Growth Rings
This morning, I sat on the edge of the Chattahoochee,
where I waded and prayed for turtles as a child.
The damp sand on my feet reminded me
I can still count the 1,464 days,
a season of my life I have marked off
sometimes in sharp seconds,
now more often in epochs:
the dark age of torpor and tears,
the ice age of vodka and headrush chaos,
the gradual warming, an approximation of patience.
I saw myself on the east bank of the Jordan,
alone in company,
turning over prisms of metaphors
about silty baptisms, plastic bottles with portable blessings,
the tortoise-like armor of Israeli guards
across the tranquil flow of river.
The next moment could so easily not have happened at all.
I was already home,
no more threatened than any other new soul
unschooled in the body's share of salt.
But I glanced back--
which is maybe to say
my eyes wandered from my work.
And I saw myself being seen
by eyes dark as the soil
that will eventually welcome me as a feast.
I still cannot fault myself.
I still cannot imagine what sacrilege it would be to resist
being seen from crown to lips to heart to hunger to toes
in the space of a breath.
Sometimes love grows like bamboo--
fast and reckless,
taking burnished height as its due,
rigid and hollow.
The ancient sound it makes
when the wind passes through,
the startling crack when it is broken
echoing off unsympathetic stone.
Some say these reeds--
macheted,
ground to pulp,
pressed into the invitation of paper--
could save us from slowly suffocating ourselves.
They may let us give these now tender oaks
the nobility of old age,
built in proud circles from inside out,
long after we have surrendered
by force or grace.
2 January 2020
Yes, No, Maybe
It is true that it is always day one,
if you are feeling philosophical
and a little buoyant.
It is also true that it is always day two,
and, for that matter, day 7,729
from some marker,
and there is no doubt that
you take up this new mantle
with some wear and tear.
Which is what I was thinking this morning
because I have this spot on my thigh
that could be the stubborn memory
of a cigarette burn from those days
or could be cancer.
And it's fine either way really
because I'm not afraid of much,
there are people who know just the thing to do,
and next to no one has viewing rights
to my thighs these days.
There are some mornings I wake up
saying yes to anything that will listen,
like when I've been dreaming
of mountain laurel flowers shaped like starbursts
or of meeting a llama in the early morning mist
at Machu Picchu.
There are other days I wake up
saying no,
usually because I am gearing up again
to make that one catastrophic decision--
you know the one
that always wears different clothes
but leaves the same stink.
The no's rarely stick,
heady resolve notwithstanding.
It is better to wait on the rest
until we have some time to talk, you and I,
to catalogue that absolutes
that own us in part,
and rehearse the etymology of maybe.
We should decide if it is about
possibility or permission.
It's January, and I am now aware
that once you reach a certain age,
the winter is so long in coming
that you lose the autumn expecting it,
and by the time it is in hand,
the daffodils are already announcing its end.
Only the spring goes on and on in real time.
And really all I mean to say
is that you were young once--
no, not a tragedy--
and yes, you will be young again,
but differently, maybe.
It is true that it is always day one,
if you are feeling philosophical
and a little buoyant.
It is also true that it is always day two,
and, for that matter, day 7,729
from some marker,
and there is no doubt that
you take up this new mantle
with some wear and tear.
Which is what I was thinking this morning
because I have this spot on my thigh
that could be the stubborn memory
of a cigarette burn from those days
or could be cancer.
And it's fine either way really
because I'm not afraid of much,
there are people who know just the thing to do,
and next to no one has viewing rights
to my thighs these days.
There are some mornings I wake up
saying yes to anything that will listen,
like when I've been dreaming
of mountain laurel flowers shaped like starbursts
or of meeting a llama in the early morning mist
at Machu Picchu.
There are other days I wake up
saying no,
usually because I am gearing up again
to make that one catastrophic decision--
you know the one
that always wears different clothes
but leaves the same stink.
The no's rarely stick,
heady resolve notwithstanding.
It is better to wait on the rest
until we have some time to talk, you and I,
to catalogue that absolutes
that own us in part,
and rehearse the etymology of maybe.
We should decide if it is about
possibility or permission.
It's January, and I am now aware
that once you reach a certain age,
the winter is so long in coming
that you lose the autumn expecting it,
and by the time it is in hand,
the daffodils are already announcing its end.
Only the spring goes on and on in real time.
And really all I mean to say
is that you were young once--
no, not a tragedy--
and yes, you will be young again,
but differently, maybe.
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