Crossing

My insect-like anticipation, the blind 

reach for a child's hand

I squeeze your small, wrinkled fingers,

call you my king

the curvaceous floating of laughter

flung from down the street

spilling empty, like letters faint 

but acidic with secrets

_

Ammama (1921-2010)

deep sleep of the night

at another day's still beginning

simplicity occupies the mind

simply.

see:

hours follow each other like breath

the nights of ordinary sleep

and days of unaccustomed deaths

_

A Sort of Buddhism for Beginners

Big A carries me to the couch because the floor is wet. (Yes, it doesn’t make sense.) He continues to hold me in a hug. It is a week where four of my/our friends have cancer or are undergoing treatment for cancer. It’s been a month of seeing children “removed” from their homes—some through guardian ad litem work, one of them Li’l A’s best friend. Which means that after I've been strong in front of my friends and my kids, Big A has been the one holding me through the frequent, circumlocutory, incomprehensible rampages.

He tells me:

One in five people that you know will have cancer at some point in their lives. Half of them will die from it.

And this next part was quite unnecessary, but he feels the need to tell me this every now and again:

You must know that 100% of all the people you know will ultimately die. 

_

Ode to the Coming of June

the clear virginity

of empty days

like plastic wrap

like creaky nights

 

And radio static

in remote patterns

like birds beginning 

to stutter in song

 

all our days of summer

all our years of childhood

slide like released ice

--one halcyon afternoon

_

Daughter

Her voice rises tiny from behind the Rodgers and Hammerstein. Her tone is imperious:

Mama!

That exclamation is summons. I kneel on the floor beside her bed. She is two; the bed is only a month old. Her old crib was about to fall to pieces from all the meaty-thighed jumping that took place in it.

She is in the new, improved, big-kid bed now, I am kneeling beside her.

What is it, Chuk-muk?

A glimmer of eyes in the growing dusk. The shine of her teeth,

I forgot.

Did you want mama to bring you another hug? Another kiss?

My arms and mouth demonstrate the words. My heart fills with happiness, and chokes my throat. Another stroke of her hair, a kiss planted directly into her palm. She holds it, falls asleep.

This child now--at this time in my life, has ways of making feel grown up, parent, knowing… in ways the first child, my companion, the brother I’d never had before, could not. 

_

About school children and their killers

This morning, dropping the kids off at elementary school and preschool, I could feel my hands tightening into claws, throat swelling, voice panicking as I said goodbye.

Violence towards kids--any kid, not just mine--is my trigger for anger, for desperation, suicidal ideation, cold rage, lately—thankfully--for action, but still most frequently for fat, bawly tears. And I know exactly how stupid that sounds.

They have adequate security at both schools (locked doors/ keypad entry), but on NPR they were talking about how you really can’t stop anyone if they’re determined. So I showed up to retrieve the two-year-old hours before her dimissal time. But I’ll be teaching my class tomorrow  and won’t be able to. Big A tries to point out the killings are all the way in China.

True. Kids are so small and trusting everywhere. Also true.

_

Passage

You help us all into the box.

It is shaped like a coffin.

We are to leave for Mars.

They say 

That Earth will be uninhabitable.

We are to lie inside

this box,

that is like a coffin,

for three days.

 

It takes that long to get to Mars.

 

For five hours I try 

to teach the children

to say,“uninhabitable.”

Their mouths fail to shape this noisy word.

 

I think about the

impossibility

of keeping 

the two-year-old quiet

 

or still. 

Three days.

I think of the improbability

of saving the child with Asthma.

 

I say, 

I’ll stay 

here on earth with our children.

Underneath sacrifice,

Artifice.

 

The anxious place 

of silence

in my deep 

and small space.

_