Lick the Knife

 

Lick the butter off the knife,
or the peanut butter, cream cheese or mayonnaise.

While you are at it, if the meal was good, 
run your finger through the gravy on the plate.

Life is only an infinity of nows.

Waste nothing.

Cataract Surgery

 

One eye can still see into the past;
yellowed like old photographs of cars and thin girls in jeans 
with long straight hair; like cigarette stained walls, like bourbon.
The old sight is blurry and faded, fog along the ground.
I didn't realize how every color, every sight, was changed 
by these decaying proteins, this flotsam of age.

The new eye sees the white ceiling as, I guess, white. 
Fluorescent. What other people see.
The sky is blue and untainted as with 
smoke from far off forest fires.
The leaves are deeper green, more alive; 
the golds and reds of Autumn to come less obvious.

But my old eye still sees into the past
still sees every failed attempt at love,
every hurtful miscalculation, 
every lost forking away from the path.
I am not sure which vision colors my dreams now
but when I lie awake in the early hours

before the dawn breaks in grey (or butter yellow),
all the old failures, the ghosts, the cold anxieties
are colored by my old eye.

It will soon be corrected.

Squiby

i

It has been as I always suspected
it would be. No less than to
turn over to sleep and fall away deeply.
Fall into blue to indigo to black.

Wait! Can't the moonlight crackle
and burn, sputter like a tallow wick,
Catch and blossom into flame?

ii

The afternoon Sun is oblivious
to the conversation in the other room.
The generations hear each other
in the stories and laughter.

The birds call from the hedge.
The sunlight moves across the wall,
over baskets on the bookshelf,
over old prints of French castles.

It moves of its own accord,
inexorable and unforgiving.
One hundred years of afternoons
have crossed this room from wall to wall.

Outside, the stones scream in agony
and the lawn cannot hide.
The trees boil the light into green.

iii

Breakfast on the last day -
cupcakes, hot dogs (no buns)
boiled eggs, dill relish
ice cream.

iv

Red as cooked lobsters,
we think we know all the roads now and
enter the Chilmark General Store like natives -

Or so we imagine.

August, 2010 \ July 2026

Bitter

I once picked an olive straight from the tree
along the street in Sun Valley where my sister lived.
I didn't know it would be bitter as gall
and I spit it out.

Olives must be cured by water
or brine; then crushed and kneaded
before the oil is pressed out.
Salt, they say, leaches away the bitterness.
How did anyone ever learn this?

Memories croak like crows at dusk;
call to one another. A dozen stories at once,
old wounds, bits of glass working to
the surface of the skin.

Love is written on a sheet of paper,
crumpled, creased and worn,
a tight ball barely legible at times,
worn out.

Though there is nothing to solve,
each moment is an answer.

07/04/2013 06/30/2026 

The Last Time I Saw Patricia

Pat was surrounded by an entourage of angels all of her life . They guided her footsteps all of her life, protecting and comforting her and assuring her of God's love. You could not spend any time with her without feeling their wings brush you. Her father, her grandmother, her first granddaughter and most recently, her Beloved, all took turns guiding her hand and protecting her. I am sure there were many others as well, friend and family gone before. Pat was no fan of angelology. She did not feel any need for intercession with God on her behalf,  so this understanding of her life must be mine and not hers. I know that she did believe she would see her loved ones again and felt their presence. Call it projection, or the Collective Unconscious, or wishful thinking, I don't really care.  

 

I remember the shape of  her hands and radiant color of her eyes; the sound of her laugh and the warmth of her hugs; the taste of her cooking and the care she took with the things she loved; her wisdom and her devotion to others.

 

As for me, I joyfully anticipate the brush of her wings.

 

April 23, 2013 

Take These and Bind Them to Your Heart

 

 

Take these
and bind them to your heart
As a priestess might keep the name of her god,
mingled with the scent of cloves and frankincense,
in an amulet between her breasts.
Hold them in your secret place - 
  empty as the inner space of the rose's bloom-
Longing, glistening like polished amber ---

My hands along the River of your back;
My fingers swimming in your hair;
My lips like flowers on your throat
  or at the gate of your mouth seeking entry.
Fingertips that seek your breasts, your flanks, 
  your eyes,
Pluck at your dark harp until you fall, singing
  in ragged exultation, into the tingling well;
My breath that hides behind your ear . . .
  or teeth . . . or tongue . . .of tip of nose.
The rasp of beard on thigh and my hands
  on your hips like falcon's grip or on
that spot where bottom meets thigh.
Oiled fingers crease your back, knead your
calves, grip and pull at the sweet taffy
  of your body.

And most especially take this - 

The part of me which disappears from view
  goes into you,
Part of me no more, goes into you
to seek and rage and weep
In darkness only you can compass,
know and heal.

 

January 7, 1993
   

 

 

Seventy (to accompany a card)

Hey! Wait up . . .
You do, of course,
take from the bike petal
your sandaled foot
and rest it on the earth.
You turn back and watch
with that arch look; laugh
and apply the power of those
exquisite titanium hips.
The bike rolls forward.

You pass through the trees,
each one connected to its siblings
by a thousand thousand tiny roots.
They bend ever so slightly toward you
and whisper in their leaves.
You don't stop.

This bike path goes down
to the water's edge.
You will not be satisfied with less
than the roll of wave on shell;
of the long perfect horizon.
You will put aside your bike and walk out
onto the hard pan of the beach.

This is
a metaphor, of course;

like love. 

 

Forty

 

This is your homestead now,
your land, sown as it is
with seed or salt.

Yours to husband and to harvest,
to till and break and
cause to bloom.

On the barn, the old letters
have faded and are painted over
with your name now.

That time you said when or if
or then has left. There is only
this sunlit afternoon.

Ready?

Just remember that the Earth
always turns toward the morning,

And a gentle rain is
surely on its way.

For Emica on her fortieth birthday

March 5, 2026

Divorce

 

Did you, my friend, revel in your freedom?

Shook loose the halter of matrimony and

bounded into the morning light.

Was it worth the solitude to leave?

A brief shower but no further blooms,

Only the dry crackle of steps in dead leaves.

Were Fall and Winter unexpected?

Or hoped for?

In the pub, each man drinks from his own cup.

The murmur of voices is not a conversation.

To listen to the song is not the same as singing.

Hands that grip the table edge do not touch warm flesh.

Perhaps I am wrong.

Perhaps the walk through the dark streets alone

Was no hardship. The empty bed, the dish in the sink,

No compromise.

We come and go alone, I suppose.

The sea waves crash ashore

unheard, the mountain broods unseen.

February 17, 2026

for Matt, of course.