The transcendent void of a long hot shower
I stand in the shower
happy and idle
my thoughts are few
and they wander
slow and moony
like they are on holiday.
I love these episodes of wet simplicity
I am alone
warm and unrushed
there is nothing to do
but wash
and breathe
exquisitely unable
to do anything else.
Why creativity was invented
You are so domesticated
with your blender
and your bamboo socks
your nose has forgotten
how to hunt the air
your skin is shy
your hands cannot endure
but your beast is inside you still
you drag a million ghosts behind you
your bones remember your ancestors
your blood remembers
how to boil
let it out
you will not be devoured
you will simply
yearn
this is why creativity was invented
a safehouse for shadows and truths
an excuse to thunder
so be wild in your art
no one is watching
tear into the flesh of your inhibitions
come undone
you will return to yourself
but with epiphanies
of desire.
The tiger
They say the tiger stalked the man
who tried to shoot him
circled his cabin for days
waiting for him to return
quiet as snow
he pounced
and all that was left
were a pair of boots
and the shriek
the trees were the only witnesses
thin old pines
they remember all the sounds of the forest
sucking them up like water
they say some indigenous folks can read the bark
like Braille
but you don’t want to know too much about this story
the rustle of leaves isn’t always the wind
sometimes it’s a shudder.
The secret to a happy marriage
It is not who is kinder
she told me this
and other things
out of the corner of her mouth
as though we might get detention
for talking
on the bus.
I was fifteen
she was eighty
married for over fifty years
she said with amazement
as though referring to someone else.
She was tall
and winked a lot
which had a way of making
me feel special
even though we just met
you can’t water a garden in a drought
she laughed like a cowboy
the nicest thing you can do for a husband
is be the smartest
happiest
most irresistible
you.
I asked her what he was like
she smiled and she said he was long dead
but he made her laugh so much
she had a backlog of love
to last her
until it was her time
to join him.
I thought of her today
in the grocery store
when my husband lifted my son over the aisle
to peer down on me
so it looked like he was fifteen feet tall
the little grievances I’d been nurturing the past hour
like rotten fruit
fluttered away
and I finally got what she meant
about the drought
I laughed out loud
and as the happiness returned
I could almost feel the love
gushing.
It made me ache for the kind of heaven
they show in the movies
the two of them up there
all shiny and warm
he is telling her stories
and she is floating
in joy.
The community pool
He shoots down the little slide
our first time in the pool
his face wide open with awe
at how marvelous it all is.
I make all the right sound effects
but the truth is on his eighth time down
my pride in his feat is eclipsed
by a flood of patriotism.
I am in love with my country.
The pool is a soupy collage of every race
and this would be rousing enough
except everyone is also
astonishingly nice.
The teenage boy with the snorkeling mask
who finds my son a ball
and then salutes us like an admiral
the old lady who doesn’t speak English
who entertains my naked child in the changing room
by making popping sounds with her cheek
so I can get dressed
the little girl who said
isn’t he cute
even when he peed
near her sneakers.
As my son falls asleep
I whisper what a lucky boy he is
the clean pool
the slide
the puzzle of luck
that landed him on this patch
of an uneven and carved up world.
