inversion

Last night, watching the baseball game
under cover of a full moon, I wondered how 30,000 people
could sit this close to one another and not go crazy,
not feel their space crunched by boozy revelry
or the off-color remarks about the missed play at home base.

And I was amazed even further when,
after the final inning, we all shuffled down the long ramp
of the stadium's innards to its single exit on Townsend.
So many people and not a single mishap or thrown punch,
no fanatical drama unfolding between rivals, no need
for police intervention, or an EMT, or bomb squad.

At game's end, we simply streamed toward the door like fish,
not even stopping for unraveling shoelaces, the bright signage
of ad slogans, or a sudden craving for chocolate or cigarettes.

In front of me, an oafishly muscled man was holding onto the hand
of his thin little girl, stooping slightly to steer her forward.
And behind me, four buzzed college boys were discussing the last out,
a stunning catch nearly to the home run wall.

And I, too, headed downstream, pulled along by the sheer momentum
of numbers, this perfect inversion of solitude bringing neither
chaos nor collision but the reprieve of synchronicity, and I laughed
at how easy it was, after all, to accept that which promised to carry you,
without complaint or demand, toward safety.

desert dancer

When you dance in the middle of a desert
you are cheating time, beating Nature at her own
impossible hand, knocking at the door of Gravity's
starchly organized house. Can you feel the tightrope of your body
slackening, abandoning its stocky stiffness?
See how quickly you tumble from your learned rhythms,
your tuneful dips and sashays.
On this particular earth it is all dearth and want,
a dustbowl of not quite enough,
but the peace you are looking for is here, too,
absent of its water weight, its burbling excess.

In this desert, it is neither green nor gentle,
but it is also mountainless, and in this low, dry place
you will see your nakedness, your barren landscape,
your heat and loss and hunger. You will be unable to retreat
to shade or shadow, because there will be neither, just a single
plane of visible light, the one dimension of yourself you have somehow,
in all this time, never quite introduced yourself to.
But because you are in this desert, you will have no choice,
this unfamiliar ghost will be the only other body there,
and you will bend to it, stretch yourself beyond words,
beyond the usual reinforcements, the doorways you like to hide behind,
you will reach down into a different kind of darkness
and take the hand that is offered to you.

small goals

a cup of tea with cream & sugar, quietly,
because it is just morning and no one
is demanding anything of you, and you don't
yet need to demand anything of yourself.

pillows behind your back, at the desk,
because it shouldn't be so hard to sit still.

pet the dog, put your cheek to his cheek, say hello
in a higher, sing-song register, because even this
brief touch brings you back to a place absent of toughness,
and because when he is being held close and cooed at,
the dog will lie at your feet for hours, calm and near-sleeping.

moisturize, have lunch, put on a clean shirt, empty
and refill the dishwasher, because you need to take care,
because the body needs to be restored,
because it is good to make time for tasks that force
an alignment with order, and because there is no easier purpose
than a clearing off of the dusty messes, the small eruptions of mail,
whatever gnatty distraction is in the way of getting somewhere else.

let go of the argument, its bruising remainder, its strangeness
and alarm, because when you keep it flattened to your chest
for too long you can't breathe, and because there is a whole
day outside just waiting to be plunged into,
ripe and forgiving and opulent with love.

ice water.
as little driving as possible.
the guitar for even five minutes.
sunscreen on that place on your shoulders you never get to.
a walk somewhere close. easy, even steps.
the smell of late summer. that hum of bees.
a view that stretches to another zip code.
close your eyes.
close your eyes.
close your eyes.
now open.

locating the self

one day, I mistake the rustling of the leaves
for the pre-arrival of the garbage truck,
and I run outside in a heave of pajama and recyclables
to discover it is only Monday.
Above me, the sky glows an unnatural,
virus-colored blue. It would be an understatement to say
I have lost track of time. I have lost track.
In crowds, I am teetering slightly, squinting
at the exit sign, wondering if I'm the only one
who didn't bring enough layers, who is wearing the wrong
shoes, who is wrestling with her own heart, wondering if
I will remember, entirely, the way to get back.

how can we decide that where we are
is where we need to be?
where is the map for locating the self,
the precise axis where we are freest to forgive
what we cannot hold to our vibrating bodies and recognize
what we are already embracing?

moonless

i am looking for something, i know it.
a book maybe, a sign, an act of wonder.
a particular leaf pointing north, then a rock,
then an abstract painting hanging over the front door
of a house i've never seen before.

i am looking for the deer in my backyard to come
close enough to kiss my cheek. i am listening
for the sound of bees, aiming in a flurry
toward an Eden of pollen. I am watching the road
for an old woman who will call out to me and say
mysterious, delusional things i will understand perfectly.
i am waiting for the breeze to blow in and ruffle
the papers on my desk as if they were runes,
and then, by this new geometry, i will be made happy.
i will be certain with everything, and everyone.

but who am i to ask for such mystical direction,
a narrow spotlight, for an upstairs window to dabble
its sill with carcasses and remind me of what life doles out
if you wait too long? who am i to listen for the lighthouse call,
to reach for a steady hand to steer me through the fog?
what opportune magic am I passing these hours to witness?
what holy moment will leap on my shoulders and gather
the tangle of reins nesting there?

outside, the night is moonless and still.
it is so dark and infinite.
i can barely make out my hands in front of me,
but i do.

splitting the lane

Before she walked toward the shallow end of pool
swathed in her dark bathing cap and fresh muscles,
before she stood at the scrubbed white edge
tucking her last tendrils in, safe from chlorine,
before she bent to do some final stretching,
the limbering up before the full force of laps
pulled her into that deep and pounding purpose,
before she looked up to catch up eye
as I was preparing for another turn back around,
she asked, wordlessly, if she could share my lane,
giving me that lift of her chin and the raise of eyebrows,
an insider's greeting, before all that,
I was swimming beautifully.

I could even say there was a grace there, an art
only otters can truly master but under which
I was a willing student, arrowing through
the lane as straight as my body would allow,
eyes on the prize of the black tiles leading
me toward the finish at each end, then the slap
against the pool's rim, at each turn counting "10," then "11"
and on through the twenties and thirties and forties,
when I knew a certain softening would creep in,
the limbs losing their thrust and torque, the water
slowing behind me, nearly currentless, and yet moving still,
the quieter, closer, more intimate act of swimming
one's last laps, the knowing there, the gratitude
of having stayed buoyant for nearly an hour powered
by the simple coordination of feet and hands.

But now, nodding my okay to the woman already
half immersed by the time I reach her, I know
this afternoon is about to disassemble, the pool
already less bright and possible, my own
efforts marred by the diligence required now
for splitting the lane.

And it's true, as we pass each other mid-way
through the next series of laps, I find myself
straying toward the far edge, erring on the side
of safety, sensing the likelihood that my breast stroke
will collide with her crawl, and I want to be nice,
easy, I want to share like I said I would.

Except swimming this way makes my breathing shallow,
makes me inefficient and nervous, and what began
as the Zen equivalent of aerobic exercise has devolved
into an over-conscious avoidance, into me clinging
to the space allotted and nothing more, and this
has me watching my elbows and narrowing my stroke,
pulling myself in, diminishing the surface area
I had chosen, on this brilliant day, to spread out,
to elongate, to become more than what I manage, most days, on land.

By now, I have stopped counting seconds and laps. I have lost
the number of times I have touched this edge and back again.
I am only watching the near horizon where a dark blue cap
is bobbing toward me, where a goggled set of eyes approaches
every other stroke, where a body is lunging forward,
threatening with its near misses.

It is not swimming anymore, at least not the kind I had begun with,
and there is a part of me that wishes I'd had the stomach to say no,
to have been able to avert the gaze, the question mark,
the look that said, "May I" and "Can you" because there is that part of me
unwilling to share what I had counted on alone.

I want my rhythms back, my aspirant swishing, my lovely aqueous solitude.
I want the room that is this water, this faultless aquamarine,
this generous, silent place that holds whatever I bring to it,
no matter the weight. But the choice has now come down to this:
stay or leave. And more than the unwillingness to share,
leaving would deprive me of all I have come here for.

This is how one begins to unclench, to unfasten from the act
of claiming, of believing that anything in this world
is one's to navigate at the self-made pace of
smooth and spacious privacy. This is how a truce is born.
This is how slowly an alliance begins to form, unnoticed,
unrecorded. This is how two bodies manage to swim alongside.
This is how two bodies manage to swim together.