Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Last night when my work was done,
And my estranged hands
Were becoming mutually interested
In such forgotten things as pulses,
I looked out of a window
Into a glittering night sky.

And instantly
I began to feather-stitch a ring around the moon.

The air is close by the sea and the glow from the pink moon

drapes low over a tamarind tree.

We hold hands, walk across a road rushing with traffic 

to an abandoned building site on the bay, look out across the dark marina.

Sea cows sleep by the side of a splintered dock, a cluster of them 

under the shallow water,

their wide backs covered in algae like mounds of bleached coral.

Every few minutes one floats up for air, 

then drifts back down to the bottom, 

without fully waking.  

They will do this for hours, and for a while we try to match 

our breath to theirs, and with each other’s.

In the morning, sitting in the garden beneath thatch palms, 

we drink black coffee from white ceramic cups.

Lizards killed by feral cats are scattered on the footpath.

I sweep them into a pile with the ones from the night before.   

Waves of heat rise from the asphalt, 

and we sense a transparent gray fuzz lightly covering everything 

as if there were no such thing as empty space, 

that even a jar void of substance holds emptiness as if it were full.

In a world of loss

     gratitude is what 

          I demand for keeping 

     precious catch

within my reach.

     No one despises 

          the shepherd for

     collecting his flock. 

No one accuses 

     the watchman of 

          making a captive 

     of his charge.

I’m like a holster, 

     or sheath, all function 

          and no fury. Don’t 

     you worry as I 

swallow you whole. Those 

     ulcers in my gut 

          are only windows,

     the stoma punched 

in my throat is just 

     a keyhole. Don’t be shy.

          Hand me the rattle 

     of your aching heart

 and I’ll cradle you, 

     bird with broken wing. 

          Let me love you. I

     will hold your brittle 

bones together. I’ll 

     unclasp your beak

         so you can sing.

     It’s a world of always 

leaving but here

     you can always stay.

begins with its subject,

          which is the sentence.

Track the sentence

          to find out what happens

or how it will act. It is

          the subject, after all. To track,

meaning keep an eye on,

          which is synecdoche,

part representing the whole

          of a thing. One

may track a package if he pleases.

          One may track a person,

though you’d probably want

          the whole of him, not only

an eye, or perhaps

          only an eye. Look how

the sentence is so capable

          of embracing contraction.

A him may function

          as a subject, but that depends

upon the sentence, i.e., A man

          is subject to his sentence.

You understand.

          Such syntax renders it like

a package showing evidence

          of having been tampered with—

People always tell me, “Don’t put the cart

before the horse,” which is curious

because I don’t have a horse.

Is this some new advancement in public shaming—

repeatedly drawing one’s attention

to that which one is currently not, and never

has been, in possession of?

If ever, I happen to obtain a Clydesdale,

then I’ll align, absolutely, it to its proper position

in relation to the cart, but I can’t

do that because all I have is the cart. 

One solitary cart—a little grief wagon that goes

precisely nowhere—along with, apparently, one

invisible horse, which does not pull,

does not haul, does not in any fashion

budge, impel or tow my disaster buggy

up the hill or down the road.

I’m not asking for much.  A more tender world

with less hatred strutting the streets.

Perhaps a downtick in state-sanctioned violence

against civilians.  Wind through the trees.

Water under the bridge. Kindness.

LOL, says the world. These things take time, says

the Office of Disappointment. Change cannot

be rushed, says the roundtable of my smartest friends.

Then, together, they say, The cart!

They say, The horse!

They say, Haven’t we told you already?

So my invisible horse remains

standing where it previously stood:

between hotdog stands and hallelujahs,

between the Nasdaq and the moon’s adumbral visage,

between the status quo and The Great Filter,

and I can see that it’s not his fault—being

invisible and not existing—

how he’s the product of both my imagination

and society’s failure of imagination.

Watch how I press my hand against his translucent flank.

How I hold two sugar cubes to his hypothetical mouth.

How I say I want to believe in him,

speaking softly into his missing ear.

Love is a flame that burns with sacred fire, 

And fills the being up with sweet desire;

Yet, once the altar feels love’s fiery breath,

The heart must be a crucible till death.

Say love is life; and say it not amiss, 

That love is but a synonym for bliss.

Say what you will of love—in what refrain, 

But knows the heart, ‘tis but a word for pain.

They come home with our daughter

because there’s no one at school

to feed them on the weekends.

They are mates, and like all true

companions they are devoted

and they bite. We set their cage

on the kitchen table and wait

for the weekend to end, for our girl

to fall asleep so we can talk

about god while the rats lick

the silver ball that delivers

the water one drop at a time.

There are so many points on which

you and I disagree: the value

of a clean counter, the purpose

of parent-teacher conferences,

what warrants a good cry or calling

you a name so cruel I make myself

whisper it through my teeth. God

is the least of it. When I think

I’m so angry I could hit you

in the face, you turn yours to me

with a look of disbelief. The rats,

meanwhile, have turned up the volume.

Tick, tick, says the silver ball

as their teeth click against it, thirsty

as ever, thirstier still at night

when the darkness wakes them.

And during the day, when they’re curled

together in their flannel hammock,

head to tail, two furry apostrophes

possessing nothing but each other,

paws pressed together as if in prayer—

to what gods do they prostrate

themselves then? God of fidelity? God

of forgiveness? I lied when I said

I didn’t believe. Who—even me,

the coldest of heart—could turn away

from a sea parted, bread that multiplies

to answer need, water transformed

to the sweetest wine, the kind

that tastes better for each year

it’s been left in the barrel?

When I told them it must be like dropping your kid            

off at school their first day, all my parent friends

nodded and smiled uncomfortably, meaning              

what would I know. I won’t be taking solace                 

in the many firsts ahead. Here among the gray,

spotted and brown heads of the seniors,

their soft flesh and angles, their obedience as they

sit as uprightly as they are able at white, parallel

tables, nobody cries, and very few speak.                 

When I seat dad beside her, one senior tells me

she’s ninety-four, presenting one hand, four

fingers in the air, just as she might have ninety

years ago with a stranger like me, now long gone.



                       Dad never liked me to talk:

Lower your voice, he’d say. If I was louder:

Put on your boxing gloves. Or: You’ll catch

more flies with honey than vinegar, as if some day

I’d need the flies. I stopped talking, started writing

instead. I work full-time and dad wants to die,

so I dropped him at the Champion Avenue

Low-income Senior & Child Care Services Center,

a newish building, municipal and nondescript,

in a neighborhood that’s been razed and rebuilt so often

it’s got no discernible character left. There was bingo,

men playing poker in a corner. Red sauce and cheese

on white bread pizza for lunch. Dad, a big talker,

was an instant hit, but refused to return. What

is the name of that animal, someone asked me.

Where is Philip, asked someone else, over and over.

As if firsts and lasts were one and the same.

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.