High above our neighbor's house
a flock of cedar waxwings,
egg-sized birds (must be hundreds)
gathering, resting, waiting
to take wing as one across
the equator. When they sing,
it's a crystalline morse code --
the bare live oak crowded, sounding
their own password primeval,
their own kind of belonging.
Now they've left, replaced by spring,
green canopy delicate,
its too brief default setting
before the summer descends.
Somewhere else, those same birds sing.
There is no perfect child.
There is no time like the present.
There is no one coming to rescue us.
There is no reason for alarm.
There is no guru.
There is no method.
There is no one coming to teach us.
There is no natural law.
There is no going back.
There is no use in crying.
There is no one coming to save us.
There is no better time.
There is no perfect pitch.
There is no top tier.
There is no one coming to dazzle us.
There is no true blue.
There is no Mother Nature.
There is no bird in the tree.
There is no one coming to restore us.
There is no light on the porch.
There is no moon for the moon.
There is no center of the universe.
There is no one coming to judge us.
There is no will to matter.
There is no angel that fell.
There is no demon that tempts.
There is no one coming to guide us.
There is no last day.
There is no sunset.
There is no alpha dog.
There is no one born to love us.
There is no last word.
There is just a celestial thread
that we hold for safety,
that we pluck for sound,
that we discover and trust.
A kind of writing-myself-into-a-corner exercise inspired by Paul Averitt's "Saying Goodbye"
A rare morning with nothing
to grade, no one to pick up.
His teenagers were asleep,
His wife was in the shower.
He made a coffee,
put on his earbuds,
sat in the still living room
of his comfy house.
He thought, before pushing play.
“What can a guy even learn
at one point five speed (or worse)?”
Earbuds on transparent mode,
he could just make out
the clicking of the dog’s paws.
He’d have to get up
to take him out & make sure
the coyotes & bobcats
weren’t out & about.
(It is the suburbs,
but the animals don’t know.)
Softer, his wife’s footsteps come.
She laughs at some FB post.
Her eyes, clean, joyful, turned up —
her dark almond eyes.
She looks five years old,
like in that one old photo,
seated between her brothers,
her whole body saying “cheese”.
She looks just like that.
He joins her in the kitchen.
They talk and take the dog out
together in their pjs.
A boy, a girl, & the dog.
The kids still asleep.
Another sort of jueju, this one inspired by a prompt suggested by Tricia Ebarvia & Kim Parker -- "What's saving your life right now?"
His hat & his belt,
his stance & his stare
all announce the gravity
of this moment at the plate.
He'll finally get to run --
a rarity in this game.
I lean against the chain links
with the other dads,
letting them chatter,
knowing that he knows
I am there, watching
behind the hot cage of boys.
He steps to the plate,
plants and grinds his cleats
in the white striped box.
I feel something pool
deep in my stomach, worry
that he'll miss, or worse,
that he'll be thrown out at first.
But he sees the pitch’s arc
and he knows. He knows.
A ping of aluminum,
and a flash over
the dad who's pitching.
I gasp at my boy,
delight in his hopeful speed.
This one is years old. I've written about this subject, this child before : )
We stopped at the farm
because Mari wanted to see
her grandparents.
The highway turned
to farm road
to cracked blacktop
to gravel winding
between rows
I couldn't identify.
A straw hat moved
among the rows, stopped.
A shot ran out. I jumped
in the back seat.
"Grandpa must've found a snake."
I walked with Mari
to the house, comically citified
in vintage store Dickies & Vans.
Grandpa shook my hand,
a child's hand in his rough, raw
shotgun hands.
We drank chicory coffee,
eating a storebought lemon cake.
"Come see the peaches."
Grandpa plucked one
hanging deep in the boughs.
We ate beneath the trees
heavy with fruit,
sequined by the sun.
I have never known
the name of the creek
that winds through the neighborhood,
brackish, slow, beside the road,
but I have smiled at
its myriad surprises,
gifts unique to inhuman
spaces everywhere --
burrs, spores, and flowers,
rainbowed still water,
dragonflies & unseen birds
resting, drinking, taking flight.
A Google maps search
reveals the name (White Rock Creek),
a name neither fitting nor
jarring. I log off.
And in my mind, see
it as I know it, nameless,
wild, quietly following
its own old path through
our too busy lives.
Any less than ten yards, you have to punt.
The momentum lost, you now hold a line.
Back & forth it goes, ten yards the standard.
But something matters about the near miss.
Falling short does not equal standing still.
Seeing the summit awes like reaching it.
Go the whole nine yards. Notice the distance--
beyond your reach but within your sight,
close enough to go back where you belong.
Ours is a campus distracting,
downright manic in its care. Counselors,
specialists & advisors lining
its expensive halls. Every student an honors
student. So the manicured
lawns & catalogued trees fit.
One tree so young no bird
could find room to nest in it.
One tree in a line of dozens
not yet tagged but firmly roped
to the ground, a blue ribbon
low on its wrist-thick trunk. Hope
springs eternal for small things.
Listen for its wind-tousled rustlings.
I have a better understanding now of love
but not of loss.
I have children & a wife, happy & healthy,
none of whom has suffered
anything uncommon to middle class bubbles.
No cars have been mangled,
the seats & buckles haven't failed, and AAA arrives
in the rare moments we need help.
Teachers love my children & share good news.
No detentions or reports burden us.
It has often been this way, this flow of joys
interrupted with the rare heartbreak.
Music & books, clouds & birdsong sustained me
while my wife worked hard into the night,
Friends & concerts, nights laughing in parks
while my parents struggled & sacrificed for me.
Grad school prolonged an untested belief in beauty
when others suffered & lost (& even died).
Perhaps now I'm fueling a reserve
of good will, good health, & good fortune
to draw upon in some hospital years from now.
Experts, harried, will explain the diagnosis,
my family will adjust their schedules,
will delay long-hoped-for plans, will lose sleep,
caring for the frail me I can only imagine.
May I have the strength to find the joy then
that I take for granted now. May my family
feel that the end of a good life need not be a loss at all.
This was originally just the first & the last stanzas. Adding the middle one made it a kind of sonnet, in my mind.
My first grade teacher was a tall
kind-hearted joyful woman.
Her hair was perfect, symmetrical
waves of the brightest red
framing her clean forehead,
blooming from the front of her veil.
We were told
that her hair went far
down her back.
I never saw it.
My mother did.
I loved that teacher with
something about as pure as
how she loved me, about as pure
as how she loved Jesus. I loved
her so much that I was jealous
of how she loved other kids,
of how sometimes my mom
talked to her and had business
with her that didn't include me.
There's a photo of a bicentennial cake
taking up her entire classroom:
Donated refrigerator boxes covered
with construction paper, toilet paper
tubes fashioned into two hundred
birthday candles. And another photo
of our First Communion, innocent
children lined up by height, led by her
to the altar, identical Amens
synchronized and choreographed
to purity and perfection.
And picture day, a rare day
out of our uniforms. I had a new shirt
with Mexican embroidery on the pockets.
At the front of the line, she stood,
dabbing Vaseline on each student's lips.
She put her hands on my shoulders and told me
I was handsome. "Smile, honey."
Her name was Sister Rosaline. That entire year she taught me first grade, she also served as a prison chaplain, as she did for years after. After she retired from teaching, she served in hospital ministry until her death in 2007.
middleagedmiddlechild. 