Month: April 2021

You were beautiful,
and I spent hours trying to decide
how to dispose of your picture.

I could have burned it.
I could have thrown it in the trash,
or left it in a gutter full of old rain.
I could have chopped it into confetti
and thrown it off the tallest building
in town, but none of those seemed
a fitting way to end you.

I didn’t hate you enough for fire.
You didn’t belong in the landfill
or a grimy wet sluice, and
if I’d tossed you into the sky,
I’d just have to see the pieces of you
when I came back down.

So I bought a packet of flower seeds.
Himalayan blue poppies,
and I crumpled your picture
and tucked the seeds inside
and I buried you.

In an empty lot beside a thrift store,
I buried you,
thinking you weren’t so beautiful after all,
but with a bit of rain and sunshine
you might be.

I am not very good
at telling you how I feel.

I write you love letters
in the sand of the shore
but the sea keeps
washing them away
before I can sign them
with I love you I love you
please stay with me.

I write you love letters
every day I tie them
to the legs of carrier birds
but they go in circles
they get lost in transit
they get blown off course
and never make their way
to you.

I write you love letters
in languages
you don’t know how to read.

I write you love letters
you don’t read.

If you were a random house
on a random street
in any given town,
somewhere in the world,
I would want to be a postcard
sent from the San Diego Zoo
delivered accidentally,
anonymously,
to your front door

Some day soon
I’m going to drive out of this city.

Out to where the roads
shrug off their asphalt
and go back to gravel and dirt.

Out where street lamps
haven’t yet outnumbered
oak trees, and the only
moving lights are fireflies
instead of high-beams.

Once I’m there,
I’m going to pull over
to the side of the road,
look up at the sea of stars
and scoop up a bucketful
to bring home to you
and show you what you’ve
been missing all these years.

You ask why
I love you.
For this:

You are
a minute
of quiet

in a loud
shouting
world.

A survey of conquered lands:
fifteen telephone poles, three
valleys, and the wire skeleton
of a fence line an acre back
from the curve of the porch.
Seven feet a week, when the
weather’s right: humid enough
for the vines to suckle water
right out the August air. Drought
can’t kill it, just makes it sleep,
twisted, drying in the Alabama sun,
until the clouds give back the rain,
and its endless gnawing march
resumes. Burn it if you like:
set fire to the vines and watch
flames curl up hillsides like
shedding leg hair with a match,
but all that does it make it
a little more eager to sprout.
Here’s a secret to keep your head
afloat under the encroaching tide:
kudzu’s worst nightmare – a pair of
small white goats.