Have I lived enough?
Have I loved enough?
Have I considered Right Action enough, have I come to any conclusion?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
Have I endured loneliness with grace?
I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.
Actually I probably think too much.
Then I step out into the garden,
where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,
is tending his children, the roses.
“Come to my funeral dressed as you
would for an autumn walk in the woods.
“Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission
to be late, even without good cause.
“If my day arrives when you had other plans, please
proceed with them instead. Celebrate me
“there—keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live
well. Don’t stop. Think of me forever assigned
“to a period, a place, a people. Remember me
in stories—not the first time we met, not the last,
“a time in between. Our moment here is small.
I am too—a worldly thing among worldly things—
“one part per seven billion. Make me smaller still.
Repurpose my body. Mix me with soil and seed,
“compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful,
wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow
“and decay, let me be lovely yet
temporal, like memories, like mahogany.”
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house—
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
“I.
In the basement of the crack house I used to visit
as an outreach worker on 121st street in Harlem,
I was convinced He refused
to travel north of 96th. I wrote a letter
to Joanna on her mission in Taiwan, detailed
each irrefutable piece of evidence proving
we are all, in fact, alone.
Told her about the nine-year-old orphan
forced to sell her body
for three years before ending up just off
Times Square, discarded in a dumpster.
I told her about the eldest son
who answered a burglar’s call and was shot,
paralyzed from the waist down. I asked her
about drought and famine and endless
civil wars—what lessons does His book
refuse?
“II.
When her heart rate dropped by half in less
than a minute, the population of our cramped
hospital room tripling in a handful of seconds,
I grasped for anything that would keep me
upright. At first, the wall: cool and steady,
demanding my body ascend beyond what seemed
possible. Then, nothing,
no one. I stood in the waiting room
of the O.R. waiting to be called in,
to find out if my child had survived.
I spent each second trying to pull tiny shoe-coverings
over my too-large feet. I confessed every wrong
of my life to an empty, over-lit room of steel
and sterile instruments that all reflected back
distorted versions of myself. I fumbled
for any prayer I could remember, hoping
that I had all along been mistaken about the hollow
blackness of the infinite sky. I never wanted
so badly to have been wrong
about anything in my life—
and then a disembodied
voice called out, seemingly only to me—
a tiny growl at first that blossomed
into a wail dwarfing any thought my mind
could possibly hold, any faith
I’d ever been so foolish to claim.”
They wanted to tear down the tulip tree, our neighbors, last year. It throws a shadow over their vegetable patch, the only tree in our backyard. We said no. Now they’ve hired someone to chainsaw an arm—the crux on our side of the fence—and my wife, in tousled hair and morning sweat, marches to stop the carnage, mid-limb. It reminds her of her childhood home, a shady place to hide. She recites her litany of no, returns. Minutes later, the neighbors emerge. The worker points to our unblinded window. I want to say, it’s not me, slide out of view behind a wall of cupboards, ominous breakfast table, steam of tea, our two young daughters now alone. I want no trouble. Must I fight for my wife’s desire for yellow blooms when my neighbors’ tomatoes will stunt and blight in shade? Always the same story: two people, one tree, not enough land or light or love. Like the baby brought to Solomon, someone must give. Dear neighbor, it’s not me. Bloom-shadowed, light-deprived, they lower the chainsaw again.
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and your children come home
to find their own history
in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?
This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.
When you have no words for the wounds
when your body is as hallowed out and dark
as a jack-o-lantern
in November
when you have lost your north, your south,
your east and your west
stay still.
Words for the pain are forming
beneath the skin of your patience.
Your body is gathering light for winter.
Your compass is emerging through water.
Sometimes dying is the only way to live again.
It may take all your stories away.
It may hunt and kill your pride
so you are left with nothing
but questions and space
howling into the night
what next? what now? what for?
This is when grace
pours her warm milk
into your wounds
and advises you to rest.
To steal the secrets of sorrow
and learn her heavy song
so that you can become an instrument
of resilience, turning ever forward
with more than you were born with.
For isn’t holding hands with
sorrow a bridge?
Dying while you are alive
birthing your next self
and then
beginning anew.
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
Wild & Precious Life 