Lying back after the sweet wreckage
of a good time, I never expected
feathered expectations to rise
from the bed and hover above me
and suggest that hey, this could be
the rest of your life,
you could get used to this…

yes, I lay there
staring at the bird who hung there
like star fire, like remnant Creation,
thinking of past damage, recalling
trust and its dangers, wondering if
whales felt this way the first time
they called to each other
and heard an answer, thinking of
sky and sea as field of possibility,
all things above as below;

there I lay
between all the affirmations
being offered, thinking, thinking,
not heeding the exhortation and model
of acting beyond thought
or moving into consumption as fire moves,
leaping from fuel to fuel everlasting;

and still I lay there saying to myself
that so much had happened
that trust in the moment was shocking,
that what was stirring here was electrocution
in waiting, not caring that nature
was apparent, not realizing that artificial doubts
were ready to be discarded, there below perfect wings
and above the long permanent calling of mate to mate
as on high and deep below spoke to me
of what should be;

I lay there in that hardly turned bed,
resting soft against the body of another
and said, finally, that this was not another
but part of me, and to turn from her
was to deny and turn from myself, to deny
the voice saying

hey, this could be
the rest of your life, this could be
worth getting used to, this call you’re hearing
is the voice of the possible asking to be born,
these wings are the transport you’ve awaited
since the beginning, the night is turning to dawn,
the dawn to day, the whole of all is opening,
the beginning is here…

and I turned back against her in agreement
and slept without thinking until we both awoke.

You create a new word
right after dinner
and send it out to play.
It begins with a “C”
and starts out strong
but soon trips over its own round foot
and falls down the stairs
in a heap.  You bend to pick it up
and cradle it to your bosom,
rocking it while it weeps. Chagrined,
you change its name
to something that begins with “E”
and suddenly, it has survived the fall
unscathed.  Now, transpose
its central letters and what happens
to its story?  Nothing has happened
at all,  it never fell.
Isn’t this fun?
Creating new words
that mean nothing
until you give them voice?
You can’t even pronounce
these things but they’re alive
because you breathed them.
It’s a nice power to have.

You can do this as well, you know,
with those you claim to love —
say their names as if you were in charge,
remove everything that has hurt them
from those sounds, even change the names
themselves if they carry too much weight;
and if that’s too much, if the only safety
you can offer is to give them new names
in a language you can’t speak, you learn it
as fast as you can, practicing
the words where no one can hear you,
because love is always a language
invented in secret and held there
until you have strength to let it out.

Let’s go further into
this hard world
we’ve discovered.  Take a left
turn into the wind
so our faces become flushed with cold
and the fun of the gamble.
If we were explorers this would be
the plunge over the falls
into a valley full of
anachronisms.  We should
honor the stuck pig
on the stake up ahead,
a portent of what is to come,
our love a sacrifice to some god
known only to the desperate citizens
of this land.  I’ll make maps and
build fires of palm fronds and old
soda bottles, you can weave traps
and skin the rats we’ll be living on
for our whole time here.  Dirt poor and
stinking of fear and imagination,
we’ll establish a camp and fester
beyond the known ways,
and we’ll be legends elsewhere
for having gone somewhere unknown,
at least until the day we return.

No one will believe us then when we say
it was not horrible, not wonderful,
just another place like the one we came from,
full of people just like you except
we were the first to chart it and name it
and it was ours, all ours,
beloved homeland, found once and lost
and we do not speak of it often,
though the memory sustains us.

Under
the moon, all of Cordoba
sleeps

as my lover spins suspended from the air itself
in white linen above the fountain,
glistening from the spray.

No one may see this except this dreamer,
and I dare not say a word of it —
I can hear her singing

as the scents
of cinnamon and cardamom
float past me.

I shall not speak of this, ever,
even to her. But I shall carry
this, her fragrance and the silk shine

of her above me, not goddess
but such a human, more real tonight than I,
until I close my eyes for the last time

under another Cordoban moon
that will surely rise on another night of yearning
when I am old, tired of waking life yet glad of my memory.

HE
woke me up

had to slap him around
until he gave up
bugging me for attention

between us
I think he liked it
and I will have a hard time
figuring out how to keep him
from doing it again

because I know he will
and I just can’t sleep
when he’s like that

tried to make him happy
with bedtime stories
and pictures and movies
but it seems

it just makes him want
to bug me
even more

damn him
and his demands

him poking his head up
at the worst moments

making himself known

as if I don’t have enough
to worry about
between work and money
and all this art begging
for release

like a relapse
to our youth
when he drove me
damn near crazy
always pointing out
what HE wanted

those days
I wanted it too
but now I’ve grown up
and I’m supposed to be
more in control

and still
HE wakes me up
in the middle of the night
first thing in the morning
add weird moments of the day to that
and it’s like he’s got
my number on speed dial
and can’t help but push it
press it
any time he sees something
he wants me to see

HE ought to know better
I don’t have time for that

or to make him feel
like I share his enthusiasm

when something catches
his single-focused
eye