running Archives

inaudible birds

pending confirmation

on a summer evening in the Super El Niño year
a body gets to worrying
about the birds
how the babies get thrown
from their nests
in the latest desert monsoon
a week after flocks fall
dead in the heat when
the avian flu once thought confined
to factory farms
has leaked somehow to shorebirds
then seals
then sea lions
as though categories were only temporary fences
& i
want to hear what they are saying because
i worry about running
out of time to hear
meanwhile am going
on an hour now trying to log in
to this airline Yes I Did Reset the Password
& again
& again
locking on one thing i can set right by persistence
& attention to detail
& again
it does not work
with a tiny pink error code
& a miniature number
to call
but not now
tomorrow maybe at a less convenient time
when a body should be doing other work
such as the work of living
or else replying
to indicate that i have received the notices
re: updated student loan repayment plans
& re: SAT registration dates for rising juniors
& then onto work email
re: exciting changes coming this semester
(read: same dysfunction/ same hope/ new flavors. . . & a logo!
schedules & possibly even working bathrooms coming soon!)
& i have returned the bagged lettuce to the store
in response to the latest outbreak of whatever
& my daughter came home without my hearing
over three fans so when I wake sweating around 2 am to text
is everything okay? i get moose emoji in reply
& yah are you? with selfie in bed now my turn
lol laughing emoji eyes not adjusted yet
i read the clock wrong moose did not hear
& now the cat on my chest offended
by the visible bottom of her bowl
or perhaps because of the fans so loud
or something in me so loud running
wanting just a little more time to catch
the better end of the story
let there be a better end
to tell it forward this time
to tell ourselves and mean it
not
running
& it is not in the end about getting
anywhere
is it?
only not this
running so loud
& so fast
we cannot hear
the birds

Dashes

And flight.

I look up from a page where I am working out this thing about the flying men that came and went, and find Buzz, the resident cat, with that look. Like, what about you? where is it you fly off to?

My secret I suspect has to do with being a creature of ritual, prone to long bouts of longing for ecstatic states. I move a pen across the lines of a page, as a younger me used to move feet over miles and miles of sidewalk concrete

road / trails / following
something––

I knew I wouldn’t reach it, but I would reach the end of an attempt at being in its presence, and I knew there was worth in the attempt alone and it was worth more than any I –––

At the time I would have called what I was after a better time but secretly I called it a synonym for light, some word I didn’t have yet. I still don’t have it, don’t think that I would say it if I did. It was for this luminous something I could almost see near the end, and I knew it––

to be worth collapsing
for I wanted it to
take me from my body that I may know something––
just beyond its reach––

The Chase

How to work a running stitch.

What kind of poet would I be if I couldn’t fix a seam? You asked, incredulous, adding, you know, it’s not rocket science. When the language got too tight around our necks you said Look and undid the top buttons, like There and How hard was that? and it was obvious we had a long way to go.

I mean to live, you said, and invited us to join you, running––your kites on laundry lines, your great river piping underground, leaking secrets from the dripping faucets of our fourth-floor walk-up. Your hero at the mop, finishing a shift while the oracle she’s come to visit goes fishing for change in her apron.

The legs of our love tended to falter. Fatigued, we wondered how you kept yours onward. Once, ascending a hill, you reminded, don’t look up. You can follow the street as well as the sky, and as we looked for your next words you called back, not even at me, striding ahead. Eventually, we learned to follow the backs of your legs and fall into a rocking trance. The grates of sewers punctuating our periphery, we found our breaths in time with the river below us, and as the miles went on, stitched our single body back to some subterranean source.

***

Inspired by Anne Winters, especially Night Wash.