hungry

It’s silly to think a grocery store
the day before Thanksgiving will be anything less
than manic. Woodland’s is a veritable obstacle course,
carts bulbous with raw turkey, the produce shelves
picked clean hourly by buzzard housewives.
You are here simply to gather ingredients for stuffed
mushrooms, your small offering for tomorrow’s meal.

There’s no reason to stop at the butcher’s,
though you’ve always liked the guys behind the counter,
their easy camaraderie, their confidence with the sirloins.

You envy their fraternity, their banter, their pride.
You had something of this once, a basketball team,
a crowd to go to parties with, gatherings an easy transit ride away.
Now, a long and busy highway separates you from that intimate domain.

But you walk by and the butcher pauses between customers to greet you,
and you appreciate his time, his interest, the way he leans
his forearms right up against the glass to get closer.
In another life, this might be called flirting, but from where you stand
this is simply called contact, and you don't remember a time
you've been this hungry.

It’s not just your move to the suburbs. The world has gotten so skimpy
with trust, with care, with diligence and kinship, and you have simply
come along for the ride, kept yourself at a neat and fractious distance
that makes it possible to mutter a string of obscenities at a jaywalker
or spend years not knowing anything about your neighbors except
the car they drive.

In your own way, you’ve become inured to suspicion and scrutiny,
the friendless wave of the airport security wand, every gaze
that doesn't quite land. You expect less from a woman walking her dog
than the dog himself.

Now, it’s kindness that disarms you, the invisible
hand of love, the impromptu phone call, a dinner invitation,
letters nosing out from among the bills,
spectacular, unprovoked gifts that keep you hopeful,
and even the minor warmth from the butcher reminds you
all is not lost, that you still have it in you,
that under your own thick skin your heart is pounding visibly,
tender and permeable as ever.

keepsake

the letters from Simon
the send-off from Tanya
postcards from Gary
a handmade box from my sister
a painting from Kim
the note from Jacquelyn
the thank-you from Dania
the epistles from Jade
the scribbles from Sean
each letter from Kirsten
the plea from Victor
a reminder from my brother
the poems from Jean
the first email from Emily
the bundle from Sherry
the send-off from April
the song from Cara
the Polaroid from Daniel
the note from my mother, via the florist
the airmail from Dad
a smiley face from Laurie
the valentine from Andres
Jen's wedding invitation
Julia's handwriting
a letter from a college professor
the CD from Mat
the music from Matthew
a bookmark from Rebecca
an apology from Robin
the questions from Molly
the book from Tom
a painting from Jef
a joke from Gillian
a secret from Ro

...

don't tell me you are alone,
swimming in deficit, cracked in two,
raging fists at the life bearing down.

don't tell me there are no miracles left
to witness, no waterfalls, no sunsets, no vigorous moths
churning around a single porch light.

don't tell me the mountain is less than mythic, the view
unspectacular, the walk so vertical it hurts.

if you say the sky is too pale and reedy, the street
too silent, heavy with rotted leaves and ugly tire marks –

if you tell me no one has remembered your birthday,
or asked about your health, or noticed your haircut –

if you claim there are no invitations to dinners out,
no laughter, no ear cocked forward, no sympathy –

if you think there isn't a hand left in the whole world
just for you, this day, this hour when you need it most -

you're wrong.

Dressing up for the Doctorin memory of Danielle Drumke

Dr. Brown doesn’t know I showered for her,
shaved my legs nice and smooth,
prepped and primped like I would
for a first date, scrubbed myself clean
of all possible unpleasantness, gave her
a fresh canvas to investigate on this
overcast day, a Thursday a little on the chilly side.

There’s a part of me that believes
a good swipe with the washcloth
and fresh underwear will give me
the clean bill of health I’m after,
because there’s something altogether mystical
about how one person can escape an early mortality
and another can fall headfirst into the flames.

When I was nearing 30, I ran into a woman
I knew on the 5th floor of the medical center
on a university campus in San Francisco. I was
leaving from my annual Pap smear. She was
visiting her oncologist. She was 27. She had brain cancer,
some crazy thing, stage 4. She was on her way out,
although no one would have known it then, all smiles,
looking like she owned the world, like it was hers
to play with, like she wasn’t about to let anything pass her by.

Less than two years later she would be gone,
permanently, and I’m thinking of her now
as I spread my legs for the good Dr. Brown,
realizing that smooth legs and an even bikini line
are of little consequence in this examining room,
that I could just as easily be dangling into the pit
of some irreversible horror.

And yet, this is no way to keep breathing, as if any moment
life could topple and shatter, as if I am just squeaking by.
Even when she had it worst, Danielle managed to fly home
for Thanksgiving, take a trip to New Zealand, visit friends
in Seattle, and in all those pictures she is grinning, looking
like she hit the jackpot, like she was made of luck.
She must have had her moments, I’m sure,
the derisions at God, some inflammatory assault
into her bathroom mirror, watching her scalp
metastasize, the long shoe-horn scar biting
her skin, disrupting the symmetry of her body
and everything else she had to cleave from,
a spot on the soccer team, playing drums for the band,
a lover who couldn’t take it when things got bad,
the surgeries and speech loss and a wheelchair
and hospice. But in her photographs she is
the brightest light in the room, a star,
a goddess, a golden opportunity.

The ovaries look good, Dr. Brown says,
kneading her hands on my lower abdomen.
Perfectly normal, she adds, and even she looks relieved,
and for a moment I forget what a narrow escape this could be,
a momentary lapse on the part of the Fates,
who are off somewhere else wreaking their havoc.
For a moment I gaze down on my body and see
something long and beautiful and intact,
a smooth stretch of highway heading into
the deep, wild heart of the universe,
and there is nothing else to do
but say thank you.

hello, November

This is a workhorse of a month,
juggling the brilliance of fall and the indelicate
ash-white arrival of winter.

November requires the unearthing
of scarves, dusty heating vents, slippers from the back of the closet,
the right blanket to accompany the streams of books
that will be read, almost with worship, in the fading light.

There will be moments the days will seem graceful
as rainbows, the sweet drift of leaves scattering streetside,
softening the blow of tires and traffic. And then, in a flash,
the cold will hustle in, and unstoppable drafts will insinuate
themselves into the living room, cleaving you from cozy rest,
from remembering what it was like to be truly warm.

November feels the strain, bears the weight of the year,
knows that a month lies before the whole thing wraps up for good,
and what do you want to do about that, November asks,
more like a dare than invitation, more like bite
than nibble, because this is it people, this is your chance
to finish what you started.

But what if November is where you start?
What if you are the one holding all this weather?
It is no porch swing, this month, no easy playground slide.
It is not the icy popsicle dribbling down your chin, or
the lick of heat from a Christmas fire, all those bright
stockings, the smell of some perennially baking casserole.
It is not the tulip bulb, the leeward breeze, the mirror of moon
on a murmuring ocean. It is not a slice of sweet cheery pie.

November is fleshy and earnest and true blue, precise as a coat button,
the heady incense of freshly sliced pear, the sound of a motorcycle
on a wet city road. It is a chest of drawers, antique, in the family for years,
mahogany, sturdy as the day you were born. November is crepe wool,
a dress hugging your waist, a pair of black leather boots skimming your knees.
November is whiskey on a dark night, a hand on your shoulder,
a whisper in your ear. November has both hands on the wheel,
a check in the mail, a table set for two, roses in a glass jar,
a tiny light illuminating every hallway of the house.