RASPBERRIES IN NOVEMBER

 

Walking my daughter home from school,

the autumnal sun clear and bright

all around us -- though the wind is sharp,

undeniable, an uninvited guest looking

for a vacant place to settle in.

We stop to pick the few remaining

raspberries along the way. They are cool

to the touch, trembling slightly,

tiny pistils of hair standing upright

on their flesh, offering back to us the rain,

sun, and soil of the season's passing.

She picks one, and places it in my hand,

while I reach for two more at the top,

placing them into her palms one at a time.

Sweetness offered, and sweetness

returned, I think to myself. So simple.

"This is the best raspberry that I've ever

tasted in my life," she exclaims.

She has said as much more than twice

over the summer. You would be forgiven

for thinking it mere exaggeration,

a childish excitement, but I'm quite certain

that it has been true each time,

as it is here and now. For both of us.

MUSIC BOX

 

My daughter turns the match-thin handle

of the music box, its tiny metal teeth

plucking out "Love Me Tender"

with the bright clarity of a child's lullaby,

slowing and increasing the tempo

of this tune she has learned this way,

its simple notes rising and falling

from her steady outstretched palm.

When I was her age, my older brother

and I rode in the back of a sweltering hot

station wagon while a calm and serious voice

broke through the radio announcing

that Elvis Presley, a man who seemed

to me to be from another planet, had died

suddenly, at his home in Memphis.

Death was a gray and mysterious thing;

but I knew that it meant an absence,

a silence which no one came back from.

Yet music lives upon air, much longer

than breath alone, writing and rewriting

itself at will -- and here it is again

on this most ordinary day in autumn,

dry leaves tapping at the window glass;

a day made all the more lovely by its brevity,

and because we are here to speak of it.

Which is to say that there is no need

for the saying, no need at all. This song,

however small, will do just fine.

ONE MORE THING

 

There is always one more thing to retrieve on your way out the door. Yesterday it was your hat and gloves. Today you searched blindly for your keys, as if you had been suddenly dropped into a stranger's disheveled living room. Tomorrow, who knows? It seems you are always fumbling through coat pockets, grocery bags, and drawers, always turning to check behind you. Things, after all, have a way of piling up on their own, never quite where you left them. This is when living alone becomes most precarious. You must set friendly traps around the house, signposts, always placing things back where you picked them up. You must recognize patterns, follow your own footsteps with intent. Each morning in the doorway, you must pat yourself down before allowing yourself to leave, recognizing each small, familiar shape in your clothing; touching your own hand once, then again, just for good measure.

LEDGER

 

I was born with a list of books

I will never find time to read or to live;

I was born with the silence of their

pages pressed against my lips.

SCATTERED

 

So many different rains tonight,

their slender gray thoughts

scattered everywhere at once.

Perhaps the wind can somehow

bring these factions together;

perhaps by morning a consensus

may at last be reached.

IN REPLY TO YOUR QUERY

 

Ask me anything

you like. I will do my

best to remain

silent.