music that has never ended

Here is the Last Stop variety store
where you worked your first job unpacking boxes.
Here is the beach where you juggled rocks
and chipped your front tooth. Overlooking bright water,
the yellow house your family loved and had to sell.
The sandy lovers’ lane where you first tasted salt
from a woman’s skin with the windows wide,
open. Eight years of stories that you told as we drove
tangled roads in your black Jetta, kayaks on the roof.
As we walked every beach on Cape Ann,
paddled the pulsing harbor and bays,
married on a rock overlooking the raw sea.
But this turbulent force, this blue that is not blue
nor green but sliding, rolling, slipping over itself endlessly
in its rush toward rock and sand, these cascading
layers of sound—the roar, the whisper, the crashing—music
that has never ended, that has existed since the beginning
of time—this is no longer your story.
Or ours. Or mine. I stand
at the edge of the surf,
cold wind sobering my vision,
staring into this rare sea, loving this face of God—knowing
this may be the last
I see of her—as if for the first time.

Witness

You are the shard of light
flashing from a spoon’s hollow—
and like everything infinite
I cannot touch the softness
below your ear ever again.
Why, my own face
reminds me of yours,
for in these eyes
even strangers see
all that I became
in loving you. All
that I believed, witnessed, lost
and learned over eight centuries.
Even my child can see longing and defeat
playing against the iris’ defiant fire.

Naming Jack

There is nowhere I can go
that you are not present.
The hairpin turn that took us
away then returned us home.
The overlook where you placed silver
in my daughter’s palm so she could see
April’s gray bowl of valley.
The very museum window
through which we looked out upon rushing
brown water, red brick from another century
and hills that leave only a thin strip of sky.
This is the cost of living in a small place.
I came here to escape my life
without you, forgetting
that everywhere we’ve ever been
will always be ours. When we last
climbed that winding mountain road—side
by side—we were busy choosing
a name for the puppy we’d soon have.
Like expectant parents, we were too full
imagining a future to realize
the moment we were living
could be all we’d have left
once we drove into that cloud.

To a Teacher

This is the first time in my life as an educator & a parent that I have felt tremendous & absolute pride in the country that I represent & have brought my child into. What I am about to say may seem overstated, but I feel in my bones, in my cells, new hope for the survival of our planet & its childrens’ children. We have a chance to create a different fate than the tragic one we have been hurling ourselves toward. I believe that having a profoundly intelligent, well-educated, international president can cultivate a deep, lasting respect, desire & commitment to learning in this country.

While teaching yesterday, I was reminded of just how urgent our work is as educators: a freshman student asked, “What is Watergate?” I asked the class to raise their hands if they had the same question & numerous hands went up. While there are wide gaps in my own education, I struggle to imagine a college student in 2008 that has never even heard the word Watergate—a part of recent history that dramatically eroded our nation’s confidence in its own leaders & resulted in a president’s resignation. How ironic to have a student ask this question on the very day our nation is choosing its next president, a leader to replace one who betrayed our nation & the world & should have been impeached, not pardoned.

Our ignorance is deadly.  Our work as educators has never been more essential than now. Finally, we have a leader who believes in what we do.

(for Shoba)

On Love & Politics

I’d like to step out of my usual genres to simply say how sad I was, while listening to the vice presidential debate, to be reminded of one thing the candidates agree on: I should not have the right to marry whom I choose, were I to be so lucky to have a partner. All I could think about was my daughter, who was watching as well, who would be reminded all over again that her mother belongs to a group that is not granted basic marriage rights. After all the patriotic pride I’ve felt for my country during this remarkable election, and all of the talking to my kid about it, and her budding political soul breathing this air, this revolution, to see such a stark blow to my civil rights with my daughter watching—I was ashamed for my county, not “of” but “for” my homeland. Land of the free. Standing where I stand, as a woman bound by a civil union that is invisible in the state where I live, a marriage-rights activist that ironically suffered the loss of my own eight-year “marriage,” a single mom looking through the lens of a fresh divorce though I can’t even legally divorce, I can tell you that the central thing that robbed me of my marriage is something many Americans face regardless of sexual orientation—the devastating, long-term effects of incest, a crime that can cripple a child’s ability to ever have a family of her own. And in the end, my heart is just as human as the heart that can legally marry—or tragically, legally divorce—in his or her homeland. And my daughter’s heart is just as tender as the heart of a child born to parents who can legally marry—or lose—the love of their lives.

The Visitor

Light fills the kitchen’s southern windows, illuminating a sea
of floating particles and the row of old, mud-caked shoes
in every size. The noisy family that lives here now
has a shiny, fat pot on the stove and the heavy
smells of another tribe’s meat and spices make me
scan the room a little faster, as if time is running out.
And it is. I shouldn’t be here. We don’t live
in this house anymore. But the counters are the same yellow
counters and there is the peacock blue crescent stain
my glass left after the cheap coasters bled.
Or were you already gone by then? Look! The green and black
linoleum your mother recognized from the fifties. Haunted, I slowly
pace, letting my hand run over the smooth, white cabinets
we tried to close quietly each morning, hoping
the other might be able to sleep a little longer, yet
no matter how we tried, they made a loud, woody pop
as they fit back into place. And there is the door
you put your right side through
because I’d just closed it—notice how the top panel’s stain
doesn’t match. And there you are, chopping fast, showing
the proper way to hold a shallot so fingers are safe.
Your black Japanese robe opening
as you prepare tilapia in white wine and caper sauce
that first night. Your green and gold Moroccan tea glasses.
Our placemats stacked with books.
Keys next to your napkin.
How can there be nothing left of us?
Not a nail in the wall? There, in the corner,
how tightly we hold each other the night
you last make me rice with cardamon and rose water—we hold on
as if each other’s body contains the thing we need most.
As if love that fierce will protect us from failing.
As if forgiveness can be wrung
from the beloved’s flesh, salty kisses and 2,705 days of longing.

the veracity of rumor

(formerly titled September 20, 2008)

in progress after new reports from home

Reasons

The ripe, abandoned
garden with its weary, ravaged faces—
its sunflowers stand tall, waiting
to be touched and eaten. Rickety
shadows of houses built one
hundred years ago sink
just a bit, at odds with the sidewalk,
the street, the very tilt of the planet.
A soldier in his stiff, medaled
suit walks quickly in the late
sun, his suitcase ticking like a metronome.
Kids skateboard bare-chested, flying
upside down, skinny angels
surfing concrete waves. The torture
victim’s gentle voice and broken
English when the interviewer asks
for a description of the cable that beats
him to this day. Chivas, isn’t this enough?

Death Without Song

With death—flowers, cards and people arrive.
Platters of food and wet eyes puncture
your aloneness. The people you know can barely
stand to look at you
but they do, and they say something about loss,
or try to, or tell you they know there’s nothing
they can say to comfort you, and that alone—
because it’s true—comforts
like bitter medicine. Admitting
the always stunning impotence of words
exposes the fact that you’re living
your worst nightmare and a noisy house
only delays the torture of silence
after years of hearing her voice fill these rooms.
The announcements, obituary, wake and funeral delay
the onset of what feels like your own death.

With divorce—nothing and no one arrives.
Not even her mail. The house is emptied of her
belongings. You sweep her long hair off the bathroom floor
for a last time. For the first time
you notice the clock ticking. Couples
everywhere when dining alone. People
don’t try to say anything about loss
when you tell them the news they’ve already heard.
Several seconds—perhaps two or three of the longest seconds
you’ve experienced in an even longer time—elapse
before they say something brief, usually two or three of the shortest
words you’ve experienced since the last time you told
the news that’s already known. News that travels
without announcement or newspaper clipping.
I’m so sorry, they mumble before suggesting
lunch sometime.

When We Had the Chance

Not learning her recipe for mole sauce—
why didn’t I take notes? Speaking
too quickly, letting the rush
fuel my words. Leaving the room. I regret
my silence. Regret my words. Falling
asleep without her in my arms. Turning
another page instead of apologizing. Throwing the book.
Not waiting. I regret remembering.
Regret allowing words she did
and didn’t mean live in me.
Regret that I believed
her anger. That she wasn’t angry.
That I stopped gazing
into her eyes without turning away. That I cannot
remember the exact path of each line
in her forehead. That I stayed.
That I left. Came back. Married her.
Didn’t. That we did not stay the extra day
when we had the chance. That I said yes.
And had no answer. Secretly knew
the answer. That I didn’t just leave
the room. Left too early. Waited. Longed
and sought the impossible—gambled
on it. Won. Then won. Then lost.