Who moved my plane?

The first trick-or-treaters in 15 years are knocking. I’m leaping over several strewn suitcases, holding up a finger, looking for my hidden stash. Ah, the Dove chocolates, mostly gone and partly stale, pass from me to them in unwritten code: costumed children get treats. I’m just glad I didn’t have to resort to the boxed raisins (trick).

Suddenly, I’m in a time machine, clunking about in noise and heft as I grab the wheel with both hands and strain to turn. It is a slow descent. I’m back at the locust house; I see my witch friend barbecuing next door in the dark. ‘We have to stick together,’ she croons over the flames. It’s a complete head fuck and fog. Everything is percolating in the back matter.

The real reason I’m here is to find the underbelly of this machine we call life. I panic about the house with my coffee and wired thoughts. I have to get to the other side of each and every one and then find my way back. I’m not sure which way to go at each intersection. Decision and creation. You can’t have one without the other. I pick a path; I adapt; I pivot; I grow stronger ankles.

Now I’m ambling through the woods past abandoned cabins. I gaze around me at all the nesting places, resting places. I want to stay. I want to fall right into the soft wide bed of the blue foothills. But the runway is calling. It is just beyond those trees.

I see her lines. I am shyly circling them. All around mothers are cheering daughters, themselves. Making, marking time. My thoughts knit a giant yarn ball; I try to separate out the threads, the colors, the patterns. I need to make sense of this soft chaos. I need. I’m a poet, but that doesn’t mean I’m not angry.

I‘m in the parade now, part of the memory and worry. The biohazardy. We are marching. We are camping out on the runway. We are drinking tea and whiskey and wearing ear muffs and watching the sunsets and planes—coming and going.

I’m standing on the asphalt. Between the yellow lines. I’m searching, standing under planes, gazing up at their massively sleek bodies. I can’t find mine. It is strangely quiet. My thoughts are stilled, as if held within a frozen window frame. I am feeling the words: ‘Let fear be your tailwind, not your headwind.’

I am running.  I am stretching out my arms. I am being cheered and guided and lifted. I am . . . flying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

dream

brown eyes,

gold skin,

black cross-hatching,

blue rivers of veins

running through;

i see you. i see you.

your fingers find mine,

carry their own heat;

i feel you. i feel you.

your open mouth holds

what we don’t need to say.

you unfold your acre arms; and

i fall straight through

to the other side.

we climb the continual

we are each born into this world with a dream.

when we first arrive, we know it to our core.

 

as time—and we—unfold, we begin to forget;

it burrows back down into our recesses.

 

sometimes small glimpses will come to the

surface, if we allow space: a painted picture, a

 

sculpted pot, a sleeping story. unmet dreams

follow us en masse down dark side streets,

 

find us in all-night conversations,

meet us under a portal of stars.

 

we climb the continual spiral—

toward voice, birth, source, love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ride

there you are

up on the north hill.

 

i can see you

through the veil,

 

embarking on our

beautiful horse.

 

we share that

mustang machine;

 

we groom her,

we love her,

 

we feel her power

under and through us.

 

we take her down

the same paths:

 

looping in, around,

up, between.

 

but we can never ride

her at the same time.

 

across the time-miles,

 

i feel you in the saddle,

in the reins, in the hard

 

handle of the brush as

i bring her to a soft shine.

 

i manifest you in the

flowing grass, the

 

wild wind, the

impeccable trees.

 

we move seamlessly

through the falling leaves

 

as if coated with fluid.

 

with each ride

we lift the scrim

 

a bit more

to see within;

 

we speak our

vision into being.

snap shot 2

We remember and forget things on a daily basis. If we could retain everything we have ever remembered—or perhaps never forget it in the first place—we would be different beings. Forgetting may be a blessing—the mind’s way of coping with this insidious loop of existence. How else could we get up and do the same things over and over again? Maybe the forgetting was a curse. Or was it the remembering?

These thoughts came to Lee as she dragged herself once again out of her dreams, out of the deep remembering that came to her each night. She was usually in a forest, in a fog of stories without words, surrounded by things you just know in your bones, things that make you run and jump and fly and hunt. Things that let you escape humanity and become the elements that make up the dreams of others, that make up the universe. Things that don’t require bones but that know them to their core.

Upon waking, she could feel the familiar forgetting wrapping around her like a bathrobe. Sometimes it came in the form of a coffee cup or phone notification. She could have stayed in that wordless world forever—and maybe one of these times she would. But the crash of the recycling bins outside had jarred her out of sleep. At first it melded with her dream, and she was rushing to try to gather all of the bottles, boxes, and cans from the week to get them to the curb in time. There used to be many more bottles. She was trying to cut back.

She had fallen asleep in the living room again, beside the simmering fireplace, with the window cracked. It was like sleeping by a campfire, the contrast of the soft heat and cool air bringing her back to a place of childhood and longing. There was something addictive about a fire, the measured build of the elements as heat met paper met wood met air—the initial catch, the crackling increase, the leap of flames, the slow burn of embers. It was like a birth and a death—right at her fingertips—and it warmed the room beautifully.

Lee was avoiding her bedroom. She had been for weeks—ever since the holidays. The pillowy couch by the fireplace was only comfortable to a point, and then her back would start to ache. But something was keeping her from that room, from that big, firm bed. She thought she knew what, she thought she had it figured out, but then she would forget. In the meantime, she continued to make fires, sandwiches, phone calls.

She checked her phone, first for the time (and to see how many times she had hit snooze), and then for the regular dose of notifications. There were only a few this morning, nothing to really stimulate her to fully wake. She got distracted by a cat video and then a news parody, and found herself laughing before her coffee—which was rare. Not really laughing, but slightly snickering as she stretched and pulled herself up out of the couch cushions.

It was cold and overcast, and she sucked in the air as she gazed out the window. She could smell the eventual passing of winter, the tiny hint of spring, the desire to run through a field or chop some wood or take off in a canoe. Instead, she followed the well-worn path to the coffee maker.

The house would be as quiet as she wanted it. Sophie would sleep until noon. There was no school today. It was Martin Luther King Day.

I have a dream.

 

hereafter

put me on a porch

like a plant and let

me soak up the sun.

 

put me back in the

pines like when we

were young and played

 

with parallel universes:

taking the arched elevator

to whichever floor we desired,

 

trying to catch the

leaves and the liars before

mom called us back.

 

what was that?

 

that was living. that

was real, and imagination,

together; both the

 

source, and the

destination. some-

times you want to go

 

back, and other times

you want to spin forward—

but really they are the

 

same parallel thing.

 

to enjoy what was

take me to your timberline,

show me where your true self ends

 

and your truer self begins.

i want to see in:

 

i want the spiral of a dream to take me

out of time,

 

put me in the womb,

put me on the edge of battle,

 

put me in the pack

chasing survival;

 

to forget the forgetting,

to feel the source,

 

to see the spine of life continuing

as it passes through doors.

 

to enjoy what was

is to carve joy

 

into what is,

into what will be again:

 

it is all the same clay, the same

tools, the same deep grooves.

 

you call me to the fire, and

i answer with water;

 

and we sit at the edge of the mountain

and conspire to love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

wiley

i was alone in the house.

that house was always so small:

little wooden rooms, littler wooden furniture.

i was sleeping—deep, on a tiny single bed.

 

it was morning, and everyone had gone to work.

your grandmother had not yet arrived from puerto rico.

the last person to leave had left the door unlocked, and

i was alone in the house.

 

i woke to a heavy feeling on my back, like a weight

pressing down, pressing me into the mattress.

i was trying to move, trying to open my eyes,

but i was frozen. i could not move, could not see,

 

could not make a sound. something was on top of me.

something was on top of me.

it was pushing down—hard, a presence so strong

but silent

 

and i could do nothing. i had the distinct feeling that

if i could just open my eyes, it would leave,

if i could just open my eyes,

it would have no choice but to disappear.

 

i thought maybe if i were dreaming, i could control

it as i had the power to do as a child. but i could

not force my eyes open, as hard as i tried.

i was paralyzed.

 

and then there was thrashing,

heavy beating

down on my back, pressing me further into the bed,

and i could not move, could not get away.

 

it wasn’t painful as much as terrifying—and heavy,

so heavy, suffocating. if felt like a bruising that

was trying to get inside me, under my skin.

it was trying to break me.

 

it seemed to go on for hours. i lost track of time.

everything felt dark and twisted, both distant and

immediate. i do not know what finally made it stop.

but it was suddenly quiet and still.

 

i could hear again—the birds through the

window. i could see the sun coming through the slats.

i felt so tired, so worn down, and i touched my aching

back with my hands, expecting to feel a mass there.

 

i stood on shaking legs and pulled up my shirt, trying to see

the bruises in the mirror, but they were not there.

nothing was there.

but the aching was there, on the inside.

 

was it a dream?

a nightmare?

i could not know.

i could not know.

 

this was not the first time i had felt an unwelcome presence

in that house. but it was the first time it had challenged me.

i had woken up. i did not have any marks on me.

did this mean i had won?

 

i stumbled to the door, opened it—half-expecting

to see someone fleeing from the house. could it have been

a real person? could that have really happened to me?

what is real?

 

i closed the door, locked it, went back to the room. oddly,

i was able to fall back asleep, deep—in that tiny single bed.

and when i woke, i half-remembered it all as a dream, as a

fog, as a confused dark descending down on me until this day.

 

 

 

‘a spring wind blew my list of things to do away’

you were blowing out cake candles

with your red lips;

you were too young for us to know,

too red.

it was not a photograph dad would have

displayed: it was stuck in a book in a drawer

in a year.  and now, so many thousands of

days later, i’m sitting in a car crying,

listening to the world turning, my child walking

away, the houses foreclosing.

 

 

Title from Greg Brown’s song “Spring Wind”

the furnace that burns the day away

always running to catch up,

always running—

 

but it keeps bringing me back exactly here,

back to the lone source, back to the page,

 

back to the stunning realization that

this stage will never be enough; and yet

 

this frenzied circle is all i have.

 

i will always be reaching—

forward and backward—

 

trying to engulf and eclipse with

oval arms a giant shifting moon;

 

un able to

 

sit and

be still

 

(unless asleep:

hibernating, dream-

 

ing in ellipses—only to

wake: to what? to whom?)

 

even the lines

move in couplets:

 

stronger together than

on their own

 

(even stronger than the

stanza, while the one-line

 

widow puts on the bravest face).

 

i miss my couplet.

 

i miss the coming home to

something—to someone

 

putting dinner on, putting a

movie in, putting a mouth

 

on mine and moving

me into the

 

furnace that burns

the day away.