Sunday, May 24, 2015

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

Sunday, May 10, 2015

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.