Sweetheart

when you break thru

you’ll find

a poet here

not quite what one would choose.

I won’t promise

you’ll never go hungry

or that you won’t be sad

on this gutted

breaking

globe

but I can show you

baby

enough to love

to break your heart

forever

<sup>I'd like to be under the sea

In an octopus' garden in the shade.

            —Ringo Starr</sup>

The article called it “a spectacle.” More like a garden than a nursery: 

hundreds of purple octopuses protecting clusters of eggs 

while clinging to lava rocks off the Costa Rican coast. 

I study the watery images: thousands of lavender tentacles 

wrapped around their broods. Did you know there’s a female octopus 

on record as guarding her clutch for 53 months? That’s four-and-a-half years 

of sitting, waiting, dreaming of the day her babies hatch and float away. 

I want to tell my son this. He sits on the couch next to me clutching his phone, 

setting up a hangout with friends. The teenage shell is hard to crack. 

Today, my heart sits with the brooding octomoms: not eating, always on call, 

always defensive, living in stasis in waters too warm to sustain them. 

No guarantees they will live beyond the hatching. Not a spectacle 

but a miracle any of us survive.

you woman tree woman one

swaying to unheard of winds uninvented air streams

you woman sky with palms broad enough to hold eqypt

who taught me to walk

slow and deliberate

like i had somewhere to go

who taught me stories

that needed telling

to love men and women who needed

who taught me to fetch life

out of the depths of rivers

taught me the words

that the tree branches sang to wake

the sun and bring morning home

who taught me to love loving

with my eyes wide open

who taught me to dance and smile

in rhythm

to clap with an open heart

The books say that milk letdown
feels like pins and needles
but when you’re pumping at work
it’s more like lungs constricting
under the crush of chlorinated water.
You know, god willing, when she’s 16 or 25
you’ll never be this essential again.
So remember this smothering need now,
the engorged breasts, the suction, the release.
Know the ache swelling and flowing from you,
is caused by your hands cradling plastic bottles,
that your warm, twisting baby is elsewhere,
away from you. Know the sadness will threaten
to sweep you under, each time you take out the pump
and you can’t swim away from it. You must do this for her.
You must stay, you must drown.

tonight I'm cleaning baby portobellos
for you, my young activist

wiping the dirty tops with a damp cloth
as carefully as I used to rinse raspberries

for you to adorn your fingertips
before eating each blood-red prize

these days you rarely look me in the eye
& your long shagged hair hides your smile

I don’t expect you to remember or
understand the many ways I’ve kept you

alive or the life my love for you
has made me live

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—      
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears,—      
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—   
Take them, and give me my childhood again!
I have grown weary of dust and decay,—   
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing for others to reap;—   
Rock me to sleep, mother — rock me to sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between:
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I tonight for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;—   
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,—      
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—      
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
Let it drop over my forehead tonight,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
For with its sunny-edged shadows once more
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—   
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!

Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
Since I last listened your lullaby song:
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—      
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep! 

        —for my children

I see her doing something simple, paying bills,
or leafing through a magazine or book,
and wish that I could say, and she could hear,

that now I start to understand her love
for all of us, the fullness of it.

It burns there in the past, beyond my reach,
a modest lamp.

You too, my mother, read my rhymes
For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.

            for Chris Martin

To you
through whom

these sudden days
blowse & hum

thirst & quench
a tide of tensing trees

days tick by
beats in a song

my body grows
fuller each day

I think my life
has always been

for this quiet
darkness

your forehead
& eyelashes

face pressed
to my breast

your skin a texture
electrifying

my fingertips
wool on cotton

wool on glass
the fibers rise

& I can’t sleep
for being alive