Our new life (2000)

I'm trying to believe what I know.  Heeding what hanging around here has shown me about people and meaning. (Divinity?) Childhood lessons about the one on whom to believe simmer and hiss in my ears this time of year. (Jesus Christ!)

My aunt died last month.  Her 3 year old son thinks she is in Heaven, with God, up in the sky.  (Like airplanes.)  I want to tell him that she is here, with God, among us.  They are us.

It's another death to make life from.  All my dreams and possibilities shift again.  My mom calls to ask if I'm okay.  (Okay?) Yeah, just different.  The little boy asleep on my lap has become the center of the universe and I a lesser satellite.

Certain desperate measure are no longer an option.  (Curse God and die!)  I have become Life's advocate and Death's companion.  We mix a gritty Trinity.

I'll go to my grandmother's house for the weekend.  We'll set the table, sit the boy atop a phone book, and offer thanks.  (Listen to us.)

Ann (1998)

You are the sheepdog
    and I the lost sheep
you rouse me from my slumber
invite me out into the rustling forest
invigorate my spirit in my body
to my wandering you are companion, for mercy's sake
and though I stumble, though I doubt
     you don't run away
     your presence gives me courage
     your words give me hope
muddied and slip-sliding
we wander for another day

If we never reenter the fold
    if I forever am lost
I am renewed by knowing you
shoulder to shoulder
I will bring you my discoveries
show your heart all of my fears
surely kindness and strength will accompany me
    off all the paths
    in my wanderer's life
    and I will rejoice in this journey
for you are my sheepdog
and I the lost sheep

receive them (1999)

I've been reading it less these last years,
except for last year

Fallen leaf language,
and clouds coasting

Orion flares on the wind,
Morse code from above

I turned from it in middle years,
the middle of 25

Numbed my body to the weather,
turned my mind to inked chatter

I walk in memories,
and meet today

Relearn the letters of wood smoke fire,
recall the meters of foggy lines

The world is full of whispers again,
I stand still and receive them

hide and see (1999)

I write in a tiny room
third floor
6' x 4'
one window half boarded up
I pull the board out

The boys in the yard dig up worms
two fistfulls of creepy crawlies
the girl from next door hides behind my car
watching them

Can they see me?
They never suspect her
Can she see me?
Only at night
illuminated by a flashlight

Me in a closet
draped in paper and daydreams
collecting pages no one reads
Who'd visit this lofty cell?
Who'd peer up from below?

I lean out the window
the boys are yelping
the girl runs to her yard
my pages ride the wind
she watches through the fence

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