Be Like Trees

Be Like Trees

Sprout stubborn roots insistent on their purchase. Be
grateful, be hungry (fight!) for light and heat and rain. Expand
beyond the earth you have been ceded.

Experience each season in its turn. Grow
strong, then open: to flower, to shelter, to shade. Reach
for what may only be discovered in the reaching.

Where there is no path, invent one--be like trees.

My Father in the Yard

My Father in the Yard

When nothing makes sense, there is raking. Corralling
the fallen into piles, collecting strays; earning your blisters
and backache in pursuit of labor's bone-deep sleep.

Chaos brought to order by a rhythm of persistent toil; crackling
protest drowning out what can't (or won't) be named, (or faced,
or solved). Everything messy gathered and burned.

There's no escape, but there is raking.

Rescued by Books

Rescued by Books

In that house, it was be not seen nor heard nor understood.

Toys lived in the bedroom, along with breath-held play.
Noisy play lived in the street and neighbors' yards.

You learned early to live in your mind. Gorging on worlds,
growing thoughts like watermelons, brewing a silent
subversion that no angry hands or words could touch.

When a book breaks your heart, it's a gift.

The Pony Feeling

The Pony Feeling
(in which two poets unravel the culturally accepted "fact" that every little girl wants a pony).

One: I didn't want a pony so much as I wanted
to be a pony. A need to be wild, or secretly wanting
to have someone claim me, tame me. Name me.

Two: I think what I wanted--want--was more
the pony feeling: a pony always knows exactly what
and how and why to be. A pony isn't self-conscious.

It just is.

Love or Detach

Love or Detach

You've seen this sick before. Lived yoked inside its
slow-burn grip--a guilty, healthy twin. Seen a life,
seen people, everything just fall away in layers;

begin to slough them off yourself to keep a step ahead.
The books, the therapists, the groups all counsel
"detachment with love." You try. You fail. You try.

Sometimes there is only love or detach.

Just for Today

Just for Today

Be her mirror. When you are faced with
those cotton-candy cheeks, those orphan annie
eyes, that empty face of never facing anything:

Don't take your escape. Stand firm and feel.
Don't already know what you're going to say.
Face that sad jesus and say something real.

Tell her your soul is not the one in need.

Wanted: Human + Poem

Wanted: Human + Poem

The phone interview goes horribly awry. Your
mouth tastes tin, goes dumb, goes dry. You
twitch. You forehead smack. You sigh.

You mime for your mirror cartoon ways to die:
Falling coconut, train tracks, thunderbolt smite.
You wallow. And then you remember to write.

Listen, you: You were born for this job.

Love Has its Limits

Love Has its Limits

It turns out. Still there is washing to do.
Socks to be turned and pockets to check;
Stains to be treated, tended, scrubbed.

A wrinkle is a habit, etched into flesh.
Starch and press and hold your breath.
Sometimes sleep does the mending.

Sometimes hope holds a seam.

Melissa is the Reason I Registered this Blog...

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