Where do the clipped wings
Of your lionswool heart
Wish to sail?
What limbs ache for its oxygen?
Stretch leg
Bump elbows with the Universe
That wakes
Only to feel
The curled laughter on your lips
As you kiss the neck of Now.

In my Mother’s House
There are many rooms
It will always be a sanctuary
To Those wrestling with beauty
In Truth.

There are 12 Steps to AA.
And, at least according to Miles,
Seven Steps to Heaven.
Which suggests,
There are Five Steps
Into the unknown, or away from it
For those of us touched
By madness.

1st Section
The (presumably crippled) writer of this palimpsest professes that love is a verb (building, v) a process which just as it arrives at a noun (building, n.) transforms into something else entirely.
So it goes. - Kurt Vonnegut

2nd section
The writer challenges the (lovely) correspondence that “he always shows up” with a memory of hearing the correspondent playing on his porch and feeling too high or drunk to be seen by her in public.
It may be noted that the writer has taken some small pains and borrowed a small fortune against his inheritance to come to better terms with his addictions. He enrolls in rehab this coming Monday.

3rd section
The writer suggests the cliche, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you cannot know.” May have some bearing on her current situation. Allow grace… but take no shit. You are the goddess Kira-Ma, after all.

4th Section...

I find myself mourning your loss.
In my dreams after walking the dog
Though a babble of baboons
To the airstream apartment in the parking garage.
The 400 years of silence between M & M.
That wasn’t silence, as much as
Talking and not listening.
The son of man leads boys into a cave
That fills with water
And comes out a Buddha flower.
The Thai farmer, Mae Bah,
Which means Mary in Syama, or “Tomorrow’s water”.
If you prefer,
Lets her fields flood with cave waters.
“These boys are like my children.”

“He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers.”

Here is the story,
“Abraham was the father of Issac…. ”
Hineni, hineni
Adonai.

Image courtesy of Thai Royal Navy

The bridge to Matamoros comes up from the mud beneath it.
In Boca Chica you can swim the river
Aiming butterflied shoulders for the same brown and white VW van your mother drove
Over the mountains to get her M.Ed
So that the children who came after
Tommy,
whose felonious parents strapped him to the ramshackle old
wheelchair that comprised his grandmothers’ estate,
could ride the same bus as the neighbors
To the same hot meal and ESL class
You did
Coming up.

I remember the Cherokee teacher who
Taught me to skip a stone over
The river.
Tasting coffee in the cold morning
In that van.
How bitter it was.

And how warm.

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

I mean it would be fun to be the in-house copywriter at Trader Joe’s right?

I think my work might be to find balance as my mojo ebbs and flows.

It’s a letting go of expectations as I sit in the pocket of the moment.
Raising boys toward becoming responsible, life-affirming and sustaining men.

Allowing more joy to break out into the world.

That should keep me busy for now.

{Coda}

In the coming years, my work will be to help Mom let go of a great weight of guilt and move out of her current incarnation gracefully.

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
Genesis 1:2

Water thirsts.
For the land it will nourish.
For the life that rides its currents
For its own level.
Not striving or forcing it solvent action.
It’s power to move mountains
or lift ships
Over the jungle.

Water consents to make the sake
That enrages a laborer on the bus from
Shinjuku station
Accosting passengers. Breaking bottles
Until I had enough of him. Angry blood,
70% water, rising.
To meet him
Quickly the old man with rheumatic eyes
Checks my hard hand asking the lout
“What do you drink this fine spring evening my son?”
“Sake, old man!” spitting
“Ah sake, I loved to drink sake in the moon garden with my wife, so lovely and warm!”
"My wife is dead, grandfather. So Kanpai!” broken
”Ah yes, very hard, very sad...

I go from house to house
With stained index cards
Detailing
My mother’s, mothers’ recipes in a plain wooden box.
With a Sunflower, my cousin pasted, on the front.
Fruits for all pantries and appetites.

You don’t need to go to the store when I come to see you.
We’ll use whatcha got on hand.
And of course, if you invite the right folk, more with be provided-
the leftovers can sustain
Working folks for days.
I come when I please
I don’t call ahead.

This is first-century Church
The is the sawdust and the pound cake.
This is what really got the Pharisees hot
For His head.
Walking on water, water to wine,
These are all well and fine
But the High Crime
Is mixing with folks of all Misdemeanors

And it’s still a radical act.
We ain’t FaceBook friends.
None of these dishes goin’ be on the Instagram.
There’s no MLM presentation at the end of night.
I’ll take Nanny’s pinewood box...

I think of writing you a poem
That feels like a letter.
I would jot it down, carefully, in longhand
On the back of the latest Cohen tome
In explanation of my more recent plagiarisms.

I imagine I would tell you my recent revelation.
That the Garden
Is our future
Not some Semitic fever dream of the past.
That total Communion with God
In naked abandon
And harmony with all created things
Is our birthright.

That we have already tasted the apple of Everlasting Life
If we have ever loved anything,
That has ever loved anything,
That lives beyond us.
All that we lack is the Knowledge of Good and Evil
That comes with time.
Time of our own creation.
From water we have come
To water we shall return.

Then I imagine your crinkled nose and burst of
Laughter at my foolishness
And remember
That you already know all of that.