WHERENESS

 

I had never considered it that way --

the simple state of being in a particular time

and place -- until you let the word fall,

suspended between us, both strange and familiar.

Where else could one be?, I wondered.

You loved words that way, trying out the new,

settling on favorite phrases, turning them,

chewing on their shapes and sounds, following

their threads wherever they might lead.

Now, all those years having gone wherever

the years go, I can only be grateful that

my whereness and yours found each other,

however briefly, breathed the same air,

shared the same silences, laughed at the same

absurdities you couldn't help but challenge.

You demanded much but expected little,

your lack of faith in others a religion unto itself,

yet never questioning where we belonged,

and never doubting that we would live forever.

BETWEEN BURSTS OF THUNDER, WE HEAR ROBINS SINGING

If we cannot learn the song

of these birds, calling through

the shuddering dark, let us at least

better study their silence.

If we cannot know the secrets

of their flight, let us at least

acquire the stillness they have

perfected on thin air.

TURBULENCE

 

Flying into New York for the first time,

all those years ago, the plane gliding through

wisps of white cloud, waving and vanishing,

before the gray and the darkness

rose to meet us, rough knots of wind

jolting us one way, then another, as if God,

having failed to reach us through other means,

was again trying to get our attention.

Lightning broke like a crack in the glass,

the plastic curtain of the window falling shut,

while my anxious mind immediately began

to map out the details of our demise,

engines coughing and sputtering into silence,

the passengers behind us praying without reserve,

the strangely serene drop from 40,000 feet

to some abandoned field, your thin summer skirt

with its pattern of daisies blending into

the long, wet grass, the shapes of our bodies,

appearing to be running -- whether toward

each other or away -- imprinted into the earth.

But just as quickly, the darkness gave way

to sunlight, the clouds began to erase and rewrite

themselves, shapes of commas and ellipses

trailing off, above and below, the brief story of

our life together -- part comedy of errors,

part tragedy -- still being written, still in search

of an ending that would make sense.