A Parting Gift

The eyes carry
a story.

I should dive inside
that liquid center
comb the wreckage
for what I know
but have no memory
of seeing.

Drown, just enough
so God can show me-

the moment
before he left-
his small apartment, Los Angeles,
his baby girl.

Maybe he paused
to take one last look-

at the shimmery ceiling, the dull heat,
her delicate face
and whispered in her ear
a tender goodbye.

before leaving

Don't be so weak
she said

Weakness
broken down by someone
so
broken
down

Her slack body had wept
in my open arms
so I carried
her emptiness and
the men

his cigarettes
and black coffee
after dinner

his two children
suddenly
ours

my father
torn from photos
told to me in vignettes

Tonight I understand

I slip
into my own arms
tend quietly
to my own loss
alone

my poem for January

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

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.

Entry

Everywhere she looked smoke and steam were rising into the air.

In the back seat of the car, clothes clung to her skin, wet from the unrelenting heat. Her eyes begged for rest but she continued to marvel at the earth unfolding before her.

The road was remarkably narrow. A thin gray ribbon wrapped around the lush green mountains, beside the winding Takahashi River, ready to be untied. Layers of mist floated above the river, a diaphanous gauze dressing laid against a deep, unending wound. The August rain fell in sheets against this small town and beat loudly on the roof of the car.

Her heart billowed with the trees and burned with the fires set by men on the side of the road.

Finally, she thought, I am here.

crowded rooms

across the room
we met in the middle
you put your arms around everyone
i slipped right in -
why not?

we stay here
out on the periphery
but occasionally,
we dance
in crowded rooms
when this life or
that death, or
that memory, is too much.

Mystic Mocha

She was looking for inspiration, for just the right place, for just the right feeling. But it wasn't here.

It wasn't this wooden park bench, awash with a hint of purple. The table's surface weathered by the sun or by another writer perhaps, whose pen excavated the beginnings of a story. It wasn't here. This would not be the place for any of her memories to begin, especially when she was hungry and breakfast wasn't served after three.

But the cafe knew to play Fleetwood Mac, long enough for her to enjoy a scone and two shots of espresso.

"If it's too strong, you can water it down" the young barista explained.

It was too strong, she remembered, the words he wrote.

In those letters he sent her from Hawaii to Los Angeles. He raced across the island to listen to the songs that she said, kept him alive in her heart over the summer. And so their love began, with Fleetwood Mac, the Pacific Ocean and the rest of August between them.

Sitting there on the purple park bench, she stared at the paths before her. Mission. Alabama. Monroe. Signs stood everywhere, each adding to the cacophony of unwelcome signs. This too convinced her that it wasn't here.

The sun a warm blanket, the soft breeze a welcome chill.
The color, her favorite hybrid of red and blue.
The quiet, despite the voice in everything beside her.

This would not be the place, the temperature, or the muse.

So she left the sun and the music. She left the scone half finished, the coffee, strong. She loved this place, but she decided to go. She was hungry for more even though she didn't know what more meant.

Life in Bytes

Kilobytes. Megabytes. Gigabytes. Terabytes.

Memory by memory, piece by piece, byte by byte, I've been unearthing, reorganizing, and saving my life. Photographs into a portable, external hard drive. 500 GB. Music into an iPod. 120 GB.

Gigabyte.

It's an endless task! I'm tired. I didn't know that so much life has happened. And it never stops, I'm so happy it hasn't.

Life keeps rising. When does it all overflow? Is that death? Is death when your body runs out of space? Out of capacity to store memory? When we are all full, where does it all go? Is the universe where it goes? Is that the river? The perfection? The om?

I love believing that we all eventually become one. A world wide web of darkness, where we shine.

Brilliantly. Infinite.

Proust's Cup of Tea

"But when from a long - distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persisitent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."

Excerpt from Swann's Way

Try, try as I may to live in the present, the past always finds me or I always steal time to look for it. So it's true, remembering can also be beautiful.