“Intimacy unhinged, unpaddocked me.” – Diane Seuss
I am like Roethke’s bulb in a florist’s root cellar
rotting and extending sprout simultaneously,
searching for light with only a few minutes in my pocket.
They say Susan Boulet’s painting, Playing with the North Wind,
is her goodbye to the world—death and beauty laced together
in a blue bundle as though they are not different from each other.
This countdown nonsense is maddening, little indicators
flashing on as the body wears down—walking slower
to the mailbox to retrieve advertisements for things
I don’t need—where’s enlightenment—where’s the euphoria
of climax—that warm endorphin wave—rush of hush
and open-mouth kisses—all gone now—even memories
abandon me—wave goodbye as they lift above the frozen horizon
in Boulet’s painting—a fine faded star in the west.…
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Today, Casy is wearing soft green slacks, the color of elephant ear plants. Her thin hair is pulled back in a sensible tail. However, as always, she has found a way to add bits of personality to her business outfit: a gold pin clipped near her hairline, the locket strung around her neck. It is her mother’s. She wears it every day, even though it’s made of copper and is leaving a subtle green stain across her collarbone. Her mom died four months ago tomorrow, and the pain has not lessened.
I haven’t seen her mom. Like her daughter, she always had things in order and never had regrets.
I watch as Casy walks towards the bus station, her strides firm and direct. The angle of her platform boots makes her lean back when the road slopes downwards.…
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Recently one of my children aggressively grabbed another, and, with much sincerity and enthusiasm, cried, “I love you!” The child on the receiving end, also with sincerity but with less enthusiasm, responded, “I don’t love you.” The loving child repeated the sentiment one more time, in case the unloving child had not really heard correctly, but the response remained adamant. I could relate to both of them—the loving one had ventured into what was for them a rare moment of openness and vulnerability, only to be rejected, while the unloving one had been terrorized by the loving one for the better part of a morning and was only stating what was, in that moment, a truth.
Love has never been simple concept to me. I come from a loving enough family, but not one that likes to express this love verbally.…
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Father, you don’t need to ask how long it’s been since my last confession. You know and I know the truth. It’s been a week. But what a week, Father! Does it involve another trip to that place? Yes, it does. But a lot more than that Father. And that woman? Yes, she makes another appearance. Probably her last though. I really think I’ve managed to get her out of my system this time. It didn’t involve too much sinning. Just a little. Which is why I’m here.
It starts with my Uncle Errol. I’m not blaming him. He just happens to live near that place. Yes, Father, the San Sussy. Not to be confused with the Sugar Bunker next door. I’m not good enough to go there.…
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“Their pallid, subterranean ways,”
the chapter in the botany book begins,
“make them incomprehensible.”
It continues, though, by expounding
on the contrary, the common
sensibleness of their jobs – to anchor
the plant in soil, absorb water
and minerals, store food. The narrative
continues with more technical matters,
never to follow up on the enigmatic
opening line. Or maybe the author,
a many-degreed botanist, was suggesting
an alternate realm of meaning, or lack
thereof, divorced from roots’ habitual work.
But it struck a chord with me, for how
can we but be in the dark about roots
in the earth, burrowing, spreading?
Deep or shallow, they are too deep for us
to follow where they lead. There is no sense
seeking full disclosure, for what replies
they grudgingly may offer would bear little
resemblance, at bottom, to the unrevealable
truth, no matter our bootless digging.…
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July 2017. As we depart from O’Cebreiro and enter the forest that wends down into the Navia Valley, Lou casts her daily intention into the dimming stars.
“Today I walk for my mom,” she declares into the darkness.
S. and I acknowledge it silently as Lou’s mom materializes in my mind. If it is the village that raises the child, she is in every sense my auntie, my elder, my second mother. On the cusp of her retirement in January she had received an initial diagnosis of cancer, but the prognosis was only confirmed a week before Lou left to join me—her cancer is endemic. Chemotherapy will prolong her life, but never save it.
I look up through the dark arms of the Evergreen Oaks and Portuguese Oaks, marveling at the silent intelligence of the trees. …
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I remember as a young girl when it was possible to behold a million stars at night, now I’m lucky if I observe only six at any given time. But that was then, when I lived far away by the sea and the stars burst throughout the cosmos as far as the eye could see. Now I live the city dweller’s lot, with artificial light impairing my view of the universe. Excessive use of manufactured luster with polluting glare, skyglow, trespass and clutter shifts my attention is shifted towards a neighbor when lights are on and shadows are no longer cast. I see them roving about and I wonder what goes on behind their walls where I cannot hear their words or sense their thoughts.
For instance, the family next door in the apartment facing my kitchen window.…
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