Reading Vows

I read the RV bed,

the valley

in the mattress

formed by years

of Carla and Julie

rolling to center, sinking

in each other’s arms

anywhere between here

and Michigan.

Sleeping there with Dorell,

house guests,

the night before

their renewal of vows,

we fall into that nest,

make it warm

with our witness.

By morning, thick

with shared heat,

I climb the hill

of the bed’s high edge,

kick off the quilt

to the cool blue sheet,

fall into dreams again.

The tension of clinging

to the ridge, a giant

snoring woman fallen

to earth, my arm an anchor

thrown over a cliff,

is too much work.

I let go, roll down,

his heft a word

my body knows by heart,

our sunken shape

a new memory

in that soft valley

where every shared night

is a vow.

High Desert Love Languages

Piñon want to be in every poem,

reach into all the cracks the weather makes.

To lengthen in any direction we must break

something, we must suck the water

from dry places, like the bee, like the billionaire,

like me, fighting for a viable teaching salary

so I can retire, scoffing at aphorisms

of well-fed western gurus who say

poverty and wealth are states of mind.

I say, states of body passed on in human seed:

working class exhaustion, the learned

love language of poverty—craving

only things that are free. Only three

out of thirty students in this desert valley

raised their hands when asked if they feel

most loved when they receive gifts.

Gifts—reciprocation—make us uneasy.

Praise, another gift, empty in this empty place.

Give me touch. Give me time.

Give me a sink full of clean dishes.

I took the survey and laughed:

how many receptors I have grown,

tiny pores of hands for almost any kind

of love. I only joke that I am needy.

On Rain

It’s raining. The dog

is sad, curled up in the misery

of not walking me.

When it stops, the night

smells of wet pine, so good,

like the dreams of city folk, their soap,

like itself and spring woodsmoke.

On a black road holding a leash,

I sniff my shoulder to see if it is me.

It was kind of the rain to wait

for us to finish weeding,

power tooling, before it fell,

though of course rain falls when it will

with no thought of kindness.

How we love to personify

the earth’s indifference

when it suits our gratitude or ire.

It felt like kindness.

three eighth graders

fourteen and mean

mistake cool for cruelty

their hearts, roots tangled

into knots of fist stunted

by a father’s tight pot

Dragon

You have a soft spot for the boy,

the quiet sophomore boy,

whose arrivals always smell

of second hand smoke

and unwashed sleep beneath

a pilled, black beanie.

You’ve watched him fashion

serpents for years:

a dragon head of clay

glued to spiral wired frame,

skinned with plaster and paint,

suspended from fishing line.

Before that, a clay snake circling

a slab rolled mug, red and green,

always red and green. And now,

a plan for stained glass:

a dragon built of shards

he will grind and foil and weld,

build something dark for light

to shine through. So, when,

on the field trip bus, he sits

across the aisle from you,

coughing, oozing green from nostrils

as he has for many months,

seeking tissues from your purse,

just trying to get his body from home

to school to a building full

of fantastical art, you brace

yourself for the illness to come,

sense it nesting, surrender when it hits:

the cough, the sputtering cough

of a dragon, trying to rise,

to rise again and again

from every cave, this one in you.

holding on

Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
Do you think you can tell?

~Roger Waters

in my early 30s I found a letter

in my dead sister’s boxes

my father had written

during her honduran mission:

“rachel is lost,” he’d said.

i still I wonder at his—at her—

smug surety of a way, holding on

to the rod, the iron rod of mormon lore

i sculpted once in early college—

a frieze in low relief, rod receding

in one point perspective, skirting

a great and spacious building—

the rod that rhymes with god in hymns,

not the psalmist’s bludgeon

shattering sinners like pottery,

but lehi’s dream of a handrail,

the one i hoped would keep me

on a righteous path, headed

for a flaming tree. i let it go,

that cold rail, it’s true— that story

i lived in for a time, that borrowed

tune singing me straight. i let go

the rod for broad sky, like my son,

now driving toward oregon,

feeling lost, he told his father,

trying to figure it out, without knowing

what he’s trying to figure out,

which makes me think he has arrived

like i once did, not lost, dear fathers,

but alive, knee aching, armpits

stinking of onions, tapestries filtering

morning light through rolled up windows,

preparing to bathe by spray bottle

in a walmart parking lot, that bardo

where no one lingers long,

holding on to a wheel.

for grey

reading abeyta from her collection

faint scent rises               i bury my nose

                        in the spine           

of as orion falls               inhale, enter

                   James’ basement

the must                           and smoke

                  of friendship

her cool hands                on my cheeks

                      these pages

in Puget Sound

Wince into some corner

of your mind as you walk,

dragged along

by will,

by love for your daughter

who has found winter

in the water,

found a way

to move forward

and through.

Strip down

to barely clad,

body curving

every direction over stones,

the shoreline of your skins,

your mothers’ mothers’ blood

pulsing ancient tides

against spring wind.

Walk with purpose,

you are told,

no hesitation.

Pour your toes into the Sound.

Wade into the icy cold,

into liquid salt.

Notice water crawling

your inches and forget

all the words that name

your parts.

Silence the monologue

cataloguing your discomforts.

Gather the reins

of your ragged gasps.

Gently pull into quiet breath.

Hold up your hands,

trembling supplicant,

above the surface,

like those birds on piers

spreading wings

to any thread of sun.

Open and close

your fingers like pumps,

like hearts.

Press palms together

against lips’ silent syllables.

Catch hot prayers,

animal gasps and shudders,

death’s promised rattle

not yet death.

Waves lick your clavicle.

Calm cold seeps into limbs,

follows blood and lymph

into deep caverns.

Don’t fight it.

Notice small waves’ texture.

Notice a lone seal’s distant head skim

and plunge,

surface there

now there

now gone.

Turn to your grown daughter

who brought you here,

who stares out past

the farthest horizon.

Look for it.

for Sage

Beckett’s Teacher Confesses

I realized today

while reading Act I,

I am not Vladimir

or Estragon. Aimless vagabonds.

I am Lucky.

Not lucky, Lucky.

The one who carries the bags

              of the rich, and the hard stool, who teaches children,

              not on purpose, to carry bags, too,

who puts down the load to dance,

              or think, when Pozzo cracks the whip,

who used to dance and think for joy

              before the QuaQuaQua

              for the A-cacaca-demy,

who now collapses, exhausted

who stands and carries on automatically

              when someone puts the handle

              of the bag in my hand,

says, Nothing to be done.

Modern Silence

John Cage called

silence traffic

more or less true

of towns and minds

not two a.m. a mile

outside of Crestone