The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart (audio only)
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Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
2005
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
2001
There was no water at my grandfather's when I was a kid and would go for it with two zinc buckets. Down the path, past the cow by the foundation where the fine people's house was before they arranged to have it burned down. To the neighbor's cool well. Would come back with pails too heavy, so my mouth pulled out of shape. I see myself, but from the outside. I keep trying to feel who I was, and cannot. Hear clearly the sound the bucket made hitting the sides of the stone well going down, but never the sound of me.
2009