In this rain-soaked sweater,
the shoulders of my heart carry
too much.
The long day stretches like
a kindergarten line,
a row of to-do's:
grade, download, print, cook, type,
change diapers,


holding you as you giggle, smile, toot.

The white school walls tell a story
through the cracks and blank stares
The silence makes it that much harder
to leave you.

When I fill up the spaces with your face,
I can do this.
When rain makes my whole body heavy,
your voice can sing me light again,
whispering through me like a soft note.

...but leaving you still makes me sad,
and when you go, I'll be sadder--

lying in the grass,
remembering your castle we made
from cardboard boxes and a tent
and a ground cloth.

I won't want you to go there,
wherever it is you will go,
and I'll be looking through
the primary-colored panels
out into the back yard,

wishing your swing was still up,
your slide in use
your toys scattered--
red blue and yellow flags of joy
only because you played with them.

There is something so perfect in your expressions--
your eyebrows angled, posed
just right for each occasion.

Love will never be a big enough word,
but I can't stop telling you:
more than all the stars in the sky,
more than all the lightning bugs in all the swamps
of all the world,
more than all the fish in the seas,
wider than the ocean.

Every day I think how you don't have your daddy,
how you may never have him
...but some holes are bigger than others,
fingerholes patched
fist holes spackled
heart holes prayered, over and over.

August 16th, 2012

In the corners
of our lives where all the lint,
loose threads, dog and cat hair
scrap metal, yarn, wood chips,
sawdust and dead skin gather-
we survive, even thrive.

We inhabit those angles
where it's easy to nestle,
hard to leave,
where rain might make a puddle

with mud or pretty oil
and where it is so
so messy...but we don't care.

We sit on top of it all,
or sleep in a tent (just to have room),
and we are hungry and thirsty
and dead with fear

but somehow still grow
in this stick forest of rotten trees
trash and refuse
ready to be restored
revived
rewritten.

demented

For 17 months, I forgot to write,
and experience
overrode
everything

...so now the voice,
the face is a mother voice
a care.taker. face.

Glowing in the dark means
something new now,
and mother means me.

Daddy became a character
from a short story I wrote years ago:
He might as well smoke cigars
and play chess naked,
think the teenage girl next door is his wife.

...and I'm not so great at being their eyes, ears, and brain.

It's funny to think my brother didn't know
the difference between dementia and demented.
He learned the hard way.

...and I learned a new meaning for face
as mine has changed so drastically

cataclysmically changed
...and there are ugly, patchy
yellowed wings
emerging
but I can't straighten them up
or make them fly right.

castles

in a sandy place
we lose our footing
but after a rain
we learn to make sand castles

the joke and the puddles

yesterday: writing a story
of what I thought was truth
or longing
or heartbreak
or love

they must have been playing a joke
when they showed me that
something they called love-
in between the sheets, candles,
a kiss in the rain
it must be the biggest joke I know to call that LOVE

and when I met her,
and every day I hold my daughter,
God's flawlessly knitted truth
like a prize,
a gift opened into LOVE

and that light beaming
all over me with a word "Mama"
or a look. in. my. eyes.
with a tiny hand in mine,
that brilliant flower,
with more color than
all the puddles with oil
in all the parking lots in the world


the faucets on all sides explode
into a watery dance
and I am blessed with too much water

cracked bark lets in light

the tree's branches are too heavy
so she grows a bigger trunk
stronger bark, more cracks
to let in the light

they carve their names into her trunk
but she has the will to live
to nurture her leaves
veins baring, weeping sap

they bore holes into her body
and her leaves are falling:
red, yellow, brown

there are lots of nests-
the Carolina Wrens, baby Robins
those eggs cracking too
with wet new life

she embraces those babies
in her branches
but when the wind blows,
the cradles rock,
she is scared too

some creaking, snapping
bending and breaking
but the babies survive
and she soaks in the life