Useless
Nothing to do
But think and think and think
And wait
But for an easy end,
For peace
But underscored
With prayers for acceptance,
For strength,
For courage,
I lack all of them
Nothing to say
But write and write and write
And wait
Comes from waiting
For death
For a storm
For a life
For healing
I have done them all
I grow weary of waiting
We talk logistics,
powers of attorney
the latest word from doctors.
The patient’s battle,
Like planning a siege on a city:
Where would the biggest challenge be?
What were the options? Where to place the biggest guns,
The line of retreat? When do we raise the hue and cry “Fall back?”
How many did we have in the fight, and would they stand?
We do not talk of the end,
of how we might surrender, if we must wave the white flag.
We cannot speak of real fears,
the stomach churning havoc wreaking knot
that has settled in our bowels,
but content ourselves with details,
like quartermasters making lists,
providing for eventualities,
counting our way through the battle.
Our captain lies abed
assaulted by creeping, terrible foes
warring for a life
and we cannot voice it.
but we are silent on the subject,
talk of other things among ourselves.
Fear is contagious,
And so each of us a sergeant
modeling bravado before the assault,
shouting orders, keeping busy, cracking wise.
If the battle is lost
we deal then.
But now
we fight.
Faith is locked
I cannot find it for the anger
that swells and threatens to choke me.
I’ve had enough and no longer care
who’s life is worse than mine.
Don’t give a damn about
the comparison of suffering that I was taught
and have carried with me
since I was small:
Someone else is suffering more
and thus diminishes my suffering
and makes it bearable.
Right now it is unbearable and
I want to feel each prick and sting of it.
My suffering.
My own.
And I want to rail Heaven
And conjure Doubt
And keep Faith at bay.
I want to savor it,
stroke it like a favored pet.
It is one of the few things I own outright.
I feign surprise at how low
this small but painful blow has brought me,
but that is self deception.
I am always on the cusp of Despair
and have always relied on the Grace
of the suffering of others to keep me from falling.
Perhaps when I am done
with grinding this glass
into my wounds
I will be able to remember the sacrifice
their suffering has made for me
and crawl back with gratitude
to Hope.
Their offering upon the altar
of my self absorption
a Eucharist, salvation for my transgression,
transforming their pain
in to my
Resurrection.
After three weeks
The ridges from the rings
Barely there
The finger had almost forgotten
Being bound for
A quarter of a century
She was surprised
That she had not remembered
To put them back on
For she had not forgotten,
She never forgot,
That she had said yes
That he had said yes
And they had encircled themselves
With each other
And somewhere beyond pleasure
Beyond safety and comfort
They had agreed
Not to be turned from this entanglement
When they were at an impasse
Somehow they had drawn on their agreement
And found a way back
Or fought a way back
It didn’t matter which
They proved that they could repair broken pieces
Make a new whole
She slipped the rings on and off
And on again,
Trying them on other fingers,
The prince searching for the right foot
But they only ever fit the one
That ran to her heart
She left them there
Like Cinderella wore the slippers
Even though she had the prince
The trees are late this year
I know this because
I grew here
And by the time my birthday would come,
As October waned and the rains fell
they would have shed their colors
to make a sloppy yellow red carpet on the ground
But the days are passing
and the leaves remain the same
The local news explains it all:
the science of the leaves
that refuse to turn
assuring us that they will,
in their own time,
just when the conditions are right
What if they don’t?
What if they are waiting for something else?
Perhaps they are willing themselves to remain the same
Refusing to change despite expectations
If they never change
I’m sure the news will inform us
We wouldn’t want to miss
Something that didn’t happen
There was a moment
When I saw something
A detail
And I was going to write it down
And describe it
So that anyone who hadn’t seen it
Hadn’t lived it
Would know it
Just by the words I chose
Like I had some comic book superpower
And you could be inside of me
And know what I knew
All because I could choose the right words
In the right order
Pluck them out of the mist
Or my brain or my soul or wherever words live
And drape them just so
Upon a page
But so many things happened
Between that moment and this
That I can’t even tell myself
What I saw
Now it will be a secret forever
From everyone.
A sheet of dark
wraps around the heart,
slip knotted anger
keeps it snug.
We like the fit
of things that hold us
swaddled like
our early infant days,
never outgrow our
desire for the safety
of the known
and thus
we stay where love has died
or pain has grown or
disappointment breeds the twins of
self and other loathing
or
we let dark resentments build
because
courage
cannot be summoned
from within
the heart
cradled in the familiar.
1.
So often in the past
the grace of a good bye
was never offered –
hearts washed by deep regret
smarting from the blow,
vowing that the next time
the words would be said
while with the living
Sadly now I have the chance
to be sure, before you leave,
that you know the depth
of what you’ve meant, how
you’ve marked my heart.
But how do I find the words
when I cannot accept
a world
that moves along without you?
II.
Surely there were weeks,
perhaps months?
You would fight and give me time
I would fight
to find a courage that would match your own
and face myself the loss of hope, the birth of resignation
But ah!
One week – one small set of days –
“I love you” whispered in an ear
already searching for the song of Heaven,
one more good soul, sweet soul
softly slipped
home.
III.
If no words at parting, what?
How to honor
that which meant the most?
The same as for the others
who were gone too soon.
Carry proud a flag of these best things:
hope resilient
goodness wide
laughter free
love remarkable and strong
a standard for the world to see
you
in me.
I could have one disease
Or two, but really,
Now we’re pushing it a bit.
A disease or two
And a condition,
Would suffice, but no,
Still more afflictions.
No one really wants to hear
Me prattle about how this hurts
Or how old beyond my years
I feel, when something is
too much,
too hard,
too not the me I was.
Too sad really, this inflammation
Of so many systems,
But especially the one that sustains
My sense of self.
In jeopardy? What little beauty I agree I carry.
Ah, the gnarling
Of body parts and soul
The fierce ignorance of how short
The race really is,
And how much more comfortable it would be
In sneakers.
They’re dinosaurs.
In my middle age,
I call them dinosaurs.
Nothing like the gentle/savage
mysteries found in the museums
and books of my children’s youth.
No, but still,
they are my dinosaurs.
One by one,
disappearing from
the landscape of my family,
their leaving as much a mystery to me
as the disappearance of the
triceratops,
or the brontosaurus
and yet inevitable,
taking with them a way of living,
of loving.
When they are extinct,
will they be, like the secrets
held in stratified earth,
discovered anew, studied, appreciated,
by those who never knew them?
My dinosaurs.
I will miss them.
There are so few left.
Leaving me to become
one of them,
dinosaur to those who next
inherit
this layer of creation
Will I be measured the same,
found a fitting evolution of love
or the beginning of the fall?
Will I stand up to exhumation
worthy of display, of study,
protected artifact
or common stone, briefly sifted,
unremarkable, and tossed aside?
