Most mornings now I eat my cereal on the front porch
Sitting on the stoop, barefoot
surrounded by green clover, weeds, spindly overgrown pansies
two cats (one not mine, but who claims me anyway)
and a dog.

Often called "quiet solitude" it is anything but that
Though I still recognize the hint and feel a nudge from my
surroundings that I am sitting in a new reality
And the world I inhabit is tilting in another direction
It is one without children

There were paintings in our house when I was young
Wildlife ones painted by an artist friend
who is still a friend
Two of them were placed on the wall above the sofa
side by side
one of a red fox,
the other, two squirrels
One afternoon my nephew, very young at the time,
pronounced them as,
"Two Skunks and a Dog!"

I often think of that when flanked by these
two cats and the beagle all vying and vying and vying
for the leftover milk
in my cereal bowl
Realizing that those paintings now
reside in another house on another wall
My memory of them an echo
And only projected upon these
unsuspecting creatures whose energy too
is fleeting through time

I was thinking yesterday and this is without
pride or gratitude, mind you, I wasn't even feeling
guilt about it when I recognized
that I was holding it, holding time
sitting in a perfect 'something'
On the front porch
I experienced something quite undone, unfettered
undressed, even unrequited
I just happened to be there with the animals
and they didn't know it, of course, because
they are always there
But I watched in quiet servitude to whatever
it is I serve
Acknowledging, simply, yes it is--
(Held and gone that quickly),
It is perfect.

Whatever perfect even means, I don't know
But it is the best description I have
Because earlier, or later, depending on perspective
I'd awoken at around 2.30, deeply troubled when
I heard the word "mom" spoken so clearly
by my oldest child who is no longer living with me

He wasn't there when
I opened my eyes
I got up to check on the smaller children
and wondered if I would find his shoes by the door
Where he used to leave them after coming in at night
In the past it was a certain sign of his safety
that he'd arrived home
But the space by the front door was
and is empty of his shoes

He is gone
And so I released my panic for his sake
I went back to bed with a soft heart
A mind eased
That his shoes are now sitting (or not sitting)
beside another door
at this late, or early, hour
for me to not worry over anymore

Behind me the sound
Of leftover rumbling
Now a hollow bellow
Is just an echo
Of the night's stormy violence

Satiated and passing
The morning air yawns serene
And smells earthy
Of worms and ozone
So the gentle Sunday emerges
Steamy-like from the moist ground

I am awash in a pale golden light
From the rising sun
And the sudden idea that
I am witness to time's newest day

A glistening shimmer
Across the hazy fog
At the schoolyard
A path leads my eyes to the first light
And all the potential of another beginning

This compulsion of a stubborn earth
To revolve
Keeps a poet busy
Considering "new day" metaphors
And unique ways to express them

And also the agreement
(to which I never actually agreed)
That calls one to service
To recount daybreak
As it has from the genesis
Of a brute's first
Rapt attention to the buttery warmth
And ensuing pictographs
Of sunshine
After a storm

As it's always been
I am also compelled
To describe what I see
As if it's not been written
(Like the repetition of dawn)
A billion times before

In a Stairwell

It crystalized a moment in time
And silenced the yearning
At least briefly
A relief at last
Where fingers followed the outline
Of a forearm
Touching the telltale
Coursing vessels
Beating at the wrist
A rhythm of want
Slipped sweetly into the hand
of another
And joined finger over finger
Weaving not just a holding
But effecting an ascension
To the next place
Of being together

Sometimes you write about nothing
because nothing is all you have
This is easy to explain
In that the other day
I was trying to imagine my own mind
And what came to me was the image of my brain
Several sections of it’s matter
Appeared as blank splotches
Like empty, dark water

I was saddened because I thought to myself
That these are perhaps the areas
of the things
I can no longer remember
And will never recollect again
I countered more hopeful, “Maybe one day I might make a good Buddhist.”
Mindlessness being a virtue

The past, the present,
names, faces,
times, places,
words, memory
drop from the synapses pattern
and plop into the blank spots
drowned in emptiness of the forgotten

Maybe this is what death is like.

Perhaps this is a harbinger to death
A symbol of our certain demise
An untested aspect of biology
An intelligent trigger latent
And ancient
That makes the coming sleep easier to accept.

Dendrites shrivel like tulip stamen
after the season has passed
Brain cells are bubbles
blown to heaven rising
that pop
Dissipating all their energy
released by a common pressure
and gone

Drawing a blank
“I don’t remember”
Or “I can’t recall”
Is a more like a quieting

Facelessness
Namelessness
And less nostalgia
Create a simpler exit

It is not just an ending of memory
These images of silent black puddles
But perhaps it’s a source of ease:
Worry unwrought
Beauty unheld
Expectation undone
Life unfilled
Unprecious
Unfragmented

There was a time that I thought
She had died on purpose
After the many times she tried before
I thought at last she'd succeeded

Looking back now I am remembering
It all differently though
Because you can remember things differently
Even if the events remain
Unchanged

It could be a matter of perspective
Maybe of maturity
A re-imagining once
Coping has been learned

Because now I see clearly
The freshly baked cookies
On the counter
The flat of pansies and potting soil
On the garage floor
The clothes recently purchased
Their receipt
And the gifts and gift wrap
On the table

All of these thing imply
A return
Not a suicide

And what I see in particular
And most often
Is the carelessly discarded purple t-shirt
Rumpled on the vanity

The one she'd put on
Earlier that morning
Maybe after her shower
Or her last cup of coffee

And she had it on while buying
Flowers and gifts and
Clothes that didn't fit
Probably even while baking cookies

And it was the one she wore while
Visiting an old neighbor
Who impulsively snapped
A polaroid that day

My mother's last live photo
The one taken
In the purple t-shirt,
Her final witness

As the water receded
what was left on the sand was a froth
green, brown, alive
with bubbles
silent crackling
millions of tiny universes
popping one by one
absorbing into the ancient remains
of animals once breathing
their food and shelter, too
now ground into firmament
beautiful wet warmth, firm
beneath my feet
walking on the ages..
Is this what we are to you,
Leftovers of a wave?

I dropped Lea off to ballet last Monday and when she exited the truck I stayed a minute and watched her walk in the front door. Her coltish legs reaching up to the sky in her pink tights. I felt like I wanted to watch her forever, getting out and walking in, over and over, so I didn't miss any nuance of the motion. Or of the moment. Which is the only moment that was real to me then; that I actually knew was happening.

Because it could have been the end of everything right there. Which it was, I suppose, since each moment's ending is really a little death. And, I recognize that and so, I didn't want to not know it while it was happening.

I couldn't stay though. Not just stay there and sit there in my truck watching the moment because, you know, the moment ended. It ended quick as moments do, and besides, the school considers it remiss if a parent pulls up and parks in the no-parking lane. And of course, like a blink she was already gone, long gone, having simply vanished before my eyes because her energy catapults her so swiftly to the next part of her life. There is no slowing down when you are 13, there just isn't. And there is nothing more you want to do when your 44.

As I was pulling away and thinking about it, I said aloud to the emptiness of the dead, "You're missing everything, Mother." I waited for the response I never get, and so I followed up with quiet resignation, under my breath I whispered, "You've missed everything."

Last night I had another dream like ones I have sometimes where I call my mother's phone and she doesn't answer. I'll call again and again and often even go to her house to look for her, and she will be gone. The lights out. Like she has been gone away for a long time. And then finally as I get so desperate to find her during one final call, she will answer. There is great relief for me, but in the dream she is often preoccupied with something and often packing again for another trip. It feels like she has left the family and that she is no longer part of my life. I can't convince her to stay. In the dream she has moved on with a companion, usually a man, and they are traveling.

Once a long time ago, right after she died, in a dream she told me that she had a lot to do where she is now so we could no longer meet and talk like we used to. I believed that to be the time where I let her go to her new life. Or her death. Her death-life, I guess. And so, now I realize when I awaken from the current dreams, the ones where she is engrossed in her own preparations, I have to recognize that there is no return from where she is.

My mind might conjure up her image as reassurance, though. In these cases I like to think the Dream-Maker as a kind of benevolent Abstract, so that in this way It soothes me when I get too frantic in my search for her.