Poem-a-Day

Don’t leave, she said to me last night. Her name means Light To Me.
Don’t leave this dooming feeling. Don’t jump. Her name means Unjump
The Darkness. Staying is a kind of writing, she said. Writing is a kind
of loving. Loving sticks a widget into the machinery of doubt.
Sticks it out. She knows what I’m afraid of. Biggest grief.
Tunnel of unforgiveness. She knows stay and say are two siblings
walking home in the rain. And I do wonder how to love without
dissolving, how to stay without unloving. Isaac Luria in the 16th
century argued God wrought the world because without it, God had no
expression for compassion, generosity. God might have been a giver,
but how can anyone cup a hand around another hand
              if there’s no other
yet, just infinite beforeness. Knock knock, the lemon squeezer says,
Who’s there, says infinite beforeness, It’s me,
              the stainless steel responds,
I’m God, you’re citrus, let’s start a world. Nobody’s a mother without
somebody to blame. Nobody’s born unwedged between dirt and sky.
It takes something round to wrap round something round, press down,
press hard and love comes out. THIS ISN’T HOW LOVING GOES,
I’m yelling at Isaac Luria’s grave, blue as a thwack of sky on stolen
land. The thing about staying, she’s saying, is staying
              drapes itself over everything
you’re scared of. Like a blanket full of button holes, and stars wedged
into them. The thing about blankets is they’re less threatening
              than love.
Her care pins me to a place called Here. Her name means Generous
To Me, and Pressing Hard With Buttons. I’m trying to say Yes
              to the holes
where buttons go. Yes to the cupped hand before fruit, to the sting
of juice. I could live here between dirt and sky, grow a garden
in the storm drain. I could grow the garden here—Edenic river
of honey, milk, river of balsam, of wine. I could spread out here
and stay. Pin my fears to paper, regret and what they call
“The Great Friendship Recession.” THIS ISN’T HOW
LOVING GOES! I’m yelling just before the world
begins. The world gets made each morning.
And we’ve emptied all the garden’s fields.