Monday, September 21, 2009

Dean Asleep

Here is my friend:
slack, soul turned inward
betrayed by blood
and he is now apart from the world
in a cocoon of grace, the white sheets,
and the strange cold key of machines
their pumps and whirs, the pulse
of birdsong bleating
he's losing weight spendthrift,
can hardly afford it
he is on the tracks, facing down the years
facing down another lifetime
before his wife, his child,
his ordination
facing down the past of desserts, cigars
and coffee,
of hard liquor and bad drugs,
of a tough Norwegian father,
and the years of wanting.

I can see him asleep, even though
the door to his room is closed.

He has staff; he'd be gratified.
Code Blue twice,
and they give him a girl with a sequined
sweater, and a laptop,
on a desk with wheels. She watches only,
she's in Continuity.
As a theater man he'd understand.
Her job is to watch.

I sing and sing.
I hold his hand, and though God
is his co-pilot, I only know standards.
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

I kiss his hands, which I've never done,
would never do.
I love him and love him, and hope
he will wake.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

spirograph

the moon sets again
and again, a spirograph pattern centripetal spin
pushed along by my hand on my landscape
horizon, black on blue, and the sinking disk
goes down, goes down again, goes down
each moon phase a face of some one
that I love, and these loves
these orbiting satellites pulled to my breast,
my gravity, pulled into ovals and circles
repeatedly, overlapping paths, a design,
some grand design, the lines that shift and shift
minutely as the weeks and years,
as I spin at my molten core, keeping them
always in view, the ones sometimes cold and
distant, the ones that veer close to me catching
my breath, my heart pounds,
and the small moon of my child, here in my out-
stretched palm, always circling --

I am turning my back on myself forever,
knowing they can only be this close, or that,
but my face needs their light, I only can see
by that light, by their faces turned to me.

Lover, turn to me -
husband, turn to me -
friend, and friend, and friend --

child, who will only look over his shoulder
who sometimes suddenly rises before me,
full faced expectant, I am the plain,
I am the flat river before him, reflecting,
and he is the sun, the center,
the only thing that really matters
anymore.