p.a.d. day eighteen

Conversation

I remember my mouth moving,
words spilling out upon the hospital blanket.
I remember him answering
in between labored breaths.
I wanted to lean in closer
so I could hear what he said
but I was still afraid
to get too close to him.
I remember that everything in the room
seemed larger than he did
and that I kept clenching and
unclinching my fists
like they were jellyfish,
like if I opened and closed them enough
I could propel myself right out the window.
I remember looking at
the potted orchid
beside the soap dispenser
and how the labellum
looked like a polka-dot pocket
full of words left unsaid.

p.a.d. day seventeen

All I Want is Spring

I walk back streets
admiring the dandelions
in unkempt lawns,
the elegant curve
of a gnarled
cherry blossom branch, spontaneous
rain showers,
earthworms in garden soil,
gray squirrels
clipping buds
from the maple trees, and,
overhead, a flock of
snow geese,
fragile and determined as
a girl in Sunday lace
who happens upon
a mud puddle.

poem-a-day challenge *** day sixteen

White

Driving through
the empty plains
I saw the child
wearing
a white
death mask
a pink dress
shaped like
an hourglass
yellow flower
clutched in her fist
silent
calm
beyond
the looming storm
the white cold
of the plaster mask
and her bare legs
so close
to the mouth
of the tiger
prowling
among
leaves of grass.

p.a.d. - day fifteen

The Tin Man

One must have a mind of Myth
To regard the pain and the suffering
Of impending death grafted with grief;

And have been crushed a long time
To behold the fractured bones skewered with steel,
The amputated leg still throbbing on the fragmented altar

Of pain killers; and not to think
Of any catastrophe in the bones of the x-ray,
In the dream of a newborn baby,

Which is the dream of the orchid
Full of the same tears
That are falling in the same blue sky

For the watcher, who watches through the mirror,
And, broken himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the everything that is.

p.a.d. day fourteen

When I Think About Love

I think about running in circles,
changes of clothes, new hairdos,
endless peanut butter sandwiches
stuck to the roof of my mouth,
and then one night, walking downtown,
there you were, and my phantom life
flashed real, and nothing else
mattered but this new fire burning
like the street lamp on 4th Avenue.

p.a.d. day thirteen

How Can I Write Poetry

when the boy who
draws pictures of knights on
the floor next to my desk
wants to play, to run in the grass
with bare feet? All my life
I have longed to be alone with words,

a l o n e ,

lonely even, to dive into loneliness,
that inky eternity beyond eternity,
nothing to distract me. But for now
there’s a boy slowly pointing
a toy sword at me, and
his laugh is like the echoes of a wave,
like a starry wave, like an answer.
I am watching
to see how it’s done.

Day Twelve - NaPoWriMo

So We Decided to Burn, Burn, Burn. . .

like the homes of
contract Chinese workers
laying the steel rails
of a narrow gauge spur line
from Olympia to Tenino
who escaped into
the snow of Christmas Eve
with nothing but blankets
wrapped around their bodies like
coat of plates,
like the Chinese hand laundry
on the northwest corner
of 5th Avenue and Water Street
that disappeared
while its owner was
rafting mill waste wood to
heat the laundry water,
like the incense and
fireworks of Forest Cemetery
in springtime
where ancestral bones
lay waiting for
the bone gatherer
to carry them
to Heaven.