The Woman Who Knew All Too Well

(for Joan Valentina)

 

i

That her health was a soldier

too wounded to correspond.

That her body was in a lover’s quarrel

with an inopportune world.

That the simple act of walking

was to drag an anchor

across unforgiving ground.

That each breath she took

was a flower devoid of

its heavenly scent.

 

And so

this woman who knew all too well

has passed away.

 

ii

Though my life only brushed hers

like a moth grazing a bulb ablaze with light,

her absence has gnawed a hole

in the fabric of the world.

Aside from my lackadaisical interest

in the lives of others

I was no match for her uncanny radar,

nor could my faintly fractured mind

hold a candle to the bated breadth

of her insatiable curiosity.

I could only stand back and marvel

at her clever knack for discernment.

 

I would not be wrong to say

she knew a thing or two

about everything and everyone,

peering room by room through

a spy glass made for drawing down the stars.

 

I could see her apartment window from mine

and every now and then I’d glance

across and notice her scrolling the internet

in a lonely pool of light, her lamp

casting a theatrical spot

as if she were the sole star

in a bare bones production of her life.

That vacant light had caught my eye

as it had been on night and day

for weeks with her missing at the controls.

 

I wondered if she might be in hospital

knowing she would know if it were

the other way around.

I suddenly had the unsettling feeling

I might never see her again.

 

Though she was never

one to withdraw from the world,

her Lupis had lately gotten the best of her.

Even so, she would find ways to stay

on top of goings on,

even if by more subversive means.

Nothing could stop her desire to know.

 

Now I wonder,

where has all that knowing gone?

 

iii

Another’s death tilts the mind’s

tender machinery.

It simply does not compute

to be suddenly and irreversibly erased!

For the habitual problem solver,

resourcefulness is the highest religion.

 

It’s true I once described her as

tilting every room she entered

so that all roads led to her.

At a party, she’d speak

without a pause on any subject

as if from the axis of her

own personal wheel of fortune

with the inarguable voice

of lived experience.

The food she prepared.

The parts she played.

The clothes she wore.

The people she helped.

The stories she shared.

The problems she solved.

The paths she took.

 

Nothing escaped

her powers of observation.

She, the mystery solver.

She, the truth decoder.

She, the gossip monger.

She, the storyteller.

She, the advice provider.

She, the mentor

for finessing every room.

 

As I write this the morning after,

The Queen of Outer Space

is playing on TCM

and an unlikely thought presents itself:

How much world must we

hold inside ourselves

so as not to fade

when we are gone?

 

Maybe because she once said

I was her favorite poet,

I am left too numb

to do her justice

with a single line.

 

 

11/21/23

 

 

At Night in the House of My Body

 

There is only one language

and it’s prayer.

 

The gist is this:

Body, be my shelter.

Let me not impede

upon your sublimity.

Help me to restore

order if I do.

You are my house,

my only home.

I am the spirit

who haunts you;

a dove making

its nest in your steeple.

 

When we sleep

we linger at the door

daring to turn the knob

with our teeth,

breathing through

the keyhole,

ever curious toward

the other side.

 

If freed from you,

would there again be

the prospect of love,

of being courted,

of being saved

from ourselves

by ourselves

outside the room

of our selves?

 

Freed from the daily

adaptation to pain, 

we would again feel

capable of anything.

 

Here, where

our hands still work,

and our feet tread

without complaint,

with no need for glasses

to see what's true,

our teeth return

to their mouths;

a necklace of

salvaged pearls

from the depths

smiling their way through

memories that mean little

to anyone but us.

Yet we would not trade them

for fear the way back

lay by way of

a hole

in the ground.

 

Maybe

only on the other side

will we know what’s true

is all that’s real.

 

With no need

for clothes

we leave behind us

the tyranny

of to do lists,

clocks that held

our faces in place,

smells to remember

other lives by.

Now 

with no need for art,

  only the none-too distant 

prospect of waking

can we find our way.

 

At night in the house

of our bodies

we are errant children,

daring to be homeless

in hopes of regaining

a splendor

as bright as 

a single day.

11/3/23

 

The Virtues of Subtraction

 

“Make very little of yourself if you wish

to see clearly. Shut up, deeply, if you

wish to hear. Stop your preening and

disclaiming. Pour your bottles of

perfume into the dirt.” ~Lewis Hyde

(On Butterfly Hunting)

 

i

Lord, let me be content

to be small.

There’s virtue in the lowly.

Consider the violet, ant, pebble,

every abandoned leaf.

The sky bows down

to uphold them all.

 

Let me strive to be silent

that I might hear

the cumulus clouds

accumulating,

to know

the bounties that flow

ever downward,

or comprehend how

a seed births a self.

 

Think of the trees

reaching every which way

for an answer

when what’s true

lies in the asking.

 

ii

A part of me fell away today,

falling from my mouth;

a memory dislodged

from a tipsy sentiment.

How I am

to live without it

is beside the point,

sublimity being achieved

not by adding more

but by taking away.

 

What is the labor

required to return

me to my 

nakedness?

 

 

iii

If you can’t visit paradise

without putting down your bags

then you will never be

an adventurer, a traveler, or journeyman.

You will only be a tourist

because you put yourself first

and can’t put yourself down.

You encircle everything

by building a wall

between you and it

with your requirements,

minutiae, mind's detritus,

your self-importance.

Learn to put yourself aside

for the sake of being present,

in order to connect,

in order to take part,

otherwise no matter

where you go

you won’t be here or there.

 

If happiness is no more

than a beautiful moment;

beautiful moments

are everywhere.

To arrive there,

prune away your

anticipation and frustration;

impatience with those you love,

jealousy toward a friend,

anger at your family.

Learn to take away

until there is nothing

left to remove.

 

What is left?

Only an action.

You are in it,

whether in art, or sport, or in love,

with clarity, intensity and solidity.

You adjust quickly and deftly.

No longer bound by addition.

You are free to act.

 

10/1/23