Here's to May, teenage gamers, and the beautiful rowing we all do ~

Gamer Blue 

  For Micah

If I cannot release my 12-year old son

from the small daily deaths of divorce

or take him on a fancy summer vacation

I can offer him the autonomy of night

That yellow labyrinth

Foraging in the fridge for yogurt or salami

the dramatic flop into the helm

of his La-Z Boy recliner

Hands firmly planted on the keyboard

eyes trained on the horizon of his laptop

My blue-light voyager

Maybe there’s a grace

some exalted terrain

offered to a boy bathed in the blue corona

& who am I

to say

that this

is not

rowing

that my son’s small hands

do not summon the gods

& put them mercifully to work.

ECS

Happy Mama's Day and to Jorie Graham!

Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl   

themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the   

way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-

                                                                      infolding,

entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a   

visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by   

minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the   

dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where   

they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into   

itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly   

invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing

                                    motion that forces change—

this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets   

what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing

is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by

each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,   

also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something   

at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through   

in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is   

what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen   

now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only   

something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.   

I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.   

It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

Jorie Graham