found directive

"You are the dance,
and life is the dancer."
-Ekhart Tolle

We are because we are.
And life holds us
in its form--
glides
tilts
aches
and pauses us,
occasionally holding
our faces
to the audience
like apples.

waste and praise: definitions

I took this new title photo when I was out biking with friends, scoping out neighborhoods in a still unknown environment. It was a beautiful Sunday. We came to the river overlook in Brooklyn Heights. There were four men leaning over the railing. I'm not sure if you can see it in the photograph, but they are two conservative Jews and two priests, huddled and admiring the view.

Are they caught in a moment of praise?

As they look down at the highway and industrial site concealed from view, they must also see waste.

In our modern life where we have made so much waste, it is time to make praise. Must we also praise the waste?

praise: |prāz|
verb [ trans. ]
express warm approval or admiration of
to express one's respect and gratitude toward (a deity), esp. in song
Thesaurus: commend, express admiration for, applaud, pay tribute to, speak highly of, eulogize, compliment, congratulate, sing the praises of, rave about, go into raptures about, heap praise on, wax lyrical about, make much of, pat on the back, take one's hat off to, lionize, admire, hail, ballyhoo; formal laud.


waste: |wāst|
verb[ trans. ] use or expend carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose; [ intrans. ] poetic/literary (of time) pass away; be spent;adjective (of a material, substance, or byproduct) eliminated or discarded as no longer useful or required after the completion of a process
Thesurus [adjective]waste material: unwanted, excess, superfluous, left over, scrap, useless, worthless; unusable, unprofitable. Waste ground: uncultivated, barren, desert, arid, bare; desolate, void, uninhabited, unpopulated; wild.

The necessary byproduct of our existence; emotional, physical, intellectual, verbal, transcendental, unintentional, intentional. "Eliminated or discarded as no longer useful or required after the completion of a process." Is waste then the silence after a poem? The slough off of words?

We all create waste.
So let us all praise.

a trap-door poem

Morning Prayer

Sun, find me behind these blinds, between

These construction towers of sugar and brick,

Find me among these bodies, these thin-armed plants,

Give me a decent chance to scream at the honking drivers to

fuck off, or at least a good shot at their yellow behinds as they

Skulk through crosswalks like teenagers when it's not their turn.

Tell me how once I was baptized your child by young and

naive parents in a high mountain stream,

Named in the good faith that I would stay close.

praise: little snowman

when my husband was was two years old
he took the laundry powder
and spread it all around him on the floor

of the house.

he beamed up 

at his dismayed mother

and said: 'Look! I made snow."

waste: losing

I knock things over.
Dishes slip out of my hands
and break against the sink.

In the past that was it,
I would break dishes
as my life broke itself
from its holding,
become clumsier,
and sigh unsurprised
as another mug bit the dust.

Now I have gone from the old
flea market cup
to your best watch
in a pretty twelve-foot dive,
blood-red nail polish,
vinaigrette,
and eggs.

Crimson polish pools cling to the floor
like blood,
brown balsamic huddles
in an oil cell by the door,
the eggs tip and mica white
holds out against the stone counter.

I have taken to admiring my work
and lean in to inspect
before setting to clear it up,
a conciliatory gesture,
the good hand shaking the clumsy one.

The phone one day soon
will ring with her last breath,
ring itself right off the wall.

A fine mess.

i stepped in

on a return to the beloved west; to its wildflowers, rocks, and glaciers, i wound switchbacks around my waist, tiptoed past a mountain goat, wove a hand through small waterfalls, and smoothed over fields. this was where the flowers pressed together and hushed among the grass, making my feet into antelope feet, my eyes into a low-flying bird's. i came into a gentle slope of valley and gaped at the way the glacier slung like an arm into its little lake, gave birth to itself in water.

i began a new, naked tradition, stripping off boots and shorts and stepping in slowly, like husking corn. peeled my body into the skin of the water so cold it burrowed beyond my skin. it seemed to beam off layers of city and self, leaving what was left of the tiny core humbled and trembling. a few timid strokes and my feet came off the soft, muddy floor, and i was water borne, and wild. The cold pinched my lungs at the base, my breath quickened, but the shiver was singular and deep. ecstatically alive.

i always wanted to emerge new and fresh, like starting over. but often the feeling lingered as i pulled socks and shoes back on, and left with the cold. probably for the best.
after a few swims, the buzz wears off, and like in any repeated act that is seeking, when seeking turns to grasping, the desired payoff fades. we turn inward out of necessity more than out of reason.

in the city sounds, where on a good day i can hear the heartbeat tick of the changing lights, it takes a sly move to evade exhaustion's choke-hold. you have to have a place you want to go, where you can be beholden to nothing, especially yourself, and definitely where you can look up. you take in that expanse of blue, beyond the grasp of all things, and creating from that blue the water that makes the glacier, and the glacier that makes the water, you remember the mountain days and step in.

waste: Calligraphy

I catch the curve
of calligraphy on the delicate skin inside your arm

an incomplete circle,
your memory of Japan

a trace of all this time
and things that go, and then come back around.

The sun catches the red in your hair,
as it did when you leaned on the balcony
into southern light ten years ago.

I certainly don't imagine
the kiss you remember; I have forgotten it,
and how you chose her,
I have forgotten that too

and the dim soft light of the loft you shared
as I awoke to write and let the lovers sleep
and watch the minutes alone
spill like marbles across the tiles.

in praise of soundpictures

Tonight at the Met I grew new ears.

Distracted by the large renaissance gate,

I was hoodwinked into the armor room

and wound around large metal wasps.

It took several turns to wind a way back out.

In the narrow corridor around the stairs,

past celtic stones and crosses,

I heard two sounds as I passed

a large man who walked with a tilt

and two small boys, one at either flank:

"Turn right Dad...now left..."

The blind man led by his waist-high

child tilted and turned,

his cane tucked under an elbow,

his glassy eyes dark and skyward.

What had they come to see?

Did the boys choose their favorite rooms,

or did their father guide them to the pieces

he wanted them to learn?

Did they describe pieces to him,

tell him soundpictures?

Surely he listened
to the silence of the pool
by the Temple of Dendur
and glided soft fingertip pads
over heiroglyphs;
a blind man reading ancient
imaged script as braille
while the people around him
lean on stone and exhale echoes.

After this you glide across marble floors

chewing on such a collision.

And when you leave, your ears have grown.

Outside, the night hums.

Taxi meters tick.

Lights click to turn.

A doorman whistles.

The street hushes with a low wind,

and the city bares a new layer of presence.

a resolution to be more like my infant niece

upon becoming fatigued wondering what the point is
of considering the preoccupations of man
i've decided to cast all else aside

if i could go back far enough
to master the look of the day-old child
striving for the clarity to understand her mother's face
her innocent puzzling, her wide eyes, the curve of wordless lips

i would have said it all.

i will repeat her name,
repeat it again,
and call her innocence to my hands and tongue.

praise:

I count your vertebrae like stones
stretched across the river
that yawns in the open night.

You gnaw at my ribs and birds fly free.
We are splayed like fish.
I wear you close as an orange to its peel.

You, such a lion in sheep's skin;
what have you come for?
To count my vertebrae,
count them like stones

I, your casualty
and the river rushing,
the open skin,
and the teeth of night.

Raspberry Picking

The invitation came as a surprise.

The old philosopher had buttoned his coat, gathered a sieve,

and was waiting for me by the farm door.

Rain hung in the air, dappled sunlight struck leaves

through dispersed and fattened Normand clouds.

Down the overgrown road, around the bend

to the raspberry wall, we began our slow walk.

Three years ago I asked the philosopher's wife

to read a text called The Smell of Apples

which described how the fruit, kept in old crates

in the cellar reminds us of a past we no longer deserve.

I did not know that this was the last time I would see her.

Nor did I know that apples paved the philosopher's childhood

and their existence, that the road to their house

overspilled with these two fruits,

until here for the first time, I saw, smelled, and picked them.

Now she is two years gone and

the philosopher's steps are steady, but slowing.
His hand rises to gently press the hair at the back of his head.

His voice is ceremonious, and deeply toned.

You have to look, he says, for the berries that fall

from the vine at a light touch - this is how to know they are ready.

He shows where the best ones are, les plus belles.

He brings the bowl closer as my greedy hands become
too full. It ripens with their deep color.

The only sound is of his hands pushing away leaves.

We lift, duck, and gently pull.

You always find more when you look below.

There is the occasional surprise of a wild strawberry, tiny and brazen,

armed with more seeds than flesh.

He teaches me this:

You have to collect enough for the family table,

but also, to tip into the kind neighbor's bowl.

Above all, you must leave enough on the vine

for tomorrow, and trust that they will not

be ruined by the rain.

Later, we gather at the table. A little way off

the image of his wife smiles from a frame.

You have to hope, believe and smile, and work with this, it says.

Our spoons rattle the plates with the delight

of the raspberries, their deep color dashed across the white.

The house is quiet except for this sound.

I accuse myself of loving fruit too much, but here it is:

our acts reduce to small movements, our pleasures, small pleasures.

There is not much else above the tiny pleasures of the earth.

We do not know tomorrow. I can only hope that

tomorrow I will find myself on my knees again, in search of more.

At the Richard Avedon Exhibit in Paris

This room echoes with shuffling feet.

Speakers of all languages

come to pay reverence

to the geography of the human face

and there are more luminaries
of modern culture than I can count:

Marianne Moore, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote.

All are rendered in life-sized black and white,
with crisp lines, and caught mid-expression, as if talking, reciting, playing,
going on unaware of the tool intended to stop time fixed on their movements.

First there is Beckett, dignified, taller than I am.
I wait for him to hold out his hand for me to shake,
or to loan me his pocket-kerchief. On another wall, Louis Armstrong vibes so fully his eyes are blurred, Marianne Moore in a three cornered hat looks to be in the middle of a recitation.

Marilyn Monroe has been caught looking down in the only moment of doubt and fear

I have ever seen shown on her face,and there is Malcolm, steadily staring the camera down,
and it goes on...

What strikes me is how

all are alive in this room.

These shapers of our culture- all are dead

and yet collected, beyond death, they make a symphony of their influence.

One face draws my curiosity:

it is closed in emotion, in a moment of total honesty and complete absorption,
the beard is pointed, the face dear, and I approach to study the lines

not knowing I am looking at the father of modern poetry.
Ezra Pound, the plaque says, is at Williams' house
hours before his final expatriation.
I did not recognize him with his eyes contorted with memory, his mouth mid-word.

I want to hold his hand and pat his tired cheeks,
tip back in a rocking chair on that porch
and ask about leaving, arriving, hope, fear, and reason.
And for no reason, I have to leave the room so the Parisians
don't see my weak American tears.

Even his portrait artist is gone now, dead four years,
and for the first time I understand the equation
vita brevis, ars longus .

They, who are outlived by their portraits seem to be outlived
by their very souls, and we, fortunate enough to know them again,
take in their eyes, and carry them on,
their weightless weight.

praise: a story revisited

It was the second to last day of classes, and the seventh grade was getting restless. They were doing a stellar job of reading at a quick clip, and hanging in there while we did the Stick with Me, This is Too Important dance. On Summer Vacation -1, we pulled our classes together and played the 1961 film of To Kill a Mockingbird. We saw the end of the trial, the tribute to Atticus, the death of Tom Robinson, the attack on the Finch kids, the sole appearance of Boo Radley, and Scout's beautiful lingering gaze of recognition. 

Then it was time to go, and Emma stood amid a hungry, boiling crowd of kids and held stock still. Tears brimmed her eyes. She looked at me and waited for the others to go. Her face looked stricken. I asked her what was happening. She was speechless. Another student gave her a hug, then closed the door as she left. Facing each other, we each leaned back against a desk in the now quiet classroom. 

I waited for her to speak, but Emma stared out the window, silent, trying to catch her breath. 

"Are you a little overwhelmed?" 

Emma nodded slowly, thoughtfully. 

"I understand." I waited a moment. 

"Would you like a piece of chocolate?" I opened my lunch and handed her the last two triangles I had brought to share. 

She nodded, took a piece, and bit off a tiny corner. 

It got stuck in her braces. 

"What's going on?" I asked her. 

She thought as she dislodged it.

"It's hard to put it...in words," she said. 

She breathed deeply a few times, exhaling with focus and intention, and then continued. 

"They never see Boo Radley again." Her face contorted with wonder and sadness. 

I had to fight back a smile. 

I remembered sitting on the couch in Maine the weekend before, wondering how this book was going to get across to my students. How to convey the importance of the equal measure of the kindness and cruelty humanity is capable of? How a man like Atticus can take it all in perspective, and see all people and behaviors as part of a whole? I had been floored reading this book again, had laughed and cried almost in the same breath. It seemed too big to pin down in a few forty-five minute sessions. I doubted the timing, the pacing, the choices I had made. At the same time, it was essential to keep in perspective that this was still a story told by the winners, that it had its flaws. Yet, I had gotten completely swept off my feet in a way I could only hope some students would, and thought that, until they had more experience and perspective, they wouldn't. 

Here was one who had gotten it all, the beauty and the sadness and the heartbreak and the hope. I was reminded of how simple reading is, and how complicated we make it. I got teary too. I felt I had permission to, in this audience with Emma, a reader half my size, and the same age I had been when I first read the book under duress. 

Against my best intentions,  I went professorial. "It is ovewhelming...the trial...the saving grace of Boo....cruelty and kindness...needless suffering.....the book will be there for you to reread it." 

Emma nodded. She didn't say anything else, but stared beyond me out the window, glassy-eyed. I tried to put her at ease while not saying too much, letting the silence be. 

I felt a breach of time and space open up as I saw my own former age and size looking to me for understanding, for a chance to linger in the story, or at least to come to terms with what it encompassed. 

Emma turned her gaze back to me. In her eyes, I saw someone far older, and very patient looking back. 

She sighed after a moment, and in a shaky voice, summed it all up:

"It's just...such...a good...book." 

"It is, Emma," I said. "Yeah, it is."

praise: Modern Antics

The Practical Guide for Gnomes, or Duende's Travels Part I

Duende was named for the Spirit of Flamenco, because he wields a guitar and looks mighty happy playing it. Deunde is approximately one foot tall. Duende has a goofy, opiate-induced-looking grin. Duende is a garden gnome. 

Here's how it all started: my friend Chris, who is one of those willing to overcome the time-space continuum to have coffee with you tried and true college friends, offered me a Gift of Welcome and Housewarming upon my arrival in his beloved Metropolis. I held Duende at arm's length.  

"What is this?" I said (see photo for look of amusement/incredulity/distaste).

 "It was thirty dollars," he said. 

"Okay," I said. 

So I adopted a guitar-playing garden gnome, we launched a tradition of buying each other expensive tchackies, and the adventure began. Chris's anonymous hung over high school friend was staying over. Having just returned form a trip to South America, he was full of Flamenco terminology. In some dialogue I scarcely remember, the word and definition for duende was uttered, and the Guitar Playing Gift Gnome was thus christened. 

So that's the back story. 

Now, how did Duende the gnome get to Maine? A cow pasture in the Midwest? Alaska?  San Francisco? The Phillipines? And back to Maine? Read on. 

If you've seen the film Amélie, for which I have a soft spot because it played an important role in the romance that is now my marriage, you may already be over the story of a traveling gnome. But you have to give Duende some credit for overcoming a few obstacles.  First of all, he hailed from an antiques store in roadside Mass. Then, I had to smuggle him home on the subway (Chris had nothing for me to take him home in but a bag from Ralph Lauren.) I had to sneak him past my minimalist-at-heart husband, and propose things like "He could live on the balcony (read: fire escape)," or "Just imagine if we kept him in the fridge, the look on people's faces when they came over..." all to no avail. The gnome had to hit the road. 

The gnome was made to roam. 

So I called my brother. Ben has a lot in common with a foot-tall garden gnome. He's seven feet tall, but he plays the ukelele and the banjo, likes wearing baggy rustic clothes, and smiles a lot. He also likes gardening and farms. It seemed like a match made in heaven. So when Ben came to visit, I took the gnome out of the Ralph Lauren bag and handed it to him ceremoniously. "Try to keep it in the family,"  I said, since it had come from Chris, and I didn't want to just pass him off to anyone. 

Ben tucked Duende under his arm and kept him there while we scoured Williamsburg for a dinner spot. We were the hit of Roebling Cafe where Duende silently played in the candle light while we enjoyed simple/complicated/cheap/expensive food and a few cocktails. Ben, in college years, had learned to hold his liquor. I, in my yoga years, had not. We snapped a couple of photos of Duende in the candle light, smiled to nearby table occupants, paid up, and left. 

Ben took Duende on the train with him to Boston, where he played the ukelele and sang and bosqued up enough change for breakfast with Duende as his sidekick. Then, when he got home to Bar Harbor, he took him to the health food store where he worked; A+B Naturals. Duende, he said when he called, fit nicely in the band above the counter with a bongo-playing monkey. He kept an eye on him while working, he said, and after all, he reminded me, he had filled up his living room with a ten-foot orange bean bag chair and the goat-skin djembe he had made for me in Gambia. 

Then Duende went missing. 

Post cards appeared. Duende talking to a couple of brown cows. Duende digging a ditch. Duende at the foot of  redwood tree. Duende atop Chistopher McKandless's  bus in Alaska (we think this one was a Photoshop job). Duende in Somebody's Livingroom. 

Then Duende reappeared for a couple of weeks and kicked it on the counter with the monkey.

One of the postcards from the west somehow got misread at the post office, and instead of going to "A+B Naturals, Bar Harbor, Maine" It went to "A+B Naturals...The Philippines." Upon learning the non-receipt of the most recent postcard, the perpetrating kidnappers, or their accomplice, shot a fresh copy under the door from a Mini Cooper. A few days later the original appeared, bearing the stamps of its own misadventure. 

Then Duende had his biggest adventure. He vanished again for a week and postcards appeared of Duende in an anonymous man's backpack overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, and then in front of graffiti art in the Mission.

When he came back, he had on a satchel. Its contents contained a box of Rice-a-Roni, a commemorative coin, a tie-dyed t-shirt in gnome/infant size, and a book by Noam Chomsky. 

This was the state of affairs when I showed up in Bar Harbor for Ben's graduation last weekend. I paid a visit to A+B Naturals and  pointed behind the counter. 

"That's my gnome, Duende," I said to the young and well-meaning cashier. "Can I see his postcards?" 

She looked at me with incredulity/amusement/distaste and let me take pictures. 

"Where is he?" I asked, peeking around the basket of an elderly man as he carefully placed his items on the counter.  "I'd like to see him." Secretly, I had thought of stealing him myself, taking him to France or Pennsylvania. 

"He's around somewhere," she said, "go ahead and look." Amid tall bags of Natural Herb Popcorn, brussel sprouts, whole grain breads, dried mango, and Seventh Generation cleaning products I sought, but did not find, Duende. 

 I returned to the cashier at the front and reported this. 

"Oh," she said nonchalantly, "really?" She kept ringing up the elderly man's purchases and barely looked up as she shrugged.

"He must be traveling again." 

conversation: The Convenience of Distance

The world is no longer

nation and nation, 

my companion said last night

over a bowl of warm rice.

It is one being, one body. 

And if the abdomen suffers, 

the whole being suffers. 

Brackish water, elsewhere

engulfs lives and leaves us indifferent. 

We are told that in  illness thrives

the opportunity for healing, I said, 

the white grains tipping 

to rim our bowls,

but we are busy 

creating anthills so quickly 

they crumble under our feet as we climb. 

We dig into 'reality' screens that harden

the lacquer of our false perceptions. 

We each take our spoon and begin. 

I look up as he says this: 

Brackish water churns and the abdomen, the leg

the hand, the arm suffer. 

And I think,

we thrive elsewhere, 

but the infection arrives. 

praise: on jumping

I found this in a journal from the month Paul and I were about to get married. It has been translated from French. For all who have thought of taking a risk. 

The boat is leaving for an adventure.

The crew is preparing.

Each member has a life jacket,

a rope, a raincoat.

One sailor doesn’t have everything he needs.

The others tell him

there will be enough to share. 

He doesn’t know if he can count on this,

thinks he needs to be able to cover up

in the cold, to swim if the boat overturns,

to provide for himself if he is lost;

after all, that is what he has been taught.

The others have more experience.

They have understood what they need.

Some of them have had everything

for a long time.

Others have just finished

to pack their bags.

Adventure runs through the sailor’s heart.

He wants so much to do, try, and discover.

He sets off to find a lifejacket, a rope,

and a rain coat.

Someone calls.

“The boat is leaving early!” says the voice,

“are you coming or not?”

He doesn’t know what to say.

The hour of departure approaches.

The store that sells life jackets is open.

He finds one. It fits him well.

He feels more prepared.

Then, he finds the rope

he was going to take is no longer

where it was. He still has no rain coat.

He doesn’t know what to do.

“We’re leaving!” cries the boat.

“But I have no rain coat!” he replies.

“And I can’t find my rope.

It will take time to find them.”

He doesn’t want to slow down the crew.

He doesn’t want to be cold.

He doesn’t want to find himself

in a situation that would be simple…

if only he had the right tool.

“Are you coming or staying?”

asks the crew,

“we’ll make do with what we have!”

He holds very still.

It is perhaps the last boat

for adventure this week, this year, this decade.

He could wait for them to return, 

he could wait for the next one, or- 

he’s doesn’t know.

Deep in his core, a tiny spark tells him

to trust – in the adventure, the boat, the crew.

He jumps, holding hope.

My love, do we know what we have

in our hands?

praise: a good poem

a good poem

catches you off guard

and skims the edge of you like a 

finger traces the outline of your knee,

hits you like the whiff of 

electricity before a storm,

hunts you with pheromones, 

strikes while you aren't looking

isn't complete

until you fall away exhausted 

and satisfied, 

wouldn't exist without 

the dance of two elements:

the object of your desire, admiration, rage 

and you, bewildered and reaching

holds your face in its hands

and stares at you, unflinching

as if to take it all in, naked and 

unobstructed

unabashed, unafraid.

praise: through a pinhole

through a pinhole

There were eggs all year in my childhood. 

Passover red, Easter blue ornaments, 

yolk blown through a pinhole, 

omelets sunrise yellow, ochre point. 

Now you, so tiny 

you fit under my thumb. 

You will be a melon

fecund and hard, 

painful, precocious, 

with your round red mouth. 

Crouched, you prepare

for the gape of breath. 

praise: echocardiography

Microvalve, a Sort of Ode

The music of the heart, amplified, makes sense;

a song I knew somewhere to be true but had never

sung aloud.

Today I saw inside it, and heard.

Made of fleshy chambers it is round, robust as a gourd,

a beautiful thing. Shadows and folds mostly,

it sports some pixilated bursts of light

to stand for blood.

Then, the sound magnified, its echo fills the dark room.

The left valve becomes a whistle above a thick, muddy rumble,

the aorta crisp, swooping to a tick.

The microvalve does a soft-footed dance,

and closes with an extra bounce.

Abstruse cadence, tempo, pulse, throb, swing.

In its cavern it takes life from the liver and lungs

in a free fall through so many delicate strands

and with each player, churns out the flowering

bursts of its rhythm.

That extra bounce. What does it mean?

Does it say something about my temperament?

Is it brought on by overindulgence in fluttering,

worrying, or chocolate? Is it the cartwheels?

The kind-eyed, wand-wielding technician assures me

It has more to do with my inherited height.

This body is absurd business,

random and miraculous.

praise: No-See-Ums

i haven 't written of you, james.

i would like to praise the night of the wild violin

and  you, rabsrabble angle of arms and legs

swinging out of a saloon on the isle of skye

a dent in your forehead where a fight had 

spread a dark blue stain.

we brushed away the no-see-ums on our own hill,

and waited  for the midnight sun to leave the sky

as boats rocked together in the harbor, 

dew formed on the ruins of fortresses around us, and

the bugs came and bit and went.

you explained how the gnats worked their way around

in a cyclone wisp and bit harder than expected

how there was no remedy but patience. 

you invited me to stay, to meet your mother,

but i left in the morning

my clothes still damp from dew,

my head buzzing with talk.

you sent me a drawing of a sad-eyed dog

and asked when i'd return. 

i, the ungrateful traveler,  

never wrote back,

never returned to that light-

and damp-soaked island

where some chromosonal twist

hummed in loamy recognition.

i just sat here, ten years later

and stuck you in praise to a page. 

 

praise: meeting

what is it with me, i think as i slosh through a puddle 

and the sole of my foot squishes around on the rubber of my shoe,

that i can't just sit down with a poet and have a drink? 

what is it with me, that it is an all or nothing affair, 

that it has to be a stay up all night, knock down, 

cigarette after cigarette, three whiskey glass flirt 

that ends with me tumbling over myself 

in infatuation, all unreasonable and premature, without formalities? 

is it that my favorite ones wear their heart out on a straight pin too? 

tonight it was frank ohara. 

he didn't have to talk for long.

and i thought

frank, frank, perhaps i knew you in a former life. 

maybe we admired rauschenburg and pollock and 

deconstructed raspberries and drank limeade together frank, or maybe

maybe i just read your palm some night when you were out 

on a late-night whim, under a blue neon sign i read your palm 

and told you about the color purple, how it would 

tinge the corners of your poems

told you of your strange nostalgia for paris, and of the looming shadow

of a man to carry you over bridges

and said you are right, frank, yes, it is all beautiful,

the aspirin, the jujubes, and a scrap of sky is enough

maybe i skipped the part about your untimely end

and just shot the breeze, 

handed you a glass of brandy

or a flower on a pin, 

and told you to stay a few minutes longer,

stay out of the rain a little while. 

waste:from a caffeine rush

in my mind's eye

 my own body falls

 to the ground under

medeival daggers

 in a hypnotic rush, 

the same way on the darkest and most exhausted days, 

slipping under a subway car feels like it would be a relief.

this mind's eye business is scary indeed

and the sidewalk beaten, 

the asphalt long, 

the coffee thick and dark and sultry, 

the tingling necessary, 

the chirping late spring ironic

and all of it, all of it meaningless, 

the high over in an instant,

the city indifferent and wailing.

praise: Harper Lee

Sometimes you get to revisit scintillating, scathing, or ground-breaking prose. And this time you get to see it clearly, for what it is. 

Harper Lee influenced generations who have grown up on the crisp and intelligent prose of her one novel. 

And yet she has remained completely modest, in the shadows, and barely published again.

 Instead of giving an acceptance speech for the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, she said, "It is better to remain silent than to be a fool." 

If only the fools remained silent, the wise women spoke, and the rest of us listened. 

waste: shedding my grandmother, again

death in the family

ribcage of coat hangers

breasts a metal cage

head a fuse pulled dry, a tired socket

hallway of repeated gestures

android of fatigue

wire bird

on an empty feeder

the city opens

a deck of cards

streetlamps stretch

in long cords

pigeon, sentinel

huddles in an oily corner

I think of

longing

as a wire bird.

you die

in the afternoon

i‘m caught up in wires

you come to the window

get up, you say

in the cold air

of elation/pain

of electric/void

put on an old tune

wires of dry tendon move

and I shuffle.

for weeks I seek your messages

in low-flying birds

and nurse the empty hallways

of my bones.

praise: Saint Francis and Boo Radley

I am married to the reincarnation of Saint Francis.

Paul just talks to the animals. He leans in, takes one look, and pronounces a completely logical and coherent expression of the animal’s emotions or needs. And every time it makes sense.

I don’t get it.

Sunday we walked down through Central Park from 90^th to the bottom and then hoofed it over asphalt to MOMA. We spent a good long time ogling at the design exhibit, and then holding pretty objects in our hands at the store. As we left past the glassy walls of the main entrance, my eye caught a yellow spot on the ground. It was a beautiful olive green, yellow, and black bird, lying lifeless on the sidewalk. Whether it had fallen from a nest or taken one in the noggin against the glass, I expected to see gore. Things of nature are so rare here, I thought. So unfortunate when they are dead.

Paul took one look, bent down, and gently placed one finger next to the bird’s side. The bird stirred, partially woke, and ambled aboard. Paul took off down the sidewalk, his dapper black New York trench flowing behind him, his new charge perched on his finger, like it wasn’t no thang.

Holy shit, I thought. He’s Saint Francis.

This isn’t the first time he’s talked to the animals. I’ve seen him perform surgery on injured parakeets and toads. But it had been a while since we had lived anywhere with a garden, since we had been in a place where one encounters species other than humans that aren’t manicured and dressed to match their owners.

We tried to release him in a safe place in the Park, but he wouldn’t leave Paul. This was no domestic bird, mind you, but he was badly stunned. Paul hiked that bird back across town to the subway in a Nalgene pressed against his chest. “He’s in bad shape,” St. Francis intoned. “He needs sleep.” We got him a little cage, some fluff and some food, and for sixteen hours he slept. At six the next morning, Paul woke up on instinct, and I heard the bird flapping around and chirping. “He’s awake,” said St. Francis, “But not strong enough yet to go out.” Like it wasn’t no thang.

You know the rescue tale. The animal becomes more lively, more animated, eats and drinks a bit, skids across the floor, poops on the Buddha statue, knocks over the sunflowers, explores nook and cranny, experiments with flying through computer screens. He had taken over the kitchen by the time I left for work and was nothing short of chipper when I got home to plow through and prep To Kill a Mockingbird.

I named him Boo, for his Zorro mask, and for the fact that he was officially being held indoors against his will. I think what got to him, besides needing more space to fly, was that I gave him a name. I also started hunting him with my camera. I knew we weren’t going to keep him, but I was trying to keep a part – a trace of him. Proof. I tried to be really, really subtle about both, ( taking a picture from all the way across the room without moving), but I think the capturing just went a little too far. He was wild. He was not for names. He was not posing. So I left him alone to twitter and flutter about, and just as I was tucking into Chapter 2 of Mockingbird, the silence in the house lasted a little longer than the usual ten minutes before play time, and he was gone.

Without getting too precious, I was startled by how I knew Boo had left. Yes, his pattern hadn’t repeated. But I also remarked how I just knew that his presence had left. This reminded me of other recent departures, grandmothers and zygotes, and how you just sense the departure of something. Boo was so light he couldn’t bend the leaf of an orchid standing at its tip. And yet when he was gone he was just gone.

I felt like a homing device as I look for him, making the ridiculous clucking noise I had used to try to imitate his little tick/chirp, desperately craning my neck to see if he was in a nearby tree. I stood by the refrigerator clucking and listening to be absolutely sure he hadn’t somehow slipped behind it. I felt like some kind of electronic mother hen, clucking t my fridge. A few minutes later I saw out my window, as a result of all the craning, a bright, rusty cardinal making a mess in the air of the dried seeds pods and looking around smugly with his impressive crown. Maybe they’re common here, but being new here, I was impressed.

Then Paul got home, and he appeared, twittering and skidding across the floor, out of nowhere. For two days he bounced across the furniture, swung from the mobile, ate and drank and pooped. He was a fun, fun wild little yellow Zorro-masked distraction. 

Boo was quite a beautiful little fluster.

You never know what kind of effect a wayward bird is going to cause.

And if you ever need a Bird Whisperer, I know a good one.

Welcome Travelers

This space is intended for waste+praise, poetry, works in progress, and narratives.

Let's talk about the ruddy cracks between the sidewalks of cities that hold scraps of beauty, about the ties that bind us, about your uncle's hairdresser, about the rust and the wires and the sky. 

Please do read on...