Cry of the Stars

my mother had the time to gasp
before the bowl scattered
and left its negative behind:
an old friend’s shadow, told
in the space between pieces.

I stopped

where
the dead bee
still crouched

at the puddle’s
edge

to drink

Speak, once-still and silent limbs,
and give our fragile language wing;
ye need not lips nor tongue to sing
the hymns of all our dreams—

and we who watch, if listening,
might find we recognize the sound
of skeletons and souls unbound.
Our hearts, uncoiling.

Dear baby on the bus,
your smile is as contagious as your yawn,
the way your little mouth stretches
as wide as it can go and
your binky falls out,
dimples bursting like happy fireworks
across your tiny face.

Your mother's nose is as wide and beautiful
as a mango tree; her eyelids
are round heavy stones worn smooth
by the same worry that carves mistrust into
the center of her brow.

Did you see my soft look towards the two of you?
I think she did—and frowned, unsure
how to hold a stranger's pity.
It wasn't pity.

I'm falling in love with your empty palms,
where greed and jealousy cannot yet fit,
and sorrow finds no space to perch.
Soon you'll be picking up the pieces
of a broken city, soon you'll know the weights
that cut your mother's hands—

but for now, you'll hold her scarred fingers
as if you could heal them,
as if you might break the mask she wears,
as if in one person's world, she's all that matters.
I hope she knows.

A forest of umbrellas, cheerfully garish,
springs up with the receding tide like mushrooms
after a thunderstorm;
meanwhile the flock
of browning bodies sprawls sun-seared,
sleepy, over the giant mirror of the sand;
a kite wearing a sharkskin swims fluttering
through the clouds and scowls
with all his teeth.
One family with three little girls keeps
disappearing under the waves—
the lifeguard shrills angry warnings,
windmills his arm into a one-way sign
back to shore, back to shore.
The wind comes tumbling off the ocean
and snags itself in my hair and
this is almost perfect:
your laughter muffled with a cracked
conch shell, our hands wrist deep
in sea-wells and sandcastles, the burn
of happiness and salt water
singing in my throat.

The first leap from the nest
is like drowning, the directional
confusion, the dizziness of
momentum, that one despairing
moment of paralyzed lungs,

and then. How intoxicating
the slight catching of wind beneath
your pinions, that first, tiny
upward quirk

before the ground's impact.
The second leap is easy.

Nobody goes head-first
down a cliff.
For you perhaps your knees
started it all, suddenly knocking together
and out and off the edge
before you even understood,
and your shins (kicking at
the couch-back as you leaned over,
happy) abandoned ship
soon after,
and thighs and ribs and shoulders
left you just as quickly.
For me I think my arm fell first,
a limb deciding permanently
it belonged around
another waist, and the rest
is easy to guess.
In any case, at some point
the heart capers far below, while
the head sits alone on top, calling,
wait, wait,
where have you gone
without me?

To be a tree
planted once,
not thrice, not rooted
unsteady across
two oceans;
to be a dandelion
unscattered,
a trail of crumbs
leading only one way?

To learn that
a house is home and
believe it,
or else

Shall accusing eyes
burn your skin away, or
cutting words bleed you dry?
Shall angry hands beat and bruise
until your bones have forgotten
how to heal?

Perhaps, perhaps, and we -
together we would bear it all.

In the end
it is the untying of our wrists,
the image of a back
that will break us both:
ankles in slow motion and
shoulders shrinking steadily,

and a beloved face fixed
on the far side
of a neck that will not turn.

You could be the opening chapter
of a book: the kind that quickly settles
behind my eyes, alive and somehow
just right.
A beginning that promises a traveler's
journey whose steps will wander
through the whole of my ribcage yet
never venture too far;
a momentum of happiness in uncovering
the well-formed art that sits best
in my hands, piece by piece,
page by page,
moment by moment.
You could be the outline
of a classic, a favorite in the making,
the slow and joyful discovery
of treasure.
Your hand could be the masterpiece
that, carved true, fits best
in mine.

Today, amidst drifting dust
and soft massed cobwebs,
I held pieces of a woman's life
in my hands. Her fragmented
history fossilized, small moments
emblazoned in faded sepia
and the script of old books.
I could not lay the pieces out
to read the whole story, but
it was enough to know
the worn, cleaned boxes I packed
them in would hold it all
a while longer,
for those who bear the traces of
that woman in their names and
in their faces, and carry all 
the tales of her
in heart and memory.

There's a war-torn husk
you've left behind, that bears your
eyes, your hands, your feet -

but faithful soldier
finally free, you're taken
home at last. At last.

You wrote
the dreams in me
before they even dripped
their sylvan murmurings into
my soul:
never asked, but drew memories
like etchings copied from
the landscapes in
my eyes.

cut down before its time,
the tree behind my house shriveled dry
from lightning, not age.

(sun and rain breathe life to
all creatures in the forest, but then
fire won't discriminate, either.)

watch closely, all slender saplings
waiting to reach the sky:

unroughened hands must take and build,
and youthful feet must run
while blood still animates your bones.
your face may wash stone-cold
before the skin has time to sag.

we say ‘forever’:
ignored, eternity’s breadth
and our own weak hands.

This is winter’s crawl.
This is the slow breathing of the sky,
the languid drifting of the snow.
This is the old tree’s creaking,
the great bear’s dreams,
the river’s frozen rest.
This is the interruption of motion
and the lullaby of cold,
a lingering pause for us to learn
of the brief ecstasy of numbness.

This is the earnest melody
that I will never swallow:
I have a savior dressed in scars,
a father lighting up new stars,
and a heart no longer hollow.

This long hair tangled through my hands
    would burn me with temptation:
Oh, please unwind these golden strands
of long hair tangled through my hands
--though loss of silky warmth demands
    a cold, wrenching sensation--
Long hair that's tangled through my hands,
    don't burn me with temptation!