Midnight


Speak to me, aching heart: what
Ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself
Weeping in the dark garage
With your sack of garbage: it is not your job
To take out the garbage, it is your job
To empty the dishwasher. You are showing off
Again,
Exactly as you did in childhood--where
Is your sporting side, your famous
Ironic detachment? A little moonlight hits
The broken window, a little summer moonlight,
Tender
Murmurs from the earth with its ready
Sweetnesses--
Is this the way you communicate
With your husband, not answering
When he calls, or is this the way the heart
Behaves when it grieves: it wants to be
Alone with the garbage? If I were you,
I'd think ahead. After fifteen years,
His voice could be getting tired; some night
If you don't answer, someone else will answer.

Louise Gluck

Bathed In Light

I clean Molly's gunky eye
out, hours now since I finished
my wrapping duties, and take a break
on the screened-in porch, moon full
above me, clear and white, and I think
about the silver dollar my great uncle
gave me the last time I saw him
at the old folks home, before he set
the room on fire, smoking his Camels,
O2 pulled off his face long enough to savor
one of his old habits, habits being these tricky
things that die hard. 88 he was when he passed,
not from lung cancer or a myocardial
infarction or even a stroke, just from the bad
luck of a stubborn pneumonia and his own
breaking heart, the love of his life gone
ten years since, and I think about my own
eyes this morning in the mirror, looking
back at the me who refuses to die, how much
like my father's they are, how cloudy
and distant they present themselves,
how the lightning blood-streaked swollen
mess they are still resonates the constant
blue-green, how extraordinary they are, even
this morning, night after night of no sleep
or restless sleep at best. But there's something
in the fullness of the moon, the amazement
(you see it takes little to amaze me)
of making my fingers work wonders
with red and green and ribbons and bows,
that just eases the uneasiness enough
to forgive, to think there is good to be found
in gunky-eyed dogs, the wrapping of gifts,
the waiting for the kids to get here, the hope
that they find under the tree something more
than a gift, something that tells them Mom
knows them better than they'd ever thought.
All of this followed by the unexpected relaxing
of the shoulders, the serendipitous way the body
responds knowing it has done all it can.

Lucinda Williams - World Without Tears (live)

Man...oh, man...for those of us who can choose, we make our own world...I'm fucking sick of making my own filled with tears, but I sure as hell love this song...

Van Gogh: Starry Night, 1889

Snow in the Shade

There is no redemption in these words,
scattered across the page on a white screen, cursor
blinking, nothing to acknowledge what it took
to get here (foregoing the pencil and acid
free paper), to this point, to a place familiar
and foreign, a refuge and a wilderness
untamed. The bright sun doesn't melt it, nor
does it come close to warming it, your cold
cold heart. The day progresses, the arc
of evening not far from forming its steady
slip. You falter and correct yourself, meander
in some meaningful way to the flooded
basement to wash the clothes you carefully
sorted into piles--darks, whites, in-betweens.
You try to make sense of analogies, attempt
to ascertain what category you belong
in--post traumatic, self-absorbed, chronic
depressive state. The terms won't save you, and
the sun, that visionary, just makes a mockery
of the darkness you embrace, your sedum
rotting on the stems, uncut and whole,
pansies buried beneath piles of leaves
that may never know the gentle scraping
of a rake, the ornamental kale sprouting
new white leaves. You swallow hard,
your throat tightening with this newest
revelation, kidneys screaming take a break,
body moving in this automaton way from room
to room, doing what needs to be done, ornaments
and garland sitting in a corner, presents unwrapped
and far from wrapping, the brightest sun in days
filtering through the old quilt you hung
over the windows, you just wanting to know
it's right to be where you are, to allow room
for the cold, to forgive the shortcomings,
to understand that good is not always the end
result of suffering and bad is just a word.

Bob Dylan - It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

he not busy being born is busy dying

Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Salvador Dali, 1937