Don't Go

I want to ingest you,

to swallow the charred remnants

of your bones,

inhale the ash

from my palms.

I want to incorporate you.

But nothing remains.

Instead I slide your ring

on my finger,

a knuckle of chrysocolla

framed in silver.

I drape your scarf

around my shoulders,

eat the leftover pineapple

wrapped in the fridge

still fresh.

I read your poems,

seek out your handwriting,

words you formed

in purple ink.

I talk to myself

as if you could hear me

"Ampie?" I ask,

the tendril of my voice

wrapping around your name

"Ampie?" I ask,

with no words to follow.

I am a child at bedtime,

voicing a half concocted question

that will force you to stay.

My infant voice grasps the finger

of the Great Being you already are,

the one I'm learning to become.

Om Mani Padme Hum

We place our hands on the blue box

 The Grotto, Echo Canyon, Chiricahua National Monument, AZ

you chose yourself.

What made you do it?

Did you feel suddenly mortal?

The attendant indicates the end

that holds your head.

He steps softly back into the shadows.

Om mani padme hum

the chant rises from our viscera

as we urge our voices

over the roar of the furnace.

Twelve palms send compassion

into your vacant body.

Eight more hands arrive

now twenty palms,

two hundred fingers gather

to release the last husk

of your life.

One lidded eye opens

the blue box slides in

the chamber ignites

we chant you into ashes

with Great Words of compassion

Never one to miss an adventure,

you must linger here.

Surely you waited to witness

your own cremation.

Plaza, Cloverdale

In the plaza,

the stage stands empty.

A lattice of shadows

sharpens too-bright sun.

I see you there,

your back against the pillar

that holds the roof

dressed in your latest find,

a shimmering shirt

you wear proudly

as a badge of lost weight.

Your head rests on

still warm cement

you soak in music

through your pores.

Amplified base

plays your skin

like a drum.

"There's my seat" you said,

laughing,

and walked to claim it

racing unseen competition.

You caught the bassists eye

and grinned

falling in love with music

all over again.

And now the stage stands empty.

Your seat empty

or maybe your spirit lingers

for one last

blue note

of music

in the evening air.

Visitations

 

My first introduction to "pregnant lady syndrome" was when our blue Toyota Tercel bit the dust. The right rear shock had sprung through the rusted undercarriage and invaded the trunk. A week later my parents traded it for $100, its total value in parts.

After that I saw blue Tercels everywhere. "You know, like when you're pregnant" my mom explained, shaking her head laughing at my blank look "well, when you are pregnant, you see pregnant ladies everywhere."

I see Gail everywhere. Gail's grey hair, "crisp and curly" my grandmother called it, worn by a woman walking outside the natural cafe. Gail's walk inhabiting a body that moved towards its car in the Safeway parking lot. Gail, not Gail. Gail's body, Gail's car. Not Gail.

I also see her otherwise: on Arroyo Burro beach, in the raft of western grebes bobbing among the kelp, nodding in unison, preening; peering from a peregrine's eyes, as it perched on a snag at the bluff's rim; reflecting down from the ice crystals that ringed the moon. I breathed her name into the air. Luna.

I don't mean that the grey-haired lady and the western grebe and the peregrine and the moon's halo reminded me of Gail. I mean that I felt her there, as fully as if she stood beside me, as clear as her voice laughing through the phone, or her handwriting spilling out a recent adventure in a letter. I mean she was there.

photo from: http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-482019868

Pill Box

From under the seat in your car

I retrieve an aqua pill box

left behind

when everything else has been sorted,

sifted through, carried away.

On the lid, a filigree of birds

in navy and white

worn from riding

in your purse, your pocket.

Inside, a salad of pills

unsorted and unmeasured,

generic tablets

pawed through by a fingertip

in search of the right one

93 318, Taro 6, M40.

But the box had slid between the seats,

gone from your mind.

You who lived compassion

who offered your heart to each encounter,

boundryless

pills reined in your heart

thinned your blood

lowered its pressure

set its rhythm right.

and, in the end,

rupture

flood

your thin blood pumped into cavities

intended for air.

With the box in my palm,

my eyes fill and spill

with too-thin tears.

Sifting

I pull books from shelves, novels, memoir, poetry, blow dust from tops that bristle with paper. Each marks your favorite passage. As I read, you surrender completely, eyes closed, chin lifted, ingesting each word.

But by night the stars themselves glimmered from the surface of the paddies, and the river of light whirled through the darkness underfoot as well as above. [David Abrams, Spell of the Sensuous]

We shared books the way some people share gossip, spooling out the latest find over an hour on the phone. Gemini, you confessed, I buy two of everything. A copy for me, a copy for you. In your shaky hand, you inscribed a quote to entice me into reading on.

I dream of January. Of dusk at four in the afternoon. Of the careful slow pace of below-zero living. I imagine I that I will wrap myself in winter: five months of gauzy light; the sweet stultification of the cold. [Mark Spragg, Where Rivers Change Direction]

I ease bookmarks, receipts, tissues, torn corners of envelopes, post-its, squares of toilet paper from between the pages. Passages you returned to, or intended to. Books whose presence defined your life. Books you no longer need.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

[Mary Oliver, The Summer Day]

Hudson River Line, Southbound

On the Hudson brash ice

rafted and hummocked a tumult

of fragments.

I press my forehead to the glass

windows and watch.

In a fracture,

a merganser paddles into flight,

wings flapping white against open water.

Plates of ice resemble

the texture of human skin

magnified, grey

under a grey sky.

A black smear

mars the ice, stirs.

black wings bear

the ponderous bird aloft

he banks

revealing

bald head, tail.

Past the platform and parking meters

perched on a fractured ridge

He clasps the crag with crooked hands.

Beyond, an eddy of eagles

swirls

disturbed at the approach

of the train.

In the empty slips at the marina,

a bufflehead dives,

bobs to the surface.

Across the water

the Palisades rise, columnar

their roots in the river.

Each small beauty I see

through your eyes.

You ride with me, south

then west. I travel 

to meet your death.

[Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Eagle]
photograph: my mother and aunt at Limantour Beach, Point Reyes, CA, 2009