life,
apart and together,
in love and death,
are beautiful.

(In memory of Mr B.)
10/1/18

I bless the world

I bless the world.
I bless it
with stories of devotion on your body
and sing my hymns in your sleep.

Last night, I blessed the rolling hills,
carpets of violets and dandelions bloom
a cushion for tired feet,
your spine a river
to quench their thirst.

The night before I blessed it planting,
my fingers dug down to raise earth
on your back.
There I planted fruit trees.
In the valleys, low growing berries.
Up the hills, I planted vegetables.
These are the daily bread.

When love happens and pain
makes you weep,
I collect these blessed liquids to make wine.
In it, I bless the world and you.
Because this earth is my faith,
love is my church,
and I am the priest.

there is plenty

There is nothing to hate about us, you say.
I say there is plenty.

The hurt I feel is hateful.
The love I lost.
The daydreams that remain
daydreams.
The parts of my body scattered
in your apartment that I want back--
my hair, my sweat, my skin, my words, my stories, my voice,
my cooking, my jokes, my pleading, my yes, my no,
everything,
even the things I cannot recall
but my body does.
I want them all back.
But they won't come back.
And I hate that.


10/22/17

Counting grief

Counting grief

Tonight I went to the neighborhood bar
to begin a ritual
 every time
my heart breaks.
It's been a while since I've been here.

I asked for 2 shots of tequila-
1 to celebrate love
1 to end it.

I ended up doing 6-
1 to celebrate love
1 to end it;
1 to remember the hard lives lived,
or survived,
1 to mourn their end;
1 to hate myself,
1 to love me.
All to grieve
and remind myself that this
 is life-
it will go on,
as will I.


10/11/17

afternoon nostalgia

#21

Is the dogwood tree in the backyard blooming 

Like I imagine it would? 

Is the bougainvillea vine 

carpeting the front yard with valiant 

dead 

red 

blossoms?  

In my memory, they are fierce. 

I love you is a 3-syllables-long time loop

Still towards the end of March


I imagine it must be hard
to be you
when there is me
incessant and dogged
in my love.
I am sorry. There is nothing
I can do.


Perhaps I should not call it love.




But I tell you this:
I love you is a 3-syllables-long time loop.
For 3-syllables worth of time,
I wait.

Towards the end of March

Date: in the middle of March


Plan:
each day I will gather
something beautiful for you.


Because:
between words there is distance.
It teaches me patience.
You teach me the difference.




Date: towards the end of March
To remember, I drink and dance
naked by an open window--I want
to display myself to the world.
And why not?
Am I not beautiful?
You've told me so.

we are lucky

you and I are lucky.
we are stubborn enough
to insist that on any overcast sunday we make noise together,
watch the earth swell in the rain,
and marvel at rainbows without ends.


we insist on holding each other tightly,
and cry
for loves that have gone before
and loves petrifying before us,


afraid of hurting because we forget
we have survived pain.


and yet we still
insist on hanging on
to life despite
being not very good at it-



we are very lucky, actually.


our stubborn credulity
will save us.

First questions

To be ready 

to love you

there are questions we first 

must answer. 

For example:

If one of us is sleepless--like I am now--

Would the other lie down too 

and tell stories, 

count

the number of sighs between breaths--

like the poet and his wife.* 

Will we say, "I'm right here"

when the other asks in uneasy 

slumber, "Will you stay."

*Li-Young Lee

Sad questions

#18

How many days has it been 

Since you last wrote a poem? 

Only a day? 

Such a long day it was. 

You were busy
displacing water with your body

to measure the weight of silence 

across time. 

It was difficult. With each wave

the body moves 

and gravity disperses,

water spills and you had to do it again, 

like a sad question 

repeating itself. 

For example: 

If you miss someone 

long enough 

hard enough,

would they know? 

Could they feel it

sitting heavy on their heart,

refusing what is told

 it must accept

except you 

don't matter. 

Could they know? 

But then, why would you need them to know? 

They did not know when autumn came to these parts and leaves burned bright for days without you seeing. 

They did not know how much

you wanted to break the face of serenity walking around that lake 

stepping on grass you love,

stepping on paths you want 

to lay down on,

stepping on stones you want 

in your pockets. 

You wanted to break the smiles that must have happened.

The hands that must have pretended to need warmth. 

Tear the hair that must have turned gold in the sunset. 

Your sunset. 

Did they know? 

4.22.17

Advance Directive is romantic

(#17)




The next time we meet, it will be at my funeral.
You should not be sad.
Say no eulogy.
I will have lived fully by then.
I will have loved generously.
I will have been fearless and kind.
I will have laughed unashamed and naked in the sun
and cried with the loneliest.
I will have fixed some broken things,
fed and sheltered, sowed and re-sowed, created and colored,
wrote some poems, and many times wandered
through rain soaked streets and forests
bursting green.
I will have been satisfied.

Don't even talk about the past. You will not know
anyone there.
Walk by my body silently, look at me.
Look at my hands and remember
how they touched your face,
caressed your body, held your head.
Look at my painted face and imagine
petals on my lips.
Remember the way I loved and let your heart swell
knowing you have partaken in it.
Drive with the others to the cemetery.
Throw bougainvillea down my grave.
Make sure flowers cover me
before the first fistful of dirt.

When all is gone, you stay.
By my grave, tell me slowly
stories of how you've loved
since I left.
And when the gravedigger comes back with his shovel,
you can go.

Songs in transit

Songs in transit: coming
3.4.17

I am coming back
to that place on the hill
far from the city where my lovers lie,
where I planted pieces of myself, like a garden bed
it has since grown
a different bush.

Songs in transit: en route to Oakland

In this circus country, truths

are whatever magic tricks you conjure
and language
is made

to jump hoops and juggle
balls.
You and I do not belong here.
We prefer magic without tricks.

Songs in transit: Reading 100 Love Sonnets on the plane

“Love, what a long way, to arrive at a kiss,
What loneliness-in-motion, toward your company.”
This is the second love sonnet of a hundred
Pablo Neruda wrote for his third wife.
He wrote from another country, another time,
but today,
across grasslands and north to the Rockies, he speaks
as if to say he hears me, and knows
where I am going
what I seek.
Even if I do not know them, there have always been
fools like me--
we love with willful stubbornness
because we are its progeny.


Songs in transit: this is a different body

So I come back to you--
not to the place where love happened and is gone,
where now another woman goes--no
I come back to you
anew,
a different body,
through a different door,
a different bed.
In this new place, words stay.
Touch imprints. Movements happen without noise.
Bound and shelved above our heads, pleasure
is broken down to its simplest sounds, slick and wet 
like waves.
I come back to you thicker. Nimbler.
My tongue quicker, I move slow.
Time has made me a generous lover.
For this you are both glad
and afraid.

Songs in transit: panic

3.5.17

 “There are many ways to carry the past with us.”

This I read at the bookstore

to stop the panic rising.

Songs in transit: leaving

3.6.17

I leave the key on the desk and close the door,
It is not night time, but darkness lingers.
Inside someone’s kitchen, a light is turned on.  
Perhaps an exchange of a sleepy morning kiss.
Over on the next block, Bica's coffee is opening for customers
shuffling to get somewhere
then later, to come back home.

I pull my luggage past them in the rain.
I would have gladly sat down on one of those chairs
and never get up.
But I have to catch the train
back to the city where I was born
and every day
is dying.

At the Rockridge station I get on the 6:25AM train to the airport.

It is crowded. No one talks.
We are too sleepy, too sad,
we don’t want to disrupt this kinetic energy
lulling and moving our weights forward.  

The train hums louder as it dives

into the dark underground beneath the waters of the bay,
the way my mother sang to us
when we were young and afraid of the dark--
I closed my eyes and traveled with the train
back to my mother's womb--
wet and sleepy and content.
But I have to exit soon, and the train knows.
It cradles me for as long as it can, before I am expunged,
forced to look at daylight again—
this is life.
And love is no exception.

Songs in transit: when there is no return 

Where love is born, it can also die—

this is the process.
I know.

Because love is a constant
object in motion,  it leaves
in order to come back;

without return, it is lost.
The hills of Oakland know this.

If each time we love
a little shorter,
a little less kind,
give less of ourselves,
touch not frequently,
look not too long
and don’t whisper with new awe each morning we get to wake together—
it won't come back. 

Songs in transit: I arrived but not yet home

Last night I heard the hills cry.

They felt love wander and feared it lost.
They swelled with sadness, soaked the streets.
This morning they refused to wake,
Leaving rain to say goodbye.

Rain walked me to the train.

Rain stroked my hair.
Rain wrapped its gusty arms to hug me;
I breathed in its Patagonia mountain air,
filled my lungs with abundant space--
keep my feet light.

I took it with me on the plane.

It sat next to me on the bus.
It unlocked the door and walked inside.
It saw me undress and covered me as I lie down.
Then it left me there,
in the city where I was born
and every day
is dying.

Memory on my iphone

(R. minus many months.)


My iphone memory is a time warp.
For example, it keeps remembering your name
even though I have deleted you
a thousand times,
as if it knows
there is only one thing I can remember
to forget
repeatedly.

So I will need to delete again tomorrow
the balcony, my lips, your lips,
Oakland's sunset burning
centimeters from your fingertips.



2.3.17

Teach me how to not despair

(for my children. for r and his.)

Teach me how to not despair.

Remind me again

that life is a series of mathematical

errors

and all I have to do is find y.

I already have paper and pen.

I can

turn numbers into stories

stories into actions

actions into hope

hope to love

and live

kindly.

Sit with me,

in the high noon glare,

our bodies warm from sun heated rocks

beneath, watch me unravel the mystery of an equation,

with child-sized amazement duplicating,

quadruplicating, octuplicating, doubling

ceaselessly

into the distances of my imagination.

And when I cannot find my way,

teach me to trust

that inside each problem

already is the answer

I seek.

2/3/17

Last Sunday I went to a funeral

Last Sunday I went to a funeral.
Q had died in her chair,
looking out her window.
Father Keith gave the eulogy.
He said, "I knew her for many years. She loved to sit
by that window, waiting
for the day to pass.
He paused, then said, "It is with amazing grace
that we may last the length of days.
For this we should give thanks."

Does he know
the insufferable ways in which days
go on and on?

I will give no thanks
to the length of days
I endured.

I will lay face down
deep in dirt and weep
for the 13 Sundays that have passed
without me.

There is a woman waiting.
There is a woman wanting.
She died with that waiting.

if you must be silent

Love, do not call to me.
Do not say to me the feelings that vex your heart at night
when you miss me most
half asleep and half drunk,
only when light breaks make silence your armor,
and sentiments harden like laid bricks baked in the sun.

If you must be silent, be silent
all the days.
Be more silent than night.
More than a muted cry.
Aimless wandering.
Hurt gone numb.

Love, if you must
be silent.