Michele Parker Randall

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. 

Under the driver’s seat, down with fuzz, frizzled
napkins from McDonald’s, paperclips, a dime
and two darkened pennies, lies the reason I
couldn’t console you on the death of your son.
At birth, my son’s heart rate dropped with every
contraction. The nurse turned off the sound so
we wouldn’t have to hear the slowing beep—
that counting between flash and thunder—with
ever so much at stake. Me on my right side,
beep-beep, beep, but on my back or left side the
machinery would beep much slower. When
more than one doctor runs through the door at
one time, beep you know things will not end
well. But that’s not this story. Not my story. It’s
not your story, either. You had no warning. My
son survived his birth, cord thrice wrapped
around his neck; he survived toddlerhood, grade
school, and high school (just). And here, our
stories converge—one suicide completed and
one not. Forgive me. I didn’t know how to
comfort you. 

Two hours ago I took a photo of a sky
so blue it came across faked,
one of those 1000 piece puzzles 

where colors have been polarized
to a bluer multiverse; I no longer trust
any image to be true. Even mirrors 

expose a spectre, some quick flash
of a face-what-was, when
any darkness under the eyes 

developed from my choices,
legend-maker nights.
Irises clear, less sad, less 

weary. A ghost at first glance
fades into the face that is—
older, unretouched

by special effect. Without
a hint of yesterday’s
storm that cracked windows 

and trashed yards, bright
with clouds layered atop
a gemstone sky, I took a picture. 

I grew up learning which lemons were sweet enough
to eat plain & which ones to lemonade or daquiri,

or that the best candied peel comes from their cousins,
citrons, painted from Van Gogh’s palette as he worked

haystacks or sunflowers. Golder. Warmer, somehow
than the circus-trinket yellow of a fully ripe Meyer.

After reading Takamura’s elegy, now all lemons
are about Cheiko, how the fragrant oils colored

the air around them as she bit into the fruit & braided
a moment mystical—her vision clear, memory spotless.

That scrape of rind & pith against enamel. That perfume
inhaled. Then Cheiko retreating, back into the place

where her memory held her captive & a fresh coldness
became another seed of something she once knew.