Poetry

            I thank God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the 
            blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

            E.E. Cummings

I view the ripe rind of the ice-capped isle from the foreign deck, silent, bleak peaks, dusty brown rock strewn with mangy growth stretch to water’s edge, where whispering shallows shelter bright sapphire mussels, perhaps to be snatched by sharp-eyed gulls that screech over olive green granite ledge. Cowered by cut-glass glacier whose calves melt to mounds of emerald mosses, seen by those who care to seek. Snowy bog cotton, pink young lasses, daises dressed in Sunday best, blazes of buttercups, blueberries, minty pixie cups, budding birch, baby blue hare bell, round red heath, and blankets of orange lichen that will crack ancient slate-grey boulders, at glacial speed.

Crystal waterfalls trace shadowy clefts that ribbon to rivers, feed sweet angelica and spicy arctic thyme, lavender labrador leaves brew weathered dreams in rainbows of bright homes. Villages of fisherman mine gold from the sea through salt spray in shimmering light of endless day as did sage Inuit whalers in tanned skin qajaq, taming white-capped waves that harbor ivory-tusked walrus, humpback, minke, narwhal cruising in cold arctic waters as I leave the land’s deep, diverse, and peaceful shades of green.
 

The room is yours, like the house, like the sun, like 
the man you want me to call Papa.

There are hands. His. Yours. Hands that push and sting and 
choke my body. My body, also yours.

There’s a mouth. I flinch when it calls my name. Everything is so ugly 
in the mouth, especially me.

It’s all for your own good, you say with kindness; 
your kindness also a mouth.

There’s a window. It lets nothing out, not even air.
In the room in my dreams, I sit by the window and sing to the moon.

Behind me, the old fan cricks and cracks and groans like an ailing ghost. 
I sing and sing, louder and louder, so I never look at it too long.

A shack where a house once stood
Shingles that hang on by a thread
This was once a home

Built by muscled men
Carefully crafted to withstand anything
Except time

A porch where many once sat
Is now a stiff wind from extinction
Rusted rockers turned from green to brown

A screen door shredded
From temple to tetanus

The roof appears to cave
While the foundation holds firm
A home that once slept six

A time capsule
Full of firsts and lasts
Nothing left but ruins and

Memories clinging to the insides
The house is empty
But the home still stands

*On August 9th 1914, British troops departed to Germany for WWI. By the end of the barbaric war, 3-4 million women were estimated to have been widowed. 
 
Baby August has told her first untruth. 
Buds bloom no more to meet a genial world. 
The widow seizes all the pendant flowers  
with which she sought to bid her spouse farewell.
An ave before he was enmeshed in war.
Candles alive to witness one more love 
have danced themselves to death and killed their flame. 
She cannot rid her coverlet of wrinkles. 
She cannot clasp a glass of wine without  
scowling askance at its momentous shade.  
She distrusts the cup; trusts more in malaise,
distrusts the very fairness of her skin. 
She finds her pallor does not need her hug
to blanch her husband; fear can do as much. 
Azures darken with the smoke of chimneys 
whilst vaguely through an open door, she hears 
her curtains, bandying with winds of fate. 
He breathes, he breathes—can she be widowed thus? 
She strips her newly funereal bed,
dethroning love through taking down his roses. 
Yet neglecting some petals on her sheets 
which mourned their king’s expulsion when— 
having washed them too—mistakenly—they  
tinged her covers in a cruel crimson. 
Then when she made some play of them in hand
the reddest of the petals poured their flush. 
Purpled sinks, bloodied hands but—of whose blood? 
She has read her husband’s fate upon their walls.
Interpreting the muteness of her home
and wordless corridors as signs to know,
that though he breathes—she is a widow.

             Sobriety: Day 0

I don’t know why this time was different
other than time, air & light that it is, was
filling less of me. For fifteen years I was a tick
that if pulled would pucker the skin before
the neck severed, head still buried & sucking
a last second or two, unaware the wine-red
blood had nowhere to go.

The Rioja In the back of the pantry had aged
since our first year of marriage. Like equity
& intimacy, so easy early on, we’d kept it wrong.
So when we opened the vinegar it had become,
you stopped at a glass while I finished the bottle.
On principle, I told myself. Tomorrow
I’m quitting. I’m quitting tomorrow. 

Physical
              Sobriety: Day 77

My doctor holds a vial of my blood up
to the light like a kaleidoscope, turns it,
shakes it, then hides it in his fist.
He makes a finger gun with the other hand
and shoots it. When he opens his fist,
it’s gone. He pulls it back into the world
from behind my ear and pours my blood
into a dutch oven which he bakes for
a few minutes while he waves a divining rod
around my torso. “How’s your spam
filter?” he asks. I put my hand on my side.
“I can’t really feel it anymore.”
The timer dings and when he lifts the lid
the whole clinic smells like goulash.
“Your late autumn light has stabilized,”
he says, my improvements perplexing him.
I inform him that I no longer partake.
“Ah, that would do it,” he says.
“You should also limit your intake of flattery.”
Not really a problem, I tell him.
“I can order a CT of your lusts if you want
but check with your insurance first.”
Here, he turns serious and meets my eyes
with a practiced air of pity.
“I’m afraid this means you’re probably
going to live quite awhile longer.”
I tell him I understand and begin rehearsing
how I’m going to break this to my family.

Islands 

             Sobriety: Day 84

Driving home from outpatient, a cry from nowhere pierces the hum. It’s my own gut-shot voice trailing blood across the windshield & dash, but I’m still surprised by it. Anxiety controls my sounds and movements like a cordyceps fungus controls an insect. More cries rush the hole made by the first so my throat becomes a fountain filling the cabin with locusts that die in mid-air and pile into drifts on the passenger seat. I’m alone, but I imagine someone watching my breakdown like I was a character in a show, because I can’t seem to process my emotions without involving someone else. This observer is more human-scale than twenty years ago when my wailing would have been prayer. I think the shape of these sounds is holier. Not supplication so much as islands erupting from an ocean. They will one day be habitat. The maps will need changing.

Freeze Tag
              Sobriety: Day 90

You’re told it's a benchmark. Like a toddler
pointing. Practically developmental. 
A sign the brain is knitting together,
picking back up where it left off. 
“Maturing stops at the point of addiction,”
as if the brain had been caught and rooted in place
in a game of freeze tag, waiting for someone
to crawl through its legs. You shouldn’t be so
offended. You’re the one who would look at
your wife and tell her with solemn sincerity,
uncapped marker still in your hand,
that you didn’t draw on the wall.
And like a child, you need recognition
so you text “90 days!” and when she texts back
a single emoji—meager scrap for the gaunt street dog
your soul has become—the anger you’ve nursed
in dark rooms burns its way out. You complain
that no one is praising you for what you’re not doing,
and are caught off balance when she gives it right back,
telling you how long she’s been running,
circling your unresponsive statue,
watching for any chance to unfreeze you. 

Pink Cloud
              Sobriety: Day 146

It was supposed to happen by now.
The dopamine fields strained to collapse
were supposed to flare and blossom to life,
if only briefly, like a wildflower bloom in
Death Valley after the rarest of rainfall.
Not a sustainable harvest, but a promise
of something worthwhile. The clouds are
gunmetal gray and the field crunches under
foot but if I just keep walking the
moisture regime may eventually change.
Topography may be more forgiving. 
The coins in my pocket more lustrous.
The people I meet will still care about coins
and none will remember the things I’ve done.

Into all our back yards, 
the ever-vigilant crows
cast their bright eyes. 
Silent as spies, they drop
onto the damp grass, 
prod the turf, looking 
for clues to we-know-not-what. 

They step carefully around
the perimeter, muttering 
to themselves, and after
making a few quick calls,
the crows spread their wings, 
fly low over the lawn, 
and swoop away 
to make a report.