you’re my age now, I’m thinking
as I wait for the game to start
how we engrave these accomplishments
as if they might matter
thirty-five years hence
do you even know
your name is still on this board
and what does it mean
we hold these selves within us
from a time when such things made us strive
to be important to someone—
to ourselves?
broad summer is no time for poems
not with sunflowers nodding, laden
garden spiked with color
dart of wings and cicadas singing
rather, all this haymaking over dreams
while the sun shines
some poetic justice though, heart-pause
for rabbit nestlings in the carrots
…and huddles in the marigolds
with what I don’t know about
trees, their loves and losses
intimacies with beetle and worm
higher math. how to curtsey in
and bow out, gracefully
to say no and graciously
yes, these distances between
and how to bridge them. why
a lover fades before your eyes
or changes, or you change. how
to get up every day, new
in the eyes of dog or child
to prevent disappointment.
why words come thick
(fast in your youth, in dreams)
then vanish like the bees
though all the scented flowers
lead like a jeweled trail
to or from your heart—
and all the silent waiting
in one glimmer of nothing, and how easy
—you see—to vanish, to sink in the same
darkness, illogic, as generations before.
no one knows you in your shadowing:
not devil nor demons nor angels nor men
(who wrote you off, and how long ago?)
—but will it be now, at mud’s deep
that you instinctively reach an arm out
to swim, that the air takes your lungs
with all the force of forgiveness?
Resonating with today’s Hafiz read, “To Make You Perfect,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky
tell your autumn self, this fountained day
of wordy unmusical frustration is nothing
to regret. ask your winter self, who will make
work of the past? what is your spring self
but an ideal to grope for, in sympathy
with the young? you let those hours go.
(see the spiders already moving in, rose-hips,
crickets?) no need to reinvent or be clever
in your acts of love. your voice—broken,
burning, sleep-rough, shrill—will be here,
a sun-pledge.
Pick the object of your devotion—stomach,
brain—and call it your garden, say it is
for the sake of others; that the fluttering
leaves are your heart; that those twist-reach-
scramble vines growing heavy on themselves
(leaning, leaning) will someday feed thousands.
*
Life, I am your wholehearted servant. Or—
as much of a heart as I have left, is yours devoted
to shutting out tight these misgivings, which lean
toward a belief that my heart is, in fact,
a dropped glass screen. One minute safe
in your hand, the next face-down on pavement.
You know that sound: sudden, small, stifled apology
for becoming useless. How then the fragments
ingrain themselves, how eyes grow used
to a fractured view.
Inspired by Hafiz, “Pray to Your Hand,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky
to hang up my hang-ups
my why-am-i-heres, not-good-enoughs,
not-determined-enoughs and why
would the world need more dreamers
we talk and you keep asking, but
could you get a job with that? how
many ways to sell my heart, make it more
marketable? i’m hanging up your doubts
alongside mine and hope
i will be less inclined to explode
if i pin on this belief: here is also a way
of being content
Inspired by Hafiz, “A Coat Rack,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky
it is not that kind of exchange—
skill for skill, love for thanks
or even one small word of appreciation.
if we were all the little teapots
of the world—handle, spout,
bowl—we’d know
we were made to be held,
receive, pour
Inspired by Hafiz, “Energy in Sounds,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky
to do something color-splashed
important as love, a layered thing
to be peeled and savored, sparkling
within, remembered like first spring sun
on your skin, green finger-strong snapping
of marigold heads, spilled apart and all
feathered seeds teased out, cast on
to wind or soil or sand
Graceful Press Poetry 