little fish

As if birth weren’t enough.
So soon the swimming begins, the forage,
the panic of shelter and safety,
cures for hunger and loneliness.

And yet survival
isn’t the answer entirely.
We want a theme song,
God beaming down backstage,
a waterfall confirming our singular bravery.

What are we to make, then,
of our disasters? Are they not equally
spectacular? Can we not thank God
for spinning the story southward,
hellward, away from our golden halos?

Even darkness has its defiant pleasure,
its outrageous glory. Without a flag to herald
our descent, without lyrics to lessen the fall,
without poetry to take the sting out,
we fling ourselves against the current, our muscles
all twist and torque, the body of our heart
shuddering in cold solitude.

We cannot live through anything alone.
The islands we think we can claim for victory
are castoffs from the mainland.
We cannot live through anything alone.
From sheer rock someone articulates a profile.
We cannot live through anything alone.
A desert interrupted by oasis.
We cannot live through anything alone.
Each cry of despair
has an echo.

Here. Take this hand.
It is big enough
for all of us.

emptyfor my brother

I can imagine your hands, tight against the bathroom walls,
water hammering the sink.
Maybe this is the only place you allow yourself the luxury
of desperation.
Then, inevitably, you leave the door behind,
and each hour piles up like a sword pointing at your gut.
Like the Gladiator you are,
you try to keep up with the carnage.

Last week, we sat on the couch in your living room
and I could feel how tired you were,
something in you heavy and flagging,
but still you stretched your lanky arms around my back
until they gathered me in full, and you were 10 again,
or I was, and I forgot what the story was.

And yet, the narrative insists on telling itself,
and days later it was this embrace that I forgot.
You were careening through so many cracks,
it would have been an act of military precision
not to fall.

Of course, by now, you are only trying to outrace
yourself.

Brother, if I could do anything,
I would take you to the Sierra road I saw this morning,
show you how after so many hours of snowfall,
everything had disappeared – the 18-wheelers’ chain marks,
the tracks of the highway patrol cars barring the smaller exits,
even (I suppose) the carcasses of winter creatures
darting across for home.

All of it empty, wiped clean of noise and mud and ruin,
with nothing but the invitation to come closer.
Even if what would come was pain or heartache or failure,
nevertheless a road, hushed, laid bare,
waiting for you to take it.

strong

You don't have to be as strong
as you think you do.
You can come limping up the stairs,
stagger into my kitchen for water
and drink it as indelicately as a toddler,
and I will gaze at you with the same wonder
that broadsided me when I first realized
I could love you.
It does not matter if you are lost, or sick, or scared,
if the words you utter are gibberish or song,
if waking up makes your hair look funny,
if you forget the keys, if you burn our dinner,
if disaster is your ally.
You can enter my house like an elephant,
leave dirty handprints against the wall,
chew the mint directly off its pot
and I would whisper your name
like the caress it always is.

Love, I will falter too.
I will drive down a street that says
"Do Not Enter" and I will have missed the sign.
I will bump tender hips into the sharp corners
of every piece of furniture in the house
and curse louder than necessary.
I will make irreversible errors,
clutter the countertop with my messy heart,
leave wounds brutal and bleeding.
I will not fold the laundry into neat corners.
I will step haphazardly into a field of nettles.
I will almost ruin myself to catch you for the split second
you are catchable.

We don't have to be as strong
as we think we do.
If we wanted, we could fall
as easily as plastic soldiers.
We could slide our feet into the gutter
and wait for the rain,
sit so still our breath would sound
like a waterfall miles away.
If we wanted, we could unmake the plans
that married us to safety.
We could take the next exit
instead.
We could feed the world with our spectacular frailty.
We could start all over again.
We could let the glass shatter
into sand.