Like many things in fall 1988, this all starts
in a dark smoky place. A cafe
near campus.
She has opinions & confidence, long brown hair,
shockingly bright blue eyes.
Katie.
We moved to Chicago together years later,
mining that time in your twenties when everything
seems possible, nobody's married yet, and all we had
was time, cigarettes, some money, and each other.
Another writing exercise limited by one's phone number--each digit provides the number of words allowed per line. I wrote about this same relationship before, at its beginning & at its near-end.
When you’re young, you find inspiration in anyone who’s ever gone & opened up a closing door. A door shutting you out of authority or freedom, fun or prestige. A door, you imagine, that closes on important decisions related to you alone. So you relish that moment of an opening even if you don’t know what you’ll do there, even if you’re not ready to step in.
Sometimes, you’re better off in your part of the house, knowing (or discovering when it’s time) that the doors of your life are many, are wide, that they’ll open soon enough, perhaps even after you’re ready. You won’t even need to knock.
***
When you’re young, you laugh easily, loudly, sometimes at exactly the wrong moment. You feel the flush come over your ears, the tears come to your eyes. If you’re with friends, you might even get hit–the line you crossed comes at a cost, comes with a short sharp correction or recognition.
Sometimes you’re better off making sure the joke is goofy, that it’s not just a celebration of you, your cleverness. Sometimes you’re the life of the party by force. It’s okay to listen, to be kind, to be curious. You can settle for smiles instead.
***
When you’re young, candy is a reward. It’s surprisingly big. A Snickers bar is the length of a child’s forearm. A limb of chocolate. You savor & you save. The house has a drawer of sweets if you’re lucky. My house has a shocking amount of candy. Way more than I grew up with.
Sometimes you’re better off sharing it, a cake that the family slices, a gallon of ice cream that everyone scoops. There’s nourishment in this.
***
When you’re young, you put names & decorations on things. Your sheets & your pajamas, your curtains & luggage, your breakfast food & plates are adorned with cartoons & color. The process of aging is a narrowing of the imagination & the palette. You become more subtle, more calm, more quiet in the colors of your life, to the greying of your hair, your face, and the final greying which is permanent.
Sometimes you’re better off seeing through the lens of youth. Possibilities & joys open up. There’s probably even a part deep within your eye, cones & rods, there’s probably even a part deep within your mind, neurons on notice, that (re)awakens with color, with each color, with cacophonies of color. All in one place, all shimmering rainbow rainbow rainbow.
I'm thick in blood, and my heart
pounds too hard. I wake sometimes
with rapid drumming in my chest.
My wife sleeps beside me, the dog nestled near.,
my children in their rooms, sprawled,
sweating with an energy inexhaustible.
Each child, each of us, a life anew,
a lens through which to see the world
we'll leave one day too soon. To love
is to confront & frustrate mortality.
Each child, a stone placed on
the broad earth. Each child
a dimple on the cheek of it all.
There's a path that's clear & clean.
You know you could walk it,
could decide that this path would mean
something, if just for a minute.
The close packed dirt feels
solid, like a route meant for you,
each step, each crack reveals
that others before you came to
just this spot, came to a flowering
of their life as natural as
any failure or pain that stings
even in the remembering. At last,
step by step, the brightness comes,
or a rustling you didn't hear before,
and you know that this wandering from
where you were is your new life course.
A project where students take a screenshot of a row of photos in their camera roll, and compose a poem inspired by (but not describing) the photos left to right. My four photos are above, harvested on a walk on our school campus Tuesday 10/24/23.
Tell me a story of dirt & sun & rain.
Tell me a quickening & a flourishing,
of hair-thin intent reaching
deeper & darker
higher & brighter.
Tell me of your frailty, how to be alive
is to be a miracle, to look in a daze
at the surrounding ghosts of plants past,
at the carnage common
enough to go unnoticed.
Teach me to pronounce the gentle
pushing aside of individual grains,
teach me the verb for October,
teach me the tense of your proud posture.
It's been so long since we've spoken.
The opening line is from José Olivarez’s “Escargot” in his 2023 collection Promises of Gold. The image came from here.
If I look carefully enough,
I can see all my siblings
in me. This one's eyes,
that one's hair, this one's cheeks,
that one's grin.
Distance deepens
what's on the surface.
Somewhere in Austin,
somewhere in LA,
somewhere up the road,
hands like mine do work
I'll never understand.
And as the next generation
bears fruit of different seeds,
if I look carefully enough,
I can see the roots
that ground us all.
To grow old is
to grow deeper,
to grow stronger,
to be rooted
in one another.
Photos by François Brunelle for an article on non-related doppelgangers. In Spanish, "raíces" means "roots".
The world is not a pleasant place
to be without
the hard assurances of true friends
who speak up
before they're asked with stark truths
that elude you.
Silences stretch pregnant with loving thought,
their two cents
on the tip of nimble loving tongues.
It's difficult enough
to walk the wide world alone.
You need not.
Inspired by photos of Vivian Maier(not just that one).
An empty chair gathers dust in the garage, pale & stained
with dried out apple juice & cheerio crumbs.
There's a plastic booster strapped atop it, tightened fast
to keep safe what's precious, babies wild in their
hunger & joy. They learned to share in this chair,
to say please, and to thank their mom.
Sometimes these days we're in our digital corners,
eating while on screens. Timelines & due dates
interrupt & splinter & threaten what holds us together.
The refrigerator opens & closes before I can remind
them we're eating soon. They're hungry now. "Okay,
not too much." The table sits empty in a full busy house.
Image from Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count On Me.
Open wide the eye
that remembers. Capture
& share your now now
since your horizons have grown
predictable, repetitive.
Stand in this blessed
time, divided & animated
by the young, by your young.
Minutes & years sing a worth
for your ears only.
Listen, reset yourself,
and be whole again.
A classroom prompt, where we riffed on four of our phone apps for one stanza each, moving from the left column of apps to the right.
middleagedmiddlechild. 