Prayer

   Love will save me
             Will love save me
  I will love to save me


   Rise to release
          Ripen to fall, all
  Begin, beguile

                                                     Repeat.

_

Outsider

To be as space
to visit home
glorious globe
this home

to be moving
closer smaller
Country state
county street

to becoming bigger
looming larger
too big to swallow
to love

Too, our kind calls
to the slow heaven
of every
where

_

Two

Entire:

Our everyday occasions
arrive without cues
like robins courting
through the afterlight.
Our welcomes ignite,
wave higher than wings.


Desire:

With you
I revel, more than mortal
in my hands, increase.
Master-piece.
Our breath is soon
salt and oceanside
all our sounds
words untried.

_

Anger (Corner of Third and J)

She can get
more money
from dreams
they come
(yes, they do come)
floating in
on hulls of air

backwards bills
she give them back
back to the bank
hunger
take that.
(Yes, you can)
Take that back too

She can have her way
with you and you
and those two.
Mystery, gravity
she hate that.
Floor is sand; what?
Sky is shit.

_

Nightfears (Japan)

words to tunes
dances to kisses
day's light to life

covet: velvet moss
crossed by shadows

for slant are roofs
so to tip and venture

as here are moons
pale with departure

nights are all accidents
before graves awake
and smile, sea to shore

Because the Night

Baby A is better (eating ice cream). In yesterday's panic, we forgot to set the alarm and Li'l A was late for school. Big A is making me a panini with havarti and leftover curried eggplant.

In other Big A news, he's working mostly nights these days (days--heh.). By choice. We decided that given his 10-12 hours shifts, this way he'd be better able to share daily fun times with the kids (dinner, games, lolling evenings) as opposed to working days when he might see them for a brief moment merely to hug and kiss goodbye.

It's also working out great because there's a backup parent in case kids need to be home when they're sick; it works out that I can attend evening events without kids; it works out that I can drag him to as many  parties as I want.

It's working out. Except for all the nights when I can't get to sleep or the times I wake up and instantly know there's no one next to me in our tiny bed.

And oh--he's so very sleepy as he sets off for work.
_

C R Y

Baby A has "a lion-bug-mouse-bug" in her throat. "It growls, then it squeaks. Growl. Squeak. Growl." Also, "I can't breathe very well, Mama."

She's breathing very rapidly. She sounds bad enough to make Big A take a listen.

And it completely panics me when Big A (he of the "Let them take a Tylenol" advice when I take the kids' pains and complaints to him) thinks he should take her to the E.R.

I take Li'l A to school, and set off for work, get all the way to the highway and drive the 15 minutes back to hug her again. And she tries to make me feel happy by gasping out "If you're happy and you know it, do like this [lifting my hair up in the air]."

So I think about that in the car and cry some more on the way to work. And then on the radio, Japan. Libya. Cry some more.

Get to the office, check e-mail read the wonderful, loving comments on my women's studies students' eval forms. Cry even more.

It's 10:00 a.m. I'm exhausted.

_