EARLIEST MEMORY

The first thing I can remember is water -- not a lake

or river but the rising level of it in the bathtub, the untroubled

sheen of its surface splashing over the lip of porcelain,

below which many imaginary explorers went in search of

new worlds, new creatures, new routes of escape.

I am holding my favorite rubber alligator, the one I will

soon bring with me to foster care. But not just yet.

I have locked the door, but cannot remember

doing so. I can hear voices calling on the other side,

going back and forth, but do not answer.

I like the hum and gurgle of the water. I like the quiet.

But my older sister, convinced that I am drowning,

has scaled the creaking fire escape and kicked in

the window with her flimsy summer sandals, throwing

shards of glass across the smooth tiled floor.

They are like small jewels, aquarium green at their edges;

I want to pick them up and turn them in my hands.

We are fine, but we are both in trouble now.

Though our mother does not stir from the sanctuary of

her television-blue room, the permanent dusk she cultivates,

and does not bother to unlock her door. It is not time

for us to break that door in, its frame dangling

like a broken cross, nails bent downward. Not just yet.

For now, she stays in bed as though tethered there,

drifts in an ocean that is not quite oblivion,

steered by starlight we can neither follow nor understand.

We are fine, we are; but we will be in trouble soon.

TO THE YOUNG WOMAN WEEPING WHILE DONATING PLASMA

 

I cannot know your story -- the river of time

and circumstance that brought you here

today -- only this slender moment of quiet

unraveling, weighted tears pooling and tumbling

from the corners of your almond eyes,

gray-blue and receding from view, your face --

so young -- bruised already from within.

Grief has come to claim you, this much is clear,

blurring your edges, as though submerged,

even in this clinical afternoon light;

grief gazes back, unblinking as the day itself

through the clouded lens of your phone.

The little I know, or at least pretend to believe,

I cannot speak, not wanting to be the unwelcome

stranger who pierces your necessary solitude.

I would not trouble you with all the heartaches

yet to come, as they most certainly will;

I would speak only of the moments between,

moments of ease and exhalation where

you could alter course, arranging possibilities

like so many books upon the shelf. I would

remind you simply to raise high the window blinds,

to leave the door ajar, so that when joy

returns, it will know just where to find you.

ALL ABOUT THE BLUES

 

It's all about the blues, you remind me,

smiling, nodding in affirmation -- dry, chalky blue

of the sky brushing itself one way, then another,

unfathomable cobalt of the great lake churning below,

haint blue of my mother's Appalachian home,

undiluted sininen of the old country,

midnight rising like a bruise beneath the snow.

How many have come to greet us today,

come to call us back to the pulse and hum of this

indelible world, this never-too-familiar world,

this world of unfolding luxury, fear, and surprise?

You say there is a horizon here some days,

and sometimes we must make our own.

You say the colors we love most are the ones

we can never know by name, would not want to know,

colors that no amount of mixing could create.

Not until later, when you have painted this

landscape and placed it in my hands, its colors

still wet and shimmering -- reaching for one another,

as all things will -- do they begin to reveal

themselves, becoming at once a place I could

walk into, land or no land, sky or no sky,

a place in which I could easily drown.