Happy 90th, Mom!!

                                                                                                                              

There once was a young woman from Billings

Who worked at the bank for a living.

One day she had luck

When in walked young Tuck

And her heart filled up with strong feelings!

                          There once was a mom from Montana                                
                          Who raised three girls to be ladies.
                          They gambled, they spit,
                          They cheated, they bit.
                          But they always said “Thanks!”  when they robbed ya!                  

There once was a woman on Arvin

Who loved  to sit in her garden.

With her hat on her toes

And her shoes on her nose

She sat there through summer and autumn.

                            There once was a woman named Gayle
                            Who always was hearty and hale.
                            When asked how she did it,
                            She simply admitted,
                            “I never eat asparagus or whales.”

Wanting--needing-- all and more

never silver, only gold

work-- children--money--health

can I imagine--settle--less?

Oceans flood twice a day

wind blows over mountain range

yet if I kneel I could see

buttercup living prodigiously.                 

Eight Years Later

Eight Years Later

Leaving (2004) - Returning (2012)

So many things were wrenched away

I nearly died right then--

the light, the sky, the warmth of home

vanished in the night.

A deep dark void remained within--

the only thing not taken.

Darkness holding back my skin--

no heart, no lungs, no gut, no spleen.

And as the blind learn to hear

and the deaf to touch the world

I learned to feel within the dark

and how to breath again.

Now going back to sky and home

the most precious thing I take

is this gracious, spacious emptiness

within this guise of skin.

Twickenham

22 February 2012

Binders

A piece of lined American notebook paper

fits easily into a three-ring American binder.

But French binders have four rings

and French paper is three centimeters longer than the paper back home.

Back home

I counted my binders: thirty-nine

holding each one in my hands, weighing its worth

take or leave behind

packing only the essential

from five years of grad school

five years of work.

Thirty-nine,

clearly marked

three-ring binders.

Now

I carefully remove some papers

shuffle

rearrange

mix them up with something I’ve just found

printed on that longer paper

forming a new workshop out of the old.

Yet neither binder holds them well:

either four fragile new holes

hover around the worn edges of three holes

or little strips of paper

jut out below the bottom edge.

I have to unfit and refit so many things---

It’s all a jumble in my head

a quavering in my gut--

trying

to fit three-hole papers

into four-ring binders.

                                8 December 2008

                                Paris, France