Month: July 2010

Forty-three Miles

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forty-three miles
and we have left behind the skyline
(cash register, stadium, buildings so new
i cannot recognize their sunken Saturday lights)
that i saw first at seven, then nine,
then permanently at eleven

we are surrounded by pines
and the famous aspens,
the cabin built from the ground up
with logs pasted together,
stone fireplace, wood stove,
eclectic collection of furniture
(home away from home)

we follow the girls along
the not-so-traveled path,
pine emanating its Rocky Mountain
odor into our altitude-chilled skin,
and I remember
(oh how I remember)
why Colorado is
home, home, home.

Signature and All

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five minutes coming in
(clouds as dark as Grim)
thirty-five going out
but i hold him on the cover
proud as a mother

“still have the ornament”
i tell her
“signature and all”
and it’s like it never rained

she puts my bike in her car
(it fits with drunken maneuvering)
i don’t want the night to be over
(been in a dry county for months)
but we head home

the blue sky beckons in the sunset
three girls as excited
as the inebriated reunion at the bar
yelling their no-rain song
to the unforgiving sky

i sit across from him
legs interlaced
(“they’re on a date”—four-year-old)
and display my magazine cover
my middle school crush
is now famous

he reads the article
interest piqued
and Mondo’s face grins up
just like in eighth grade
when he wouldn’t wear
the same outfit within a month
i think he’ll win
(he’s already won)

My Mountain

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For Olivia

walking together
hands apart
we could climb
slope after slope

it could be pretty
with shrubs
and wildflowers
and young scrub oaks

it might sprinkle,
sparkling your eyes
just a tad with
twisted rays of light

you could lead the way
and i could follow
(something new for me)
and give in to your desires.

but

it wouldn’t build
our hamstrings
with the ever-harder
mountain climbs

it wouldn’t bring
us (no matter how many slopes)
to the glorious
tops of fourteeners

it would never be the same
as tall pines giving way
to snow-covered peaks,
to insurmountable beauty

it would be you and i
new and rounded
(soft and wary)
not as hard-won as the years
(the poking-into-sky
sharp-at-our-cores
daring-to-be-ourselves
mountain peaks)
i have given to her,
my mountain,
my home,
my love.

Wash

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with water everything is pure
from sandy shores to lakes demure
it washes off and cools us down
and shatters each internal frown

with water we wash out the weak
replacing it with a stronger streak
of life that breeds within the deep
bringing forth the hope we need to keep

with water we have a clearer light
on days that inevitably end in night
it guides us there and guides us back
and washes out what once was black.

With This Pedal

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with this pedal I thee wed
a life that’s mine (inside my head)
to remember all that is momentous
and forget everything circuitous

with this pedal I will fly
into my life, by and by
taking with me all that’s past
leaving behind what I’ve surpassed

with this pedal I am me
more than elsewhere I could be
to speak my mind and ache my soul
to take the parts and make them whole

with this pedal I thee wed
a life that’s mine (inside my head)
to remember all that brought me here
to forget all that should disappear.

Idiom

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there’s no question that you and I
circle together in yin and yang;
just throw your worries into the sky
‘cause without your buck I’d have no bang.

it may seem like a common idiom
to say that opposites attract;
we swing on both sides of the pendulum—
when I go forward, you pull back.

but nothing’s common about our love
for thirteen years in the making;
without you I could not rise above
all that together we have forsaken.

so swallow these words and keep them deep
as black against white balance out;
until the moment of my last sleep
you have my heart without a doubt.

Layers

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with turbulence bouncing her brain,
she rests her eyes
and recounts
(rebreathes relives)
the memory.

haunt
pleasure
remorse
renewal
and words that
can’t define it.

she traps it there
(behind the eyelids)
for no one else to see.

like a kidnapped child,
it will not submit
no matter how many
locks she places on its cage.

she searches for the keys
but
they have been lost in layers
of days and months and years
that only allow her this one
to keep
to keep without release.

Home at Last

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for a thousand miles
we see the reach of
the Mighty Mississippi,
the river we bought
for pennies on the dollar,
the river of dreams
(sometimes nightmares),
the river that feeds us all
and doesn’t feed us.

after cornfield gives way
to soybean field and
amber waves of wheat,
all i can think about are the bison
who ate and fertilized
this prairie, feeding
ten thousand generations
and yet
we destroy it
with unnecessary crops
feeding cattle that could
(and would) do the same as the bison.

as night gives in to day
we cross the border
and see cows in pasture
(home at last)
a truck with a Kentucky plate
(home at last)
and hope that one day
we will release
the native grasses
and allow the prairie
to be home at last.

Varying Shades

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somehow
despite their travels on
long-sunken ships
they have nestled in amongst
those that are native

in varying shades
of the colors of God
(who you hope to meet one day),
they intertwine
their lacework leaves,
dot the sky with flowers
as bright as our imaginations,
and root out homes in
fantastical forests.

though you think that only
ugliness
breeds each time they reproduce,
for the rest of us
all we see is the beauty
that still exists in this world.

Shine

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a flash and a dash
is all i really remember
(silvery as sun-spotted fish
darting in and out of rocks)

now the swim startles my senses
freezes my (once warm) skin
but i am like those fish and i
will shine, shine, shine under the sun.