~for Joanie
Yes, we know about you, and none of that matters.
We know how you keep
turning over rocks,
opening doors. I have no
idea how it works,
no idea if the whole
world sees us as kin.
How could she not?
We know we are cut from
the same cloth,
you and me, an afternoon
breeze around the neck,
grateful for easy when it finds us.
Even in black and white, we
know how to marvel.
EXACTLY Wow!
Yes, and we know how to transform
day to day,
give patience to steady
becoming.
Our generation – once tucked
up tightly in an oak gall,
encroached the safe verges
with indiscretions.
We could not help it; they pushed through our skin,
provoked by our
grandmothers, and we crashed around like toddlers.
We know it was necessary to
be embarrassed and appalling,
the only rungs to climb
out of tepid dishwater.
Of course, it was
impossible to plan or know what or how to enter.
Extemporaneous the
buzzword, we made it up as we went.
EXACTLY Wow!
We know about living the
moment, psychotropics sat us down.
How the stumble found the
treasure and to feel took more.
I would turn a silver
ring like a millstone on my middle finger,
the fear into flour. When
a waxing moon got involved, we knew
what happened to heartache.
She said less is more. Keep walking.
EXACTLY, Wow!
We know about wonder, how
it flies in, reckless and stubborn,
a cyclone of
swallowtails, a reliable migration.
And we know about nostalgia,
those sooty cobwebs
to distort the glisten
and fade sweetness on the tongue.
We know that because we
know about longing,
how it confounds continuity,
makes a touchstone
of happenstance and never
mind.
When we pitched the red
tent ages ago,
we knew it would billow
in stories before it fell.
I have what you have, as if
I needed you, I am you.
Between the threads grew enough
humble, enough silly, enough strength.
And that tent, sun faded
to the color of Utah sands,
abides in our bellies, kettle
drums of alive.
We know to follow the golden
thread, we learned the shortcuts.
Sometimes we didn’t take them
-
the date rape at the
drive-in,
getting hassled in the
parking lot at Planned Parenthood,
the onerous box of family
secrets,
that Amway Pyramid dream.
Yes, we knew and we know.
We are complicated
persons.
Grandmother Spider, Sky
Woman,
Sunanda, Minera,
Rhea, Freya,
Anan, Quan Yin
You don’t need to be a
goddess to get it
EXACTLY, Wow!
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