if

if i tell you the list
of things i'm afraid of,
will they, from this sudden, clear airtime,
evince their black power
from the closet shelves,
squirrel out of that thick and dusty air
into dangerous, fluorescent possibility,
and shatter the bones of my whole life?

the dog doesn't care about such things.
instead, she sleeps,
curving herself into a careful parenthesis,
head resting on her front paw.
and what this tells me is
she is either happy
or dreaming.

How to Explain What I Feel for You orWhy I Refuse to Write about the Ocean

No wonder the sunbathers
have heeded the warnings of tides
and moss-slippery rocks. The danger of drowning
is so obvious, the water a moonscape
of possible disaster. It's safer and less messy
to be straddling the grass with a cup of decaf,
fishing for adjectives.

So let me tell you about the perfect grass,
that clipped expanse of easy green.
Let me tell you about the coffee, the white ceramic cup,
the thick cream,
and two, even spoonfuls
of sugar.

a short letter to an old love

forgive me my viciousness
my name-calling, my absent-minded
mishaps, my cruelties and calamities,
and all the ways we fumbled while i fled.

forgive me my anger, my flight,
my bad timing, my ill-conceived attempts
at disappearing, my slipping into any available
porthole to get a little bit of air.

forgive me my haste, my impatience,
my mess, my chaotic heart.
forgive me my clumsiness while
you fell, unattended,
into the busy, dirty street.

i didn't know how to say it
at the time, and even now
any word between us is a monster
crawling out of a still febrile cave,
a great roiling of bat wings.

it's just that our hands
couldn't fit together.
that's all.

chicken love

those days when i'm bent or boiling,
a squawking, chicken-legged,
scruffy disaster needing moisturizer,
vitamins, and maybe my own pen
away from the others -

what's good is how you never lay down
the red carpet, don't run to the bath with
lavender bubbles and an offer to manicure,
don't press coins into my hands for unwaranted
ice cream cones.

there's none of that furtive dialing for delivery pizza
or worse, a disappearing act
so i can stew in my own, feral juices.

no, you do the best thing.
you give me chicken love.
tease my feathers into a mohawk,
gurgle nonsense out of your throat
in an earnest attempt to outdo mine,
then spit lavishly into the sink.
you hide the moisturizer, the vitamins,
any evidence of lavender
then take my funny legs,
place them on your belly,
and turn me
into an airplane.

query

what next, the little bird asks,
after a meal has been had,
and a little love,
the nest padded and warm again.
what next?

after the surrender to all the good things,
the bird looks up, full-bellied,
sees, suddenly, the expanse of
white space, a beautiful blur
where the horizon once was.

and what comes next
is a desire,
not for flight exactly,
but flying.

the commitments

here's a list of what i can commit to this week:
upending a coffee mug somewhere inopportune;
forgetting the time or a promised errand;
silent fury at the both the news
and my not knowing enough;
impatience with slow drivers, the weather,
and my body;
indiscriminate moments of sadness;
a fear of the smaller, unsatisfactory failures
which may or may not be related to my upbringing;
and the occasional worry that i
may not be doing what i should.

but also what i know is this:
there will be an earnest attempt
to make biscuits;
i will take my vitamins;
i will read a good book;
i will ignore the grey;
i will stretch before sleep;
i will appreciate ice water;
i will not ignore the moon;
i will carry my weight;
i will recycle
to the best of my ability;
i will say something
i absolutely mean;
and each night i will fall to sleep,
in irrepressible gratitude
with your arms around me.

tiptoe

after the wake of breaking headlines,
with a city plunged into darkness and heat,
and so many mouths cracking open
in a fierce wail of need -

no wonder i find myself straddled between
the urge to move mountains
and the other urge,
the more complicated one,
to remain as still and silent as i can,
tending my own little garden.

either way, i am left standing
as if on tiptoe,
clutching at my good fortune
of having such a choice.