Good Grief and the Goodness of Grief (February 2021)

Whether a story is passed down orally, through dance, in literature—
It only matters to me that it is 
And that they are. 

Most everything to be learned has been experienced before.
It is a matter of walking towards
Instead of away from. 

Locking a moment in time 
With goosebumps and silent undulations. 
We take time 
and make time 
In your hundred year old room. 

It might be a hundred and two. 
I don’t really know. 
I wasn’t listening. 

Train calls rattle the windows inside of their panes,
But your head doesn’t move from the pillow. 
A depth, 
Withheld from the world. 
Remember that just past the tips of my fingers
Is my love for you. 

Your streets are littered with chicken bones.
Crumbling walls
Reveal your iron skeleton.

The wake of your leaving is crashing through me. 
It will dissipate.
But for now, the waves bombard me,
And slam into my sides. 
They freeze my ribs,
And force my lungs to fall flat. 

A fire burns out.
The last cracks sputter beneath the mantle.
The rain and the embers whisper about the end.
In the spring, life is spent among the plants. 
A touch here, 
A caress there. 

Inhale.
Inflammation. 
Plants, how they love their love-making. 
Exhale. 

Oh fog,
My companion. 

It’s the death of something. 
Certainly, it’s the death of someone.
The ringing, ringing, ringing.
The era of glass relationships, lacking touch.
The only hands I know are my own.

Blistered.
Raw.
Peeling open while doors close.
And, of course, there’s the missing. 

The rain is quieter now.
The wisteria’s heavy—resting its head from the weight of it all.
But I’m here, 
And my yellowed windows have been cleaned.

Pizza crumbs stick to my thighs.
I want your eyes
To dust them off.

Undress me.
Lick the olive oil filling up my creases.

May 20
Stock Her Kitchen With:
One head of Broccoli 
Three long carrots 
Two red onions
Two yellow onions
One head of garlic
Bag of sweet potatoes 
Baby spinach
Spring mix lettuces
Three lemons
Clementines 
Three bananas
Strawberries
Grapes 
Two mangoes
One whole pineapple 
Two-three avocados 
Tomatoes on the vine 
Bell peppers
Plain Greek yogurt 
Brown rice
Basmati rice 
Honey 
Whole Edamame
Extra virgin olive oil
Coconut oil 
Cheese
Eggs
Vegetable broth
Balsamic vinegar 

We met by the river in Regensburg,
And sat to admire the bathing ducks.
She bought me a rum raisin gelato.
Then we popped into her aunt’s cheese shop.

Resting on a terrace, we discussed politics.
In the evening, she drove us to Walhalla.
It was built for King Ludwig. 
A name, to be sure.  

Overlooking the Danau,
We watched the sheep 
And listened to the bells around their necks
Jingling into the misty green.

From these wrinkled sheets
And the mountains that separate us,
I almost feel your fingertips on my skin 
And my warm tickling your thigh.

The ghostly plateaus and plains of you linger.
Your familiar topography.  
The coyotes yip to the sky from your terrain. 
But over here, they only eat cats. 

The moment we forget—
It's human instinct
To forget

But the forgetting builds walls.
Instead of breaking down barriers to see your neighbor, 
You close your blinds and lock your doors.

Maybe you shout to the sky and hear the sky cry back.
If you remember,
You will know.

That is what it means to be alive.

I was behind the wheel of a dinky rental car with her at my side.
She is a terrible driver.
Worse off than me.

As we puttered through the Bosnian mountains at sunset,
We could see the sun burning into the lake below.

That is when I noticed it.
The mountain, directly ahead, completely ablaze.
With a road too narrow to turn around, 
We climbed on.

The higher we rose, the more the smoke began to plume through the rental’s Japanese manufactured vents. 
The rocks at the bottom of the cliffs became jaws.
Licking tongue over teeth
Salivating
Waiting for something, anything to wrap themselves around.

We turned the corner, 
And a dirt road appeared. 
We took it.

You becomes a lot of people.

Let’s figure out where we should make compromises.
Maybe we can buy a plot of land near water.
You could even develop a garden there.
Doesn’t that sound nice?

Listened to my grandpa snore so loudly
That he woke himself up.
I chuckled. 

Spotted: 
A shirtless man bench-pressing his shovel 
In the back of a pickup truck. 

He was friendly 
And gave me a head nod
Before going back to his exercise. 

August 11
The Mollusk

Lines of connectivity
tethered,
weathered,
and torn.

Maybe your years surpass one hundred,
Maybe you are unborn.
Perhaps, reborn as walleye.
No, wait: a mollusk in a shell.

Pearlescent, 
cracked,
discarded,
retrieved later from the well.

Threaded through by braided wool,
Warmed by her chest and neck.
Dipping back into the river
The Sainted Lawrence of Quebec. 

I want to kiss you and hug you and hold you tight
Y fingir
Y fingir
Y fingir

She was the oldest of seven children. 
They slept in the same bed while their mamá sold herself.
Mamá left and got married to help, but she never sent anything. 

They slept in the same bed.
One morning, they woke up to find the baby smothered and cold. 

Mamá called for her to cross.
So she did.
She was the best tomato-picker, but hardly ever saw the money that mamá stole from her. 

She was sold for a night.
They slept in the same bed.
She got pregnant.

She met someone who loved her.
They became Seventh Day Adventists. 
They slept in the same bed.

He decided it was okay to touch his family.
She left him.
And took her rice recipe with her and the children.

The youngest made it for me once. 
It called for tomatoes,
Best if picked right from the garden.

It was delicious, 
But we couldn’t eat it all.
It sleeps in the flower bed.

Why is this still something that draws us and traps us?
Damn that cookie jar. 
My exoskeleton is completely adhered to the sticky paper.
I’ll keep waving my legs, hoping to pop over, but I think I know what’s coming for me.
Do we know how to stop this constant consumption,
This refusal to die?

Send my love to the intrusion. 

What if all that you do in your life is your love letter to the universe?
First we must learn how to read.
Then we can learn how to write. 
Please disregard the notes in the margins. 

Exploring the collections
The process of keeping
The secret keeping 
The secret telling

The letters that were never burned
Though found in that box marked, “Burn When I’m Gone”

Did you really used to sing me Guantamera?
I remember the bricks that were laid by papa and Chris.
I wish they would be friends.
They could be.
What a terrible thing to end a relationship after fifty years.

Do you remember dying?
You thought that the white flowers falling from the spring trees were snow.
You said it had been a long while and couldn’t stop smiling.
I held your papery hand and agreed that it was a beautiful snowstorm.

Any story worth hearing is an exaggerated truth.

Alligator skin.
I’ll scratch my ragged nails across you.
Until the scales flake off.

Maybe I’ll collect them and turn them into a designer handbag.
It can’t be too difficult.

She stitched seeds into her hem
And made the children carry terra-cotta pots on the plane.
Her jasmine flowers are the biggest.

Catching crawdads in the stormdrain
By the bank covered in daffodils
Tall grass, way past cutting
Overgrown asparagus
A pear tree in the middle of the yard
Planted lilies from the funeral
Robins doing robin things
A compost pile—mostly grass
Mosquitos
Fire ants waiting in the dirt for me

Blackberry bushes near the badminton net
Pretending we we right proper
Stained fingertips and mouths
Getting in trouble before dinner because we snuck too many
Upset stomachs
“I told you so’s”

Do you remember floating the baby pool into the deep end?
We all climbed in from the diving board.
And used branches and floats to paddle our way across. 
Pretending we were crossing uncharted waters.

Old chicken coop turned shed
Rotting wood
Climbing the tin roof to hide among the wisteria vines
Barefoot
Always barefoot
A cloud gazer over her bamboo forest 

There was a hole in the wall
And in that viny green wallpaper too
Toilet paper was often shoved in there
Although it was occasionally plucked or poked out

Everyone got locked in
At least once 
That sink
Where did you come from?
I hope you’re doing okay. 

Over drawings
Coronavirus 
Quarantine
March 2020
A time to be nostalgic and think on what has been good

Maybe we can learn the difference
In wants and needs
To take only what is necessary
To remember that living is the gift

And when we’ve done that
We can tie blankets over their shoulders
And play make-believe 

Red Mulberry Tree
Your bark is grey-brown and quite irregular
It has long, scaly ridges

However, when you were young, you were orangish when wet
You moody tree, you

A little baby rant concerning Alabama Power:
Germany is number one in the world for solar energy. 
Alabama has been called a bad place for solar energy, but it receives more sunlight than Germany. 

If I collected all of the tears of life, 
I could fill the earth with another ocean.
We might even build boats and wave to each-other from their decks.

Glory is palpable through words.
Our stories are not our own.

Kids picking out guns
For birthday presents.

Invasive plant species in Alabama:
Kudzu
Hydrilla
Alligator Weed
Tallowtree
Cogongrass
Chinese Privet
Topical Soda Apple
Japanese Climbing Fern
Multiflora Rose
Eurasian Watermilfoil
Balloon Vine
Air-Potato
Old World Climbing Fern
Skunk Vine
Mile-A-Minute Vine
Japanese Stilt Grass
Torpedo Grass
Common Reed
Garlic Mustard

Take a right at Dreamland.
Go up, up, up, up.
When you see the house with the columns, start to go a little slower, or you’ll miss it.

There’s a teeny alley, covered in vines.
Turn there.
Make sure you don’t hit any cats.
They are crawlin’ all over the place.

When you come up on the picket fence, pull in.
The gate should be open, but if not, you’ll have to get out of the car and move the latch.
Park by the flower beds and don’t mind the mess.
We weren’t able to rake the yard this week.

Now when you get there, you’ll see a little path by the house.
There’s a plastic box right along the path that holds his food.
Open the box and shake the bag.
He’ll come a runnin’.

Give him one scoop in the morning and one in the evening.
The water spigot is on the side of the house.

While hopping up onto the curb, 
I twisted my ankle.
It landed me right back to where I started:
On the ground, 
Writhing in pain.
Like my mother when she bore me.

Elbows only four inches apart,
And creeping ever closer.
Her hand moves to his keyboard,

Scrolling through endless pages
She angles her head to see better.
He turns and nods.

She smiles.
They’ve agreed.
They are going to buy the sweater.