Your Shocked, Wordless Heart

Strangely, it seems as though this is the same road I have been walking down all my life. It has branched, and forked, and turned. It has developed deep bumpy ruts, it has flooded, it has been dirt-packed and weed-overgrown and it has been paved. Sometimes I have had to jump from paving stone to paving stone, sometimes I have padded forward smooth as you please. I have skipped along barefoot, I have worn a colorful menagerie of shoes, I have tripped and fallen, tripped and caught myself, tripped and gone down hard, twisted more ankles than a person ought reasonably to be able to twist. I have walked light and heavy, hot and chilly, through deep sand, across sharp stones, alone reading a book, alone reading a phone, holding hands with my mother, my father, my sister, my Marjy and Linda best friends, with my lover, my runaway babies with my pinky in their little fists. I have walked with my posse, always and forever on down the road. And do you know, as the road goes along, sometimes it

I should empty my busy mind now. I should forget All the breathless gee whiz! and wow! I should forget Take my cue from the flowers, they don’t weave their clothes Like the peacefully trusting cow, I should forget Why fill my head with steps and flourishes With promenade, allemande, curtsey, and bow? I should forget All the people-stars in my firmament, them too? Adios to the cherished I and thou? I should forget? Yes, make it all open and quiet, sweep off the debris Bring on the all-clearing plow. I should forget Good-bye to bustle and worry, no more corrosive fuss Fretfulness, seeya! Misery, ciao! I should forget Cleansing myself of care, my body swims through deep waters Blissful novitiate close to my vow, I should forget I am clothed in every minute I have ever lived Oh I could kick free if I only knew how I should forget

What is this voice? What is this deep gruff rumbling? Can’t you hear me yodeling through the rooms, across the decades, down through my children’s dreams and far across the ocean, into my own beloved babyhood? Can’t you remember when I was a shiny bell, descant hitting the alleluias, shivery brightnotes trembling all the way to God’s ear? Were you there when we shouted down the roofs in ecstasy, delirium, in hopeless thrall to hopeful thrills? When we lost ourselves shouting up the home team in their old-school shorts on the open courts, screaming under the night lights, the gnat storms, when we found ourselves shouting with Gloria, surviving and jiving in shimmying crowds, footsore and juggling our purses and coats but alive, alive, and shouting?  And when we made our enormous shoutvoices to heavy ropes, holding our children, our frightened, frightening children, from breaking the thing, doing the wrong, crossing the road, crossing the road?  Oh I have traded in my silvertones for a g

Today I woke up to the rain beat Drew the drapes of my body upward to stand and walk Today the women’s feet shook the wood Rhythmic we stomped and floated the morning mother dance Today we spoke of lost tomorrows We might never see, we might never wake up into Today I was quiet, counting hours Spidered thoughts, little scared boats, down the routes unexplored Tonight we made a talking circle Listen, talk, listen, talk, all the ages, all the hurts Tonight I lost track of the minutes The house breathing out, the waiting for things to make sense Tonight stomp-feet are gone, circle closed Another day in this body. Sleep clawing me back

All the words have been used, all the roads have been paved All the pictures been taken, and framed All the old invitations are deeply engraved All the wilds have been formally claimed All the things have been said, all the vows have been sworn All the sentences lined up just right Oh but wait - they have never been said on this morn - In this voice - on this street - in this light All the prophets have cast off their robes and retired All the world has become very old All the most antique earthenware already fired The legends already been told All the words have been used, yes, but here’s one that’s new All glinting, and peach-fuzzed, and lilting Oh the babies are marching, their lines breaking through And the old world is tilting - and tilting All the roads have been paved, all the forest floors swept Nothing happens we don’t recognize Oh but look - there’s a tear that has not yet been wept There are kisses, and fights, and surprise All the things have been said, all the vows have be

Lonely is just a moment’s hitch in the air, one conversation missing out of the dozens ongoing, a breath’s pause. Lonely is the sneakers not tied - not just yet. Soon enough the feet will go, there will be people and music. Soon enough. But not just yet. Lonely is so tiny you can’t see it in all the deadlines, chatter, work to do. But there. Just there. In between the minute hands, straight through the clusters of people. Just one conversation missing.

My headskin hurts. The tightness of drums, the noise of pain. Where I used to think, there is wrongness. Where I used to be quiet, the world is flooding in. Monday’s child plays me tricks, bringing fire where I asked for water. I am not the little girl, but I have her headache. Why do I flee the pain? How do I flee the ache? How can I shed this skin? Tuesday’s child mocks me, laying traps, banging cymbals. I was myself and I knew where I ended. I could carry my stillness anywhere. Now I cannot keep out the marching band, it is me. Wednesday’s child waits out of sight for me, collecting sharp sticks. I stand in the yard holding out my apron, waiting for the next word to fall from the sky. How long, how long? Is this why it aches, my drumskin skull? Thursday’s child has the patience of angels, teasing me. I feel my way forward. I am in the dark. I offer my arm, my foot, my belly. Anything to hurt, just not this brainpan, this central committee. Friday’s child taunts: the weekend, the wee

  My mother gave me a word a wrist a twist of the knee a song a book a hunger My father gave me fear  arguments sentiment a push a pull a hunger My sister gave me games scissors answers a whispered bond something to aim for someone to watch My mother wanted warmth adventure  love My father wanted truth  perfection family My sister wanted bare feet freedom What was I supposed to want? My mother was tougher than she looked  than she knew in her dreamy far-off world she could be untouchable My father was less guarded than he would have liked to be easier to touch easier to wound if I’d only known My sister was prettier than she wanted to be and than me and pricklier than I wanted her to be and than me All I was was littler littler littler

I have lived in this house with my arms full and my arms empty. I have lived in this house old and young. More years than people in my family ever live in houses.  I have lived in this house noisy and quiet, dusty and swept, stinky and sweet-smelling. I have walked the rooms barefoot, I have stomped upstairs and down in my muddy boots. I have lived in this house fat and skinny. I have worn my husband’s hand-me-down jeans, my children’s hand-me-down cargo shorts and hoodies, my own flowing colors. I have lived here with big-eyed boys and sassy teens, sweet tall young men, and all of their ghosts keeping me gentle company.  I have lived here with mice, with crickets, with ants. In this house I have remembered my mother’s sharp quick way with cockroaches, the flipflop in her hand coming down in a perfect crack. I have lived here with clean dishes and dirty, remembering the Sunday afternoons and the hot sudsy sink of childhood washings up, mother and sister and me singing rounds. I have li

In tiny little pots along the peeling red deck I grew my haiku from syllable seedlings All around the house I planted my lullabies In colorful songbeds angled to catch the sun just so Lined up the ballad starts under the window In curvy old porcelain tubs lined with mulch Summer evenings, I filled the potbellied green watering can And slowly watered the tubs and rows, thinking of something else But I was making it all up as I went along Because I didn’t know Early dewy mornings, I sent the hopeful children out To cut snippets of song for the breakfast table But the deer had bitten the heads off the anthems The squirrels had dug up the ghazal seeds Because I was making it all up as I went along Because I didn’t know And I heard the flashy ads saying “Get ‘em here!” “Buy ‘em pre-potted, full-grown, all wrapped in a bow!” Oh I was sorely tempted: Hymns by the dozen! Tunes by the yard! Can’t you just imagine? All the songs just so? But no. I keep memory-mulching, rhyme-seeding Verse-weedin

I am a round baby bounced from knee to adoring knee, a miracle growing older with every bounce, more self-aware, less unafraid.  I am a broken collage halfway across the room from myself, juggling my disembodied head on my elbows, and with my eyes in my belly button I watch myself slash thick red graffiti on the pulsating walls.  I am a walnut, present and whole. I am a drumbeat, wanting here, now, love, truth, yes, why, make it stop, keep the beat.  Pacing the wooden floors, the memory traps, the what-if labyrinths. Gobbling the air, the dance, the certainties, the chopped-up tomorrows. Make it real. Make it true. What makes this a person? This body stops the air. This mouth is hungry. This self has tentacles that lick the icy cold, the easy untruth, the painful lonesome. The hard-won solitude. The burst of hallelujah. Again the icy cold.

(A Chinese form, san san meaning three three. Three images each appearing three times. Rhyme scheme abcabdcd.) *** My bruised feet know the path, they walk To meet my comfortable friend, we perch On stones in sun and shade, easing Our tired feet while we squint and talk Each to each an ear, a friend, we lurch From gossip to earnest, on sunwarmed stones Laughing, listening, friend-teasing Feet swollen, stones old, comfortable bones. *** This memory face, a father, a mother Crowding the mirror, my hands smoothing, Holding, the mirror knows my face Knows these hands and no-one other Father worrying, mother soothing The mirror knows there’s no disguise I use her hands to trace What I see with his eyes *** What do I see when I close my eyes?  Long tunnels, red-streaked lightning jags,  Children leaving home, exploding pinwheels. Anything I want. All truth, all lies. I eye the children packing their bags Down the tunnel’s length. Kaleidoscopes Inside my eyelids. This is how it feels. Close o

Slam bang splash up against the walls, it goes, or lies flat, that too Reflecting, waiting, divided by ropes but not divided at all Just cool enough, waiting to meet my body heat Deep in the giant room it shimmies under the soaring eaves Tiny humans, red-uniformed, policing, patrolling, pace its perimeter At uneven intervals, other bodies enter, shaping it, slicing it At night in the dark it lies, after it takes the bite of that white powder Relaxing its chopped, reactive waves till it stills, stills, glasses over Till it is only cold, black, silent. Waiting to break down the poison Waiting for the bodies to return, the porpoise shapes, the shrill laughers The ones that speak into its depths, sending tiny waves ricocheting The ones who swallow it, choke, cough. Small disturbances. It is itself. Slam bang splash up against the walls, it goes, or lies flat, that too Reflecting, waiting, divided by ropes but not divided at all Just cool enough, waiting to meet my body heat

This is the derelict paint-peeling house next door that stands empty This is the sidewalk I walk on, cold and hot, leafy or not, Past the derelict, paint-peeling house next door that stands empty. These are my neighbors, dog-pulling, book-reading, friend-greeting Bustling the sidewalk I walk on, cold and hot, leafy or not, Past the derelict, paint-peeling house next door that stands empty. Here is the bookhouse where folks stop to look at old thrillers, new cookbooks Left by my neighbors, dog-pulling, book-reading, friend-greeting Who bustle the sidewalk I walk on, cold and hot, leafy or not, Past the looming, gloomy house next door that wasn’t always empty. Here comes my neighbor across the street with the book I returned to her by mistake But not from the bookhouse where folks stop to look at old mysteries, cookbooks Left by my neighbors, dog-pulling, book-leaving, friend-waving Who bustle the sidewalk I walk on, cold and hot, leafy or not, Past the big white house next door, so clos

The table is large and I am small, learning my lessons The invisible council of elders rules concerning my lessons The books fly in from faraway lands, foreign birds and jingles I am wrapped in papermade parables, yearning for lessons My mother in flour and steel lap-teaches my morning Till doorknocks and dayneeds collide, overturning my lessons All flloor-spread my sister reigns, pointing, showing me brightshapes Morphing to wordbites—for her I am churning through lessons The living room linoleum a river of hopscotch math cards Flash-learning, flip-turning, learning, relearning these lessons Out of broomstick and bag a hobbyhorse, one week a live goat And from cardboard, arduous, a sundial, burning in lessons Daily my mother, low-flying, declaiming, makes star appearances  Till it’s time for real school, forever adjourning those lessons

We thought we were thirsty, trudging through deserts holding rough hands across the ranges we thought we had become the silent ones, lost our words we did what we could without them nestled into ourselves, mourning their curlicues the tunefulness of the vowels, making the lullabies we now were without. Without our tongues we became slow and so thirsty thought we were done with all that slipping beyond thought then a word came whispering down like  a wet shock and you took it and made twenty more just like it and dripped them into a castle and we admired it and shook ourselves and felt a little less lethargic and right where the window should go i remembered another word and put it there and then i thought of two more that made a roof and suddenly we were dancing in the soaking desert reciting made-up poetry ancient and cutting-edge, and our sleeves and pants legs which had been too long and dragging were suddenly just the right size and we stood up straight and tall, shook ourselves an

There were the years of storming and anger, pockets lined with resentment and hands chock-full of mad, dripping with bitter. Those years wandered in and out of love and adventure. Deep funny in the mad, hard laugh in the bitter. Don’t you get in my way, people! Don’t you come home late! That was called being alive. That was called ups and downs. That was called so much to lose. Love is a bone, tossed high and frisky, and the puppy comes stumble-panting back so happy with it.   There were the years of quiet and waiting, wondering who I still was, yet was, might be. Whatever it is, not this. Somewhere else, something else. Those years fell down rabbit holes, every crisis a welcome thrill. Shock me, scare me, move me! Burn this house down, these towering walls. Please. That was called transition. That was called what next? That never slept. Love is a wagon pulled through the rooms, piled high with morning, noon, and night. Circling, circling. There came the years of howling and lying nake

I know that the secret is starting to write And seeing where memories take me But I find myself sitting here into the night ‘Cause some of those memories shake me I got in my car and drove three hundred miles And the radio sang me old songs About sunshine and sweethearts and summertime smiles And dark days and shattering wrongs Just like in those songs, I felt free on the road From work site to truck stop to diner Then it hailed and it rained and, like magic, it snowed And between times, could not have been finer Now, I get that the thing is to write what is true And dig to the heart of what matters But what if the templates have not worked for you And the fairytale ended in tatters? And what if you just can’t be sure what comes next And you’re feeling your way as you go? And delight comes in places you’d never expect And you’re questioning all that you know? Yes I know that the secret is starting to write And seeing where memories take me But I find myself sitting here into the night

Wind on my tongue. Threads of dinosaur joy I used to know things. It doesn’t matter anymore Lost the pen. Now typing in my sleep On a broken keyboard in some other locked-up house I don’t have hands. Hmm. Do you have hands? Can you feel the rain, how it’s shot through with cinnamon? I hear the good silverware dancing How does it know when to start and when it ought to stop? Morning has broken, broken again I keep wandering through the thinning walls in the air How does it end, this stumbling road? Threads? Joy? Rain? Who will finally crank open the roofs?

  Xs and Os. We play and replay. This game, so simple, does not end. Hardly ever a winner. I block you, you block me. Why then the pleasure Drawing our lines Choosing sides Once more Cat. Oakland. The 80s. The Bash Brothers. The A’s at the Coliseum. We were proud fair-weather fans Clueless about baseball Strangers in this land Doing the wave Then taking  The BART Home. Your pregnancy, weirdly, starts counting From the last day of your menses And becomes a numbering Of dreamnights, fatigue, hope, Crackers, elastic, Baby name books “No kid yet?” Then, boom! Kid. Playing bumper clouds in the ether Me steering my nimbostratus You hotrodding your cirrus Angels jump to save their skins Skywind on our face When we’re racing Feels like we’re On cloud nine. At first you can’t hold them all at once Dropping some, smashing one by chance Till you become more careful Cherishing what is left Sifting them for clues Till finally You are down To one Life.

When I was a grassy slope I went on forever, down to the airstrip at the toy-car-sized bottom of the hill, burning to sharp hard grass stalks along the way. When I was the burnt grass, I held still and stiff, unable to wave, unable to bend, only marching and marching till I had to stop at the edge of the road. When I was a packed-dirt road I never went very far, only just down to the hostel and back, covered in little girls skipping and scheming. When I was a little girl, I climbed and climbed and climbed to get home to the top of the two-story house. When I was the two-story house, I crumbled my old stone steps and banged my big new wooden door and confused the visitors, so that someone leaving a cello lesson in the living room might open a door onto a woman in a tub.  When I was a woman in a tub, I closed my eyes to think of nothing, covered in suds, quiet for once, out of hearing of my family. When I was a family, I sang in all the voices and told the stories in back and forth direc

My little boy asked, Mama, where are we from? Yeah my baby boy asked me, Ma, where are we from? On the long-distance phone I said, honey, how come? He said well, it just seems we’ve been flung east and west Like our people are scattered, north, south, east, and west. I said sure, but that happens with folks on a quest They were pioneers, refugees, needing to roam They were teacherfolk, preacherfolk, wanting to roam And my boy said, I get it, but where is our home? Oh I’ll write you a letter, babe, make it fly high Old blue airmail letter that flies through the sky And I’ll tell you the stories to make you see why Now our telephone connection was getting real poor Yeah our voice-phone connection got scratchy and poor And he said, never mind, Mom, I know all that lore ‘Bout the last-borns who needed to make their own way All the war-born, and poor-born, who made their own way All the many who left, and the few who did stay There was God, there was love, there was traveling to college I k

My father caught him a crazy quiet secret-knowing woman Sensible when she had to be but a weirdness-stowing woman I want to be brave and cuckoo like her, fierce like nobody’s watching A continent-striding, thundercloud-riding, oceangoing woman I know the closets where she hid, the stages she burst out on I watched her close, that lipstick-glowing, caftan-flowing woman I knew her young, I knew her old, I knew her typing, scrubbing I knew her loving, I knew her forgetting, a wondering, slowing woman I loved the goofy, madcap games, although she sometimes scared me The oddball soul within that truly bright-line-toeing woman We lived on hymns and prayers and fun. On Shakespeare bursting forth From deep inside a bubble-blowing, real churchgoing woman Silence and words. Music and hush. Glamor and hard, bitter work Good night, my mother, you tiny, enormous, life-overthrowing woman.

I can’t see out of these glasses anymore.  I went back to visit my real life, looking in through the dirty panes.  I walked into the road empty-handed, and while I stood there, blind, in the middle of the street, the cars roared by me on either sidewalk. Belching, I think, exhaust from fifty years ago. Little old divorced lady in the middle of Indiana.  Seven, eight years ago, in the waning months of what had always been my real life, I walked to the eyecare center down the street with the man who had always been my real husband and he picked out a pair of large rectangular blue glasses for me. He always said I looked wonderful in blue. A little later, carelessly, he took me to Berlin and said oh, whoops, I love you a whole bunch but being married to you for the rest of my life just doesn’t float my boat, so, um, bye. My brain had often gotten compliments before, but it stopped working. I wore the big blue glasses everywhere and they got the compliments. I stammered, oh, thanks, my, uh

  I beat with my dragonwings against my earthmother asking why? Why didn’t you teach me, show me the locked-away gardens, Draw me the map I have cried for, hand me the burning key? I wander the forking skyways diving for summerfat answers Every fledgling more skillful than I, every toddler wiser, Every kindergarten full of mockery at know-nothing me Unpaged, half-hearing, the wind runs straight through me,  The worldflames knock me this way and that The lightning makes me dance a wilding And yet–and yet. I spear the questions one way And the answerflowers bloom in the opposite place. I frustrate the angryhours hot, cold, and they temper I hammer the doors of tell me, tell me, tell me And they melt into whispers of why then? why? And they rustle back: Just look at yourself! Which I can’t, which I can’t, which I can’t. I beat with my puny hands against my great, solid mother Asking why? And she says nothing at all, but builds me Yet one more pair of soaring, unreachable dragonwings. 

I put the book and the mirror down I put the telephone down, and there is a sunshine Why am I bundled in memories? Why do I speak in patterns and ancient grievances? I put a foot forward, take a step And a lifetime comes with me - or maybe falls away I watched my mother grow old, unarmed She laid down her sword and shield to dance up the sunshine Out in the world I hear endless talk Inside our walls there's a voice that speaks only to me What is a child? Who belongs to whom? We are tightly woven and can't ever come undone

  Because I am old, she is dead. Because I was loved from her strange, shocked, Wordless heart, I am alive. We will never stop swarming over her curious memory. Should we let her be, finally resting? I go knocking at strangers' doors, asking, do you know who my mother was? I put up posters on lampposts along streets I've never traveled, begging Did anyone understand this woman, can anyone explain? Should I go geographical, biographical, theological? Oh the breadcrumbs Are shiny. How did she dream herself, fairytale by pumpkin Out of little rich girl into church royalty, holy poverty? In her lap, softness on softness, I never noticed the deep conundrum. In her voice, singing, declaiming, I listened right over the silence. From her sturdiness I strung the hammocks of girlhood. I knew the pillows where she tucked her murder mysteries, smack In the middle of her hard, serious days. I knew the dances That she taught us in our sober Baptist house. We have scattered and grown, her chi

You brought me up in dirt yards, on concrete and linoleum floors, in wooden churches. On self-ground peanut butter cookies and ice-cold self-squeezed lemonade. Thousands of miles from your New Jersey. The silence was filled with hymns, poems, readings. Limericks, jokes, prayers, and old, old songs. With dancing. And trudging through sand to church. Holding your hand. There was a beach and there was sand, other sand, there was sunshine and splashing and crocodile jokes, frisbees and drip castles and heedlessness. We called it the Little Falls. You weren't there, and when I came home I was red and fiery and tender and sore to the touch, and everything hurt. You had a satiny pink nightgown and a satiny pink robe that had no seams anywhere and you wrapped me in those and for three days and nights I sat or lay on the green-and-white-striped vinyl stuffed chairs we always said we bought from the Norwegian ambassador, cradled in the gentle chill of your satin wrappings, pink against my fi