March 29th-For my dearest Mom, on her birthday.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

Dearface

Look
at the tales that
lay
in these twisted
sleeping palms.
They are
the daybreaks
worst greeting.
Arched
knotted fingers
that
weave through
shattered air,
silently etching
muted
jade
regret
into the
breath of pillows.

Sister!
Look,
at the clothes that have been ungraciously cast upon this
splintered floor.
They beckon so
longingly for your removal
that
their heads have snapped
in shame.

Was it the nitty gritty
night?
Assessed from the
agitation of coquettish
heels.

Cariña,
oh dearface
look,
the exit is paved
with curious insects
and
as your grip on the
floor is released...
See?
The knob will turn
with
natural elegance.

Cowboy

There was a cowboy in the city today,
with a leather swagger
and a face
of broken canyons.

It isn’t the hurried
structures
that brought him here.
For the cowboy,
his palms
bring
sympathetic
cues.
With a fox shimmer
dart,
he
releases
rusted
hatches
from wired cages.

And he
sees us,
dancing as we
cry
crying from paper\cuts
and
stolen wisdom.
Smothered into the hands,
the hands of anxious strangers.

Upright,

he stands close by,
his smile:
melted winks,
retreating
into
painted
archways.

The cowboys days
of hustling are
laughing,
and
settling
in the sand beds
of the
Snake River.

"We Don't Know How to Say Goodbye"

We don't know how to say goodbye:
we wander on, shoulder to shoulder.
Already the sun is going down;
you're moody, I am your shadow.

Let's step inside a church and watch
baptisms, marriages, masses for the dead.
Why are we different from the rest?
Outdoors again, each of us turns his head.

Or else let's sit in the graveyard
on the trampled snow, sighing to each other.
That stick in your hand is tracing mansions
in which we shall always be together.

-1917
Anna Akhmatova

Today's Soldier

Today
the wilted
cast iron
figurine
of
the soldier
sits in
stoic haste.
The soldier
is guarded
and
obscured
by oily
pastoral
landscapes,
belligerently
sequined ladybugs
and
gorgeeeeeessssss
bone china.

And they all wait,
in moments
of disarrayed
contemplation.

But the soldier waits the longest,
is passed over always,
by
the groups of
irreverent
crabs
and
the flocks
of
pale
ornery
pigeons.

After hours,
as the clocks in the walls
mumble dirty jokes,
as the porcelain
doll stills
the folds on her
satin dress
listlessly
and as the
antique
washboards,
and
apothecary
bottles
settle bets...

the soldier
keeps
in basic goodness.

With aches
that have
gathered
in his porous
spine..

Smiling,
amongst
the
carnivores.

What does it look like
to
be
strong.

The soldier
thinks:
“this is just as good
a burial place as any.”