Rêver de voler

Everybody dreams of flying, right?
It cannot be unusual
To look up at the gauzy clouds
And feel the pull to be among them.

Surely other people
Thrill to the notion of soaring,
And wired into their cells also,
Is recognition of the vault of heaven
Jarring as memory.

I cannot be the only one
Who arches to ease the ache between my shoulders
Where I know there once were wings.

"Awesome--what, like a hotdog?"

Other Countries


Well-intentioned relatives and friends ask
"How was your trip?"
As though I could possibly answer truthfully

I paste it with insufficient words,
Words that could not possibly stretch
Around the things I saw and felt

Words like:
Fun
Beautiful
Adventure

When I mean words like:
inner earthquake pinch bell pepper new smoke blossom isolate held shift emerge crumble minty salt flats tango miles tantrum lungs falter grow sweat and change

These are not the words requested,
But they are my storywords, honest as I can manage,
And pieced together properly
They explain how I came back different
And what transpired
And why I will no longer say, "God bless you!"
When somebody sneezes

"Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions."

Delicate Ecology

This evening it storms.
I am resigned to spending these maelstroms—
And for that matter, all incarnations of weather
Save for hurricanes, which, necessarily, are family affairs—
Alone;
Because, I reason, the circus in my head is still
Too graphic to inflict on another person.

But in the meantime there are recurrent storms.
So in a bed that seems too wide
And flanked by too many blankets,
I set about imagining
This pillow I'm spooning isn't a lumpy rectangle of cotton,
But a waist that tapers and then broadens into tulip bulbs
And gravity draws my lazy wrist
To the nadir of that precipitous dip.

When lightening splits the firmament,
Raspy white fingers reaching hungrily into crevices of the sky,
I shut my eyes against the instant floodlight
And conjure up a careless knot of hair
That spills maybe just shy of my nose.

It stops there, though.
Much too dangerously specific to pretend a scent,
Because every person’s fragrance is her own
And the beauty of this non-reality
Is that it lacks precision (no eyes, no hands, no scent.)

And though I haven't been afraid of thunder
For many years now,
I still feel better if someone else—
No matter how illusory—is there
Not being afraid of thunder
Right next to me.