try calling it hibernation.
Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
Hibernating animals don’t even dream.
It’s okay if you can’t imagine
Spring. Sleep through the alarm
of the world. Name your hopelessness
a quiet hollow, a place you go
to heal, a den you dug,
Sweetheart, instead
of a grave.

My grandmother sat at the head of her oak table 
one Labor Day afternoon & in a lull turned to me & said 
all the people I knew are dead. When she fixed those two words, I knew, 

I felt my heart in the world beat its blood through thin chambers. The constant 
rush still interrupts the body I didn’t make, but keep breathing somehow
& functioning until I can’t, & the night before she died, I felt the easing of her spirit, 

& the same when my aunt died the year before. I still say to my still-grieving 
cousin I’m here—an echo of her mother’s absence, & we are left 
together on this side of unknowing, stack like throwing bricks 

all the finite seasons we have 
& will spend without them. Up against my own lifetime
I wish for fog, early morning. Instead, unpredictable years keep emptying. 

I met and then forgot her
With unremembered things,
And thought if love could utter
Once more its murmurings,
Another one and not her
Could pluck the muted strings.

The years had passed long after
That sweet romance and free––
Kind years that seemed to waft her
From painful memory,
For she brought tears and laughter
And sorrow, too, for me.

I thought the pain and yearning
Had gone away from mind,
And cold the bosom burning
With passion unresigned,
Till I saw her returning
With Love and Spring behind.

And let her loves, when she is dead,

     Write this above her bones:

“No more she lives to give us bread

     Who asked her only stones.”

The day is done, and the darkness
   Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
   From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
   Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,
   That my soul cannot resist:
  
A feeling of sadness and longing,
   That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
   As the mist resembles the rain.
  
Come, read to me some poem,
   Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
   And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
   Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
   Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
   Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
   And to-night I long for rest.
  
Read from some humbler poet,
   Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
   Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
   And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
   Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
   The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
   That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
   The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
   The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
   And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
   And as silently steal away.

It is nice to be without answers
at the end of summer.
Wind lifting leaves from branches.

The moment laid down like something
in childhood and forgotten, until later,
when stumbled upon, we think:
this is where it was lost.

The sadness isn't their sadness.
The sadness is the way

they will never unpack the rucksack
of happiness again.

They'll never surface as divers rising
through leagues of joy, through sun
willowing through the bottom half of waves.

They'll never surface again.
Again and again,

they will never surface.

When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived
their usefulness and cannot get warm and full.
You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back

as when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket
and had that beautiful smile on and you’d talk.
You’d go to get something and come back and he’d be gone.

You explain death to the clothes like that dream.
You tell them how much you miss the spouse
and how much you miss the pet with its little winter sweater.

You tell the worn raincoat that if you talk about it,
you will finally let grief out. The ancients etched the words
for battle and victory onto their shields and then they went out

and fought to the last breath. Words have that kind of power
you remind the clothes that remain in the drawer, arms stubbornly
folded across the chest, or slung across the backs of chairs,

or hanging inside the dark closet. Do with us what you will,
they faintly sigh, as you close the door on them.
He is gone and no one can tell us where.

She hangs onto sadness
the way somebody else treads water
waiting for the world
to see how much she hurts from family
madness pierced her rib cage
twenty years ago

And she’ll continue to compete as Victim
Absolute
until she finally receives a gold
medallion for her suffering
or a truly purple heart complete
with ribbons
so that she can hang that up

and then
move right along
perhaps/at last
to someplace

really new

if the word for this is   Palestine
this love    this steadfastness

if this word becomes     again
unutterable    unspeakable

if this word   Palestine   disappears
if this work      of being

If a word, a life, the life
of a people      of a land

is taken    disappeared
    stolen            between 
    
the time   starved for months,
              of this poem

denied food            
   its writing      and

without   water  and the now 
    medicine
      
         of your     years 
  under siege   reading

living in rubble  
      you are reading it

a reign of bombs 
                        now    

dying in rubble
  what then

what then?
  what will we do?
           
    you 
I           who?
   
 will anyone    make it stop?
bring it  them!  back?    home?

this word  this land   this people
if the word for this is 

 Palestine   
it is          genocide

^{I will take with me the emptiness of my hands
What you do not have you find everywhere
             — W. S. Merwin}

And the fireflies cried.

Only owl shrieks and wing howls
Now. And one once-upon town — ash.  —

When does a fire peel to reveal skin
Of a running child under its flame-raged arms —

Child legs too short to reach mama or  
Neighbor or any hands to save her?

Stilled hands. Not the town’s famed banyan  
Branches, their hundred twined and dancing arms.  

Not sky not sea not friend not that goddess her
Tutu taught her loved fire, but loved her, more —

Only her blister-scorched skin,  
Only her lost-slipper race,

Blind to a wind blacked 
Sea where she would dive or die.  

Too quiet now for night-birds
Mothers or men — to find.

Not immortal.  
Only one child of the land

And the many large and  
Small bones under ash.

                                             ~

It seemed immortal, the old ones
whispered, older than its wars

Or star of gladness seekers who
Crossed waters to follow midnights

To a far isle — in hollowed out trees
Filled with their chickens their pigs their

Plants and all their many brown hands 
— Landed —     Green island in

The middle of wild seas birthing
Oceans —     birthing mountains  

— Then mirror     to days of calm
To come.

Shine between sunrise,
Rain between gods, love between stars,

And red fish, and gods of trickery,
And gods of blessed breaths.

— Maui — island home for a hundred/
Hundred gardens, valleys, volcanoes, tall

Stones and skies — If immortal, why didn’t?
    — If blessed, why couldn’t — ?

                                           ~
  
When does fire lie quiet at
Last or at last — its non

Immortal breath burned like sunrise.  
Its gull cry     here      a new day?

Wake, storm birds, wake infant hands    
And wake, old ones — Wake,

Island — to plant what will
Grow from cinder and stinking ash.

Planet : mirroring its
wars of every kind. . . .

What you do not have you find . . . everywhere. . . .