self-preservation

what do we forget, and why?
what is captured, held, preserved
and what is dropped like so much useless refuse?
i remember only the strength of your arms,
your long spine and your bare skin—
i cannot recall the fight, though
i know i'll never forget the strength of my hatred.
but what is emotion without
the grounding of experience or memory?
perhaps this is why
it is so easy to forget.

you should know where you come from.
you should know
whose blood is in your veins,
you should know
whose sweat watered your family tree.
you should know your land,
the acreage and the money that paid for it,
and who fought in which wars
and on what side
to earn it.
you should know your mother.
your mother, like you,
experienced yearning as a teenager;
lust in her twenties;
possibilities in her thirties;
aging in her forties;
and the violence of change after maddening change
during all of those years.
your father, like you,
tried his first cigarette,
tried his first beer,
tried losing his virginity to some girl at prom
and failed,
tried being a son and a brother
and a friend and a lover,
tried on all of these roles before you did.
you should know your grandmother,
and her childhood,
and your grandfather and who he was raised by.
you should know where you come from
so you can appreciate
the opportunities provided to you
by those who came before,
so that you can know the actual cost
of your ability to go to school
or marry who you want
or have a job of your choosing
or stay at home or go abroad or live in
all fifty states before you die--
since someone died for your ability to do that,
someone mourned that death,
and someone picked up the pieces and then
moved the entire family forward.
you should know where you come from
so that you can know your own momentum,
so that you can know
the inertia of your body and what
the marrow of your bones is longing for--
which is different from everyone else,
which is yours and
only yours and belonging only to your family tree.
you should know where you come from
because even if you don't know the story,
you will live the narrative
of your family and your blood and your roots,
and your ancestors have left footnotes
to guide you through that reading.

i spoke with authority,
so you gave it to me;
i acted with conviction,
so you convicted me
to leading a charge i can't win.
i spoke in front of the crowd
and you followed;
i outlined a dream
and you dreamed it for me.
i showed you a path
and you walked with me,
even though i don't know where the path ends
or even if it is the right road to walk.
i wrote in a book
all the words that ought to be said:
i penned a tract, a treatise,
an essay on moving and leaving,
and you left with me.
there is all this momentum, now;
all motion and heat and combustion,
and not a single ounce
of substance to fuel it.

Birthday

So plant a tree for me,
When I am gone,
And cut it down while it is young:
Let urbanity crawl around it,
Let the pests and fights surround it.
Else leave it be, shriveled and weak,
To fend for itself.
And from a seed,
An amazing length is grown-
A wonderful height is shown.
The sprout in the soil
Is nothing, a magnet, a centrifuge
Of dirt and heat
Till at once it is something,
A being of age and shade.

Water noises:

I am watching a fish
Who flits from rock to rock
Like a chickadee,
In the crevices finding hiding places
And something to gape at.
The current against
The rounded, pounded rocks
Laughs as the sparrow hops from
Stone to stone,
As the swallow sings his song
Inside the shadows.

Sky noises:

There is, not far above,
A tiny warbler,
Yellow and daring and loud
Whose trek brings him
Down among the reeds and stones.
For a moment he is silent
And singular, a marshall or
Sentinel of the water,
Glaring at the silvery fishes
And silvery moss.
When he sings again,
It is raucous, vibrant,
An interruption of the creek song.

maybe what i'm finding that i hate isn't you, maybe what i'm finding isn't fair but it's real and it's true and it sears
like a desert, like a bone, like the dried out cone where marrow used to beat and bleed and pulse and grow, maybe i am just
seeking something which no longer exists, but that existence--
i will be desperate to prove--
that existence, which maybe was never between you and i, but an internal conversation in a soft voice, in a warm hand, in an early kiss
which you were never a part of. what i am finding is that years later i can be raw, years later i can be aching, and shriveled with rage
and not a single inch wiser for the steps i've taken, and still trying to sustain the internal conversation of what love can be, and that existence--
i have been desperate to prove--
the existence of love, which is not peaceful, but means peace,
which is war, but means hope, and which is old, and tired, and stagnated in the back of a rusted-out pickup truck
but grows fresh in the incandescent spring of our experiences. this was never a conversation that i had to have with you, but merely
had to have, had to learn to live inside of. and my whole body is responsive, is nubile, is peurile, and yet even the marrow i thought had dried up
and turned to dust hears your name
(your empty, worthless name) and cries wolf, cries for protection in the night, cries for the shadows stalking outside my window,
the shadows which are not you and never were you and yet, are yours. in the lamplight, in the twilight, in that dim existence--
i will be desperate to prove--
it's an existence that engorges itself on love, more love, and which can encompass more than one.
even after my ears are deaf they will still keen for the sound of your step at the door.