Poetry

Daughter, you light the morning
breeze above our garden
with a mist of color, a prism
from a common water hose.

Your sapling fingers helped seed
the rows I point toward, and
at my side you point too—
a shadow within my shadow.

Beneath your pink ball cap, you
squint and I see your birth-
mother’s eyes, wet, seeking
the same arc promised by sky.

I wonder, wherever she is,
each time she fronts the light and
looks back, does she still see you
in the womb of her shadow?

The sidewalk chalk chips its way
across the driveway in the directionless
line of our adopted son who holds it tight,
as if to mark each moment in powder.

One at a time he picks from the bucket
colors that are difficult to distinguish
pale yellows, whites, and purples. Particles
which wash easily from preschool clothing

and turn a toddler’s scabbed knees pastel.
Hues that merge like memory when wet.
He pauses to draw a circle with eyes,
ears, and mouth, then attaches a stick body

with three-fingered hands reaching out wide
in one-dimension. “I draw mommy,” he says.
And I wonder if he pictures his birth mother,
or if he shapes her from a distance as I do,

his creation no more crude than mine
after reading the DCS report.
Or is it his foster mom of 18 months
who told us her driveway had been his easel

and of how she would spell their names
on the steps knowing it wasn’t permanent?
Or is it me? His first figure to not fade
in tomorrow’s rain.

Cold hemocoels of the mollusk,
ambergris lanced from a demigod’s head,

ballasts shifted according to the tide.
Long necks in Styrofoam

filled with ice.
The sea produces grey scales

no animal can wear.
The eyes have microcosmic

temperaments so that to speak
of storms must be a literal act,

a description indifferent to
the eventuality of wreckage

and submersion, the steady
leach of summer. A freight

of stone trudges further into
depths over the course

of an afternoon. I can name
every kind of wave that carries it.

Fluid has time been, slipping
through my fingers like a chill
glacial stream, slipping
grains of sandy soil grating
against my skin … what was
yesterday, when is tomorrow?
… all a blur, cloudy, murky with
uncertainties in this time uncertain
the chill sinking deep, deep
past skin, through muscles …
… to mere bone …

Roots sinking deep into the rich soil, breaking loose the earth, thin, hairy tendrils creeping
… weaving … gathering nutrients that course through the xylem, into my body, limbs reaching into
the azure sky, capturing clouds … tender leaves wavering in the breeze that’s a quiet breath,
respiring, creating oxygen for gecko & squirrel that scurry over the rough bark … leaves
sketching images, casting shadows with mosaicked sunlight … limbs thinning to twigs, slim &
fragile – yet strong, holding, creating life, fingers splaying, gathering air & warmth … & those
twigs thicken & grow new twigs, continuing life ….

Figment

Time weaves joy into a poem,
shapes it into a cup,
and offers it up to souls 

hurting. I drink its intentions,
water with leached words
enters the mouth, courses 

veins and eases the machinery
of grief. Distress
quenched. And this sounds 

like alchemy. And this feels
like mysticism. And if I thought
it worked I would never stop 

writing. Joy sails
and smoke-slithers away,
visible but out of grasp, 

which wind (uncontrollable)
launches. Even the fear of
the next gust is (inevitable)

enough to summon a quick breeze
to aloft all. Joy stacks
up, like flat rocks sized atop 

another—not mile marker,
sign, or landmark for other
travelers but a cairn— 

a holdfast, my attempt
to altar what I can’t anchor.

*****

Fragment 

Regular fear turns to dread in a fraction of a second:
Are you the parent of— 

the mortgage of every moment
first fought through plays out
as full-volume static. 

You are unable to hear This number was marked as home—
the sound, the tone, the glint. 

We found this phone down
by— the river, the beach,
behind a bar. How does anyone

actually hear of a loved one’s end, and not drown in words,
voice thready as they explain 

why can’t-be. We are trying
to locate the family of— 
this circle, this cycle, the dance.   

Their can you confirm what
jewelry they were wearing—
Your No. Your no no no no no— Unending, deafening tolling; 

in a fragment of a second,
you navigate back around
to fear—fist-clenched, jaw-

locked. Countless, visible, indelible, the sounds
orbit like icy-blue particles:
as if you were Saturn.

*****

Movement

Florida’s sauna-like heat creates
an exhaustive becoming. Invasive
fauna or native, today a wild grape
vine waves
mid-climb
up a water oak,
one tendrilled fist tight closed around
a fallen cabbage palm frond, brown,
moldy & hanging on, but not grounded.
Am I the tree, the vine,
or the frond? The dead
held fast by one thin, green finger?
So invested in where I am going,
I am no longer aware of what I am
clinging to.
Perhaps, sheltering
arms, oblivious
to what lies beneath me because—let’s face it—
my lifespan falls shorter than I care to admit.
Yes.

Yes,
I am the vine, the tree, the branch. I exist
on the same trunk & I am all—rhythm, movement,
structure, & also an elemental fourth thing:
joy. Where else can I live? 

*****

Easement

A rib in the remains of a bulkhead, light streams
into the tanker from the rent side, illuminating
another’s world to me.
Sugar ant sized,
and pink-red,
inhabitants hundreds
full. A happen-stance. A single moment
in a new place.
All at once
immersed
in a dance
of creatures, how I imagine stars gambol
when we aren’t looking. Their constellation
pulls breath from me, then replaces it. The lilt
just above the ocean floor echoes fog, early
morning, how it rests on a cushion of unseen,
over a grassy hill. The many atmospheres hold me,
weighted A blanket. That moment
unmatched,
suspended
as I was.
Expended air rises,
glass beads on invisible string.

*****

Element

Leaving the hospital with my newborn child = newfound joy.
Leaving the hospital after my child’s self-inflicted trauma = 

joy-cautious. He wades in perceived failure. I dive full in;
I have failed him. Day-bright air sneaks into lungs cold 

constricted with fear. All feels temporary, slippery, slick-
unnamable. Terror chokes on food, shakes down image-

memory, sound-memory; word associations sidle up to
knowledge that one child’s failed departure is their parent’s 

joy-careful. Joy-guarded. Joy-tender who sleeps outside
the bedroom to keep him safe. Soon, echoes of infancy—

first smile, first mom, first time he reaches for my hand,
the first time he initiates conversation just to talk, initiates 

a hug, walks with his head up, makes eye contact, feels glad,
at last, to be here. Joy—that day when the mental to-do list

does not include re-checking all the rooms or the equation:
ikeep everyone + in this house + alive =  joy reverberant.