Week 18

I need to write
with a pen that erases
and it's not because I'm inconsistent.

I always think three sentences ahead
and what comes out is a jumble
of thoughts and ideas and numbers
that wouldn't make sense to you
or me, give or take three days.

I like writing you letters
but sometimes I have nothing important to say.
The "I love yous" get lost
because I need to follow it up with "I miss you"
and "I hope for the world for you"
and what ends up being written is
"I and you".

What more needs to be said, really?

Week 17

There is this uncertainty
between you and me,
as if the thread that binds us
is so very delicate and thin.
I can barely see it
wrapped around me and you,
and the music is playing
and keeps on playing so we dance.

I tread more carefully than you do.
My steps are cautious
but direct and firm.
"Stop twirling," I said,
"you'll break it."
You didn't hear me
or at least you pretended not to,
you danced and danced away.

How scared I was
that our connection would dissipate
in an instant.
One second tied together,
the next, you have floated away
to a different planet
while I stayed here
waiting, watching, wanting.

Somehow, you are still here
and I am still here.
Maybe I should let go,
sink into this moment,
trust this fragile thread that binds us and survives us,
move in time with you
and perhaps without you.
I know I will make it anyway.

It's just that I would rather risk less,
stay here silently,
frozen in time
with you.

In Passing

From a half block off I see you coming,
walking briskly along, carrying parcels,
furtively glancing up into the faces
of people approaching, looking for someone
you know, holding your smile in your mouth
like a pebble, keeping it moist and ready,
being careful not to swallow.

I know that hope so open on your face,
know how your heart would lift to see just one
among us who remembered. If only someone
would call out your name, would smile,
so happy to see you again. You shift
your heavy parcels, hunch up your shoulders,
and press ahead into the moment.

From a few feet away, you recognize me,
or think you do. I see you preparing your face,
getting your greeting ready. Do I know you?
Both of us wonder. Swiftly we meet and pass,
averting our eyes, close enough to touch,
but not touching. I could not let you know
that I’ve forgotten, and yet you know.

Ted Kooser

Looking at the Stars

I still think about the shepherds, how many stars
They saw. We owe our love of God to these sheep
That had to be followed, or companioned, all night.
One can’t just let them run. By midnight

The stars had already become huge talkers.
The Parent sits in her proud Chair, and is punished.
The Dog follows the Hunter. Each time a story ends
There is such a long pause before another begins.

Those of us who are parents, and getting older,
Long, as tonight, for our children to stand
With us, looking at the stars. Here it is,
Eight thousand years later, and I still remember.

Robert Bly

Week 16

"I got you," he said,
one hand across my back,
my anchor
as he moved his fingers within.
So I leaned back
and stopped trying to hold myself up.
I felt his fingers across my ribs
and for a second,
I let myself trust someone else.
It was a weird feeling,
an out of body experience.
I didn't have to stand,
I didn't have to breathe,
I didn't have to do anything but let myself be.

Week 15

Sometimes I feel like
I see you so clearly
that I can just reach out
and touch you,
travel from my universe to yours.
I see you on a plane,
in a car, driving,
my song on the radio,
the grass ever green.
Your wife is holding your hand
pregnant in the front seat,
and you see a girl crossing the street,
dark hair that looks familiar.
Your heart stops,
but she smiles differently
and you breathe again.
Your wife notices,
asks if everything is okay.
You smile and say you just remembered something,
grateful it wasn't me.
Can't stop thinking of me,
I can't stop thinking of you.
So we meet in consciousness
saying hello,
in our daydreams, in our sleep,
I reach out and touch you
through the universe,
you feel me kiss your cheek.

Week 14

I wish I could tell you
what you make me feel.
I wish I could take all the feelings
I have ever felt
and place them in your palms
and watch you delicately absorb them
through the pads in your fingers.
I would see it in your eyes,
you would understand the love I have
for my cat,
for my sister,
for my friend.
And then I would watch you get confused,
"That hurt you?" you would ask,
and I would nod,
and you know why it would be hard for me
to explain why exactly
but it did what it did.
And you would see the tears I cried
and cried and cried
and you would maybe understand why I am the way I am.
You would reach out and touch me
and tell me that I was brave
and I would shyly deny it,
but you would already know that because you
would know that I never feel very brave,
only reckless with myself,
but I guess true bravery isn't much more or much less.
You would kiss the corner of my eyes,
my forehead,
my lips
and would squeeze my hands and give me
all those feelings back.
It's a lot to carry I know,
the secrets of all those people,
including myself,
including you.
And I would graciously accept
since even though they were not mine
they belonged to me,
my gift,
my curse.
And you would fall so much more in love with me
and hold me at arms length
for the fear that in your sleep,
I may transfer some of them to you
to make it easier for me.
It doesn't work like that.
This is mine to bear alone
and maybe God's.
You are just another set of tears waiting to happen.

Week 13

"I'm seeing someone."
The words echoed in the quiet car,
"I knew this was coming," he said,
his voice broke,
my heart broke.
This was one battle I could not fight with him,
this was one cross that he had to carry
on his own.
I wish I could help him.
I did love him, do love him.

My friends said,
"The ship has sailed,"
but the ship never left the bay.
Instead it rested and rotted
and fell apart,
yet the skeleton remained somewhat intact
so if you walked by, you could say,
"That was a great ship,
I wonder what happened."
I wonder what happened too.
Why was I not good enough when I was there?
Why is hindsight the only time he cared?

Week 12

In Neurology

She leans over and kisses him
before she goes home
to her empty house.
There used to be children,
dogs,
parents.
Then there was just her and him,
now it's just her.
He was just trying to make the yard look nice
for his grandson,
the tender age of 22,
that's when the hand of God
briefly reached down
and suddenly he couldn't walk anymore.
As she drives home,
she thinks about the vows
she uttered forty years ago.
They weren't just words,
they were alive
in room 3610
in neurology.

Week 11

"I miss you,
even when I'm sober,"
he said,
as if that was what love was.
Maybe it was.
Who am I to say that he didn't love me?
That he didn't fantasize about
holding my hand,
kissing my forehead,
giving me my three little children.
Or maybe
he was just drunk and lonely.
These things are better left as they are.
I never picked up the phone.

In the Distant Past

Things weren’t very specific
when I was in labor,

yet everything was
there, suddenly: all that

my body had known,
even things I’d only been

reminded of occasionally,
as when a stranger’s scent

had reminded me
of someone I’d known

in the distant past. The few
men I’d loved but didn’t

marry. The time, living
alone in Albuquerque,

when I fainted in the kitchen
one morning before work

and woke up on the floor,
covered in coffee. Finally.

it was coming. It was all moving
forward. Finally, it was all going

to pass through me. It was
beginning to happen

and it was all going to happen
in one single night.

No more lingering
in the adolescent pools

of memory, no more giving it
a little more time to see

if things would get better
or worse. No more moving

from one place to the next.
Finally, my body was all

that had ever been given
to me, it was all I had,

and I sweated through it
in layers, so that when,

in the end, I was finally
standing outside myself

and watching, I could see
that what brought me

into the world was pulling
you into the world,

and I could see that my body
was giving you up

and giving you to me,
and where in my body

there were talents, there
were talents, and where

there were no talents,
there would be scars.

Carrie Fountain

Ray at 14

Bless this boy, born with the strong face
of my older brother, the one I loved most,
who jumped with me from the roof
of the playhouse, my hand in his hand.
On Friday nights we watched Twilight Zone
and he let me hold the bowl of popcorn,
a blanket draped over our shoulders,
saying, Don’t be afraid. I was never afraid
when I was with my big brother
who let me touch the baseball-size muscles
living in his arms, who carried me on his back
through the lonely neighborhood,
held tight to the fender of my bike
until I made him let go.
The year he was fourteen
he looked just like Ray, and when he died
at twenty-two on a roadside in Germany
I thought he was gone forever.
But Ray runs into the kitchen: dirty T-shirt,
torn jeans, pushes back his sleeve.
He says, Feel my muscle, and I do.

Dorianne Laux

Week 10

It was obvious he was in love with her.
Every picture,
you could see his eyes soft,
you could tell that he was happy.
I read online that they broke up in 2009.
It is especially hard
going into old videos,
watching them harmonize
at the peak of their lives.
They were so in love.
And now he writes songs about her getting away.
Was he too busy?
Was she too disingenuous?
Did he kiss someone else?
Did she get tired of his shit?

I miss them, the way they were.
They were beautiful and soft.
It is no more comforting knowing that
things change for other people too.

Week 9

I can see one star through this window
in the hospital where I spend my days.
Break time is quiet
in the middle of the night,
the world is just as dark inside
as it is outside.
The air is cool and dry,
I often leave with cracked lips.
The flickering of the smoke detector in the ceiling,
if I squint, it may be a firefly.
If I squint at you,
you may be more than a dream too.
There isn't enough time on break
for me to fall asleep,
not properly,
so I lay here in the dark with my eyes closed,
waiting, watching, breathing.

Week 8

"You have cute thumbs,"
he said.

That made me smile.

Strange how we fixate 

on all the skin, scars, and body parts

that do us wrong.

Yet they notice something I never knew.

Your eyes,

your hands,

your softness,

"Like a 17th century renaissance queen," he said.

"Like a chocolate ice cream cone,"

before he ate me up.

It is good to think about while I spend another night 

on the couch, alone.

"It's a beautiful moment, just go with it. Put one foot in front of the other. Don't worry, there is no cliff. The earth will appear if you walk confidently into the future." - Glen Hansard

Relevant then, relevant now.

Original Sin

That was one idea my mother
always disliked. She preferred her god
to be reasonable, like Emerson or Thoreau
without their stranger moments.
Even the Old Testament God’s
sudden angers and twisted ways
of getting what he wanted she’d accept
as metaphor. But original sin
was different. Plus no one agreed
if it was personal, meaning
all Adam’s fault, or else some kind
of temporary absence of the holy,
which was Adam’s fault as well.
In any case, it made no sense
that we’d need to be saved before
we’d even had the chance
to be wrong. Yes, eventually everyone
falls into error, but when my sister and I
were babies she could see we were perfect,
as we opened our eyes and gazed up at her
with what she took for granted as love,
long before either of us knew the word
and what damage it could cause.

Lawrence Raab

Week 7

I know where he put his hands,
his mouth.
They slid along my legs.
I felt him taste me.

I wish I could stop my mind
from thinking
in moments like these.
It's always going,
always trying to memorize.
So frightened of losing the memory,
the thoughts,
the ideas.

It's as if perfection happens only in those moments
never to be returned to,
as if the rest of my days will wear on
and in the darkness to come,
I will think to that time in Ireland
where I had briefly experienced happiness.

Clara: In the Post Office

I keep telling you, I’m not a feminist.
I grew up an only child on a ranch,
so I drove tractors, learned to ride.
When the truck wouldn’t start, I went to town
for parts. The man behind the counter
told me I couldn’t rebuild a carburetor.
I could: every carburetor on the place. That’s
necessity, not feminism.
I learned to do the books
after my husband left me and the debts
and the children. I shoveled snow and pitched hay
when the hired man didn’t come to work.
I learned how to pull a calf
when the vet was too busy. As I thought,
the cow did most of it herself; they’ve been
birthing alone for ten thousand years. Does
that make them feminists?
It’s not
that I don’t like men; I love them—when I can.
But I’ve stopped counting on them
to change my flats or open my doors.
That’s not feminism; that’s just good sense.

Linda Hasselstrom

Week 6

I want little children
to place little tealights
around the house one day.
I can see my girl now,
she has big brown eyes
and dark bangs
and I know in her heart she'll carry a light,
a little tealight if you will,
with a flame that never wavers
no matter how the wind blows.
I handed it to her
the second she was born,
my gift to her.
Flames are not diminshed when they are shared,
neither does love.
I hope one day I will have the chance to sit down and teach her that.

Riveted

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious denouement
to the unsurprising end—riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

Robyn Sarah

Week 5

"You are amazingly complex.
You make me want to read."
That's what he said to me,
his big blue eyes locked onto mine.
My smile gave me away,
or at least a part of it.
And that, he told me,
started a symphony deep within;
his heart started drumming,
the beat raced to his brain
and made poetry exit his lips
and enter mine.
It had been a while for both of us,
laying in bed,
writing prose with our touches.
These things are essential in the moment,
so I freeze them in memory and ink.
The rest will disappear into nothing.
Memory fades faster than we anticipate.

Week 4

I spent the night
with a Celt in bed
and he wasn't you,
even when I closed my eyes.

He was close, though.
He sang to me
like I imagined you would,
and kissed my lips
and talked about life, the universe,
and how we fit in it.

I could tell he liked me
and he could tell I liked you,
and maybe liked him a little too.
Perhaps it was a sign I should have moved on
or perhaps it was a sign
that I should stay right here.

Either way, I got a taste of what it was like.
Me and you,
and it was good.

Week 3

Been debating a "Trouble with Boys" collection.

I love the way my name sounded in his mouth.
He made it magical,
or at least his accent did.
He would say it just to hear me gasp
and so he could cover my mouth with his.

I had joked with him before that night
about how I must have been a Celt
in an alternate life,
and he agreed with me.
"No one can have that much melancholy and wit
and not have some Celt in them."

The first time I had him in my bed,
I was a bit surprised;
his face was not what I wanted it to be.
But in the dark as we lay,
eyes closed,
he reached out and whispered my name,
and I could pretend that it was all okay.

Week 2

The rain outside
took me back to India
in the middle of the monsoons.
It was late at night,
too late to stop thinking of you.
I remembered a song you sent me,
it was about having faith
and I listened to it too.

Being in love with you
requires a lot of listening,
waiting,
watching.
Too much so,
but it is too late to forget.

So I let the rains take me back to India
and the song take me back to you.
Maybe in an alternate life
things would have been easier for us two,
and I would have been married in Ireland
living life with you.

Week 1

I am starting a poem a week challenge for the next year. Hopefully by the time I'm 28, I should have 52 more poems.  I can't guarantee they will be good but it will be good to see where it takes me. This is week 1.

There was a time once
where I did not speak to anyone all weekend,
not real conversations anyway.
It was late August
and I was wearing a sweater,
seems like fall came early that year.
I caught the last little bit
of The Tragically Hip.
He screamed and cried
and dropped the mic.
He had brain cancer,
I had a migraine.
This is the way that pain flows,
in and out of consciousness.
He had a death sentence,
I had lost some friends,
Goes to show that maybe there isn't
that much space in the world after all.

Young Couple At Mass

I want this one day.


At Mass the just-married couple
hold hands in the pew. New to the parish,
they sit in front of an elderly pair,
soapy scent of a 40-year marriage,
and behind a family whose eight-year-old
leans under the seats to stare
at the many ankles and shoes.

They feel noticeable, awkward—
familiar amid the statue
of the Virgin and stations of the cross,
yet objects of the faithful eyes
around them. It’s true. At the base
of her neck and just below the short sleeves
of her blouse, her skin
blooms tan and healthy. It’s too much.
The mother of four three pews back
and across the aisle senses
something indecent in that sun-blonde hair
and the way their shoulders touch.

When they stand for Communion,
the young man places his hand
on the small of his wife’s back
to usher her into the aisle.
Square shoulders and crewcut,
he walks in line just inches behind her.
Despite the choir, she hears him breathing.

Albert Garcia

From June to December Summer Villanelle

You know exactly what to do—
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh—
I think of little else but you.

It’s bliss to have a lover who,
Touching one shoulder, makes me sigh—
You know exactly what to do.

You make me happy through and through,
The way the sun lights up the sky—
I think of little else but you.

I hardly sleep-an hour or two;
I can’t eat much and this is why—
You know exactly what to do.

The movie in my mind is blue—
As June runs into warm July
I think of little else but you.

But is it love? And is it true?
Who cares? This much I can’t deny:
You know exactly what to do;
I think of little else but you.

Wendy Cope

The Sunday News

Looking for something in the Sunday paper,
I flipped by accident to Local Weddings,
Yet missed the photograph until I saw
Your name among the headings.

And there you were, looking almost unchanged,
Your hair still long, though now long out of style,
And you still wore that stiff, ironic look
That was your smile.

I felt as though we sat there face to face.
My stomach tightened. I read the item through.
It said too much about both families,
Too little about you.

Finished at last, I put the paper down,
Stung by jealousy, my mind aflame—
Hating this man, this stranger whom you loved,
This printed name.

And yet I clipped it out to put away
Inside a book like something I might use,
A scrap I knew I wouldn’t read again
But couldn’t bear to lose.

Dana Gioia

Bright and Orange

You know you are growing older
when friendships seem to be
butterflies flying to the south
for the harsh cold winter
of your heart.

What were once bright orange
and full of life and laughter
now fly away from thee,
and you can pretend to look away no longer.
Remember when you laid under the stars with me?
We talked and we talked
and there was still a remnant
of the trail of tears that were pouring out of your face
two hours ago.

Now you are in the south
basking in the heat
and here I am looking for an egg or two
to nurture and keep,
perhaps one day you all will return to me,
bright and orange butterfly dreams.
I will remember thee.

Marriage of Many Years

Most of what happens happens beyond words.
The lexicon of lip and fingertip
defies translation into common speech.
I recognize the musk of your dark hair.
It always thrills me, though I can’t describe it.
My finger on your thigh does not touch skin—
it touches your skin warming to my touch.
You are a language I have learned by heart.

This intimate patois will vanish with us,
its only native speakers. Does it matter?
Our tribal chants, our dances round the fire
performed the sorcery we most required.
They bound us in a spell time could not break.
Let the young vaunt their ecstasy. We keep
our tribe of two in sovereign secrecy.
What must be lost was never lost on us.

Dana Gioia

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Jack Gilbert