new version
Unlike a storm, the only thing in my way is not a Persian cat. When I tell you
‘this is life and love, son’ what I am leaving out is that this is also the aftertaste.
This is the nights without sleep, this is your mother in the kitchen with the same dish,
this is the storm in the eyes of your sad brother, this is the man reading a paper
on the park bench, this is the voice of the train conductor announcing the same stops
third, fourth and fifth until he grows old or retires. And this is the relief when someone else’s
heart gets a lift by what might only be the hands of one thousand tiny hummingbirds,
all small and fit.
The only time I have seen one was in South Carolina walking to Battery Park,
high on drugs, heartbroken and hell-bent on some red headed man that did not
love me as I did him. Watching the constant flutter of the hummingbird I knew
only something that moved that fast could quite carry me then. There was no relent,
no pause to take a breath, no sideways fountain sip. And it was only yesterday
that I read in a magazine that a hummingbird is the only animal that can fly but cannot also
walk on land; this is a fact that I see to fit.
Still I don’t yet know what love is, if it might be this or if it might be that.
And though it is much that I know my own heart beat and sweat I don’t know if I could marry
and never ask any questions. Could I be silent as a saint in marriage, could I even love
a middle-aged man? I wish, sometimes, that I could be reinvented, that I could say things
like love, won’t you climb to the highest platform of the stairs,
meet me there, or in the city,
or out on the streets.
And don’t get me wrong, it is often that I fall for men on TV. But to stay in love,
to actually love a man forever, well I just don’t know about that.
What I really want, I think, is a new idea of God, something I can place my fingers on,
solid as the soles of my ripped up rubber school shoes. Those were always so nice
and navy blue. Sometimes I’m scared all of this affection is too great for me to bear.
And if I could, I would love you so handsomely.
But it is poetry that can save me, often I’ve said this to myself as if in prayer
or in meditation so consider how then I could carry on in this dearth where I found you
and the art escaped me. It left me feeling lonelier than the petting zoo goats feel at night
hours after visitors pass and they are left only with the disgruntled farm hand whose eyes
are larger than Africa and deeper than its silence.
Once I heard someone describe a storm by saying the only thing that stood
in it’s way was a Persian cat and a sixth grade boy. In the alley I see them all around
and in between us too, it is in the calm, and it is in the ways we don’t let
one another in. and all I’ve ever wanted was understanding, acceptance,
and something that’s richer than the smell of upturned soil, a love that feels holy,
and lately I just don’t know, if that is out there for you,
or is out there for me.
It is Godly what I want; it is in the kind of power; it is in the depth of a storm.
And these mornings I’m only but a child who looks out of the window and hopes
for rain enough to flood the streets. Floods so deep I might lose it all in a current,
my faltering feet, to fall in love with you again, to drop my needle and let it end where it will be,
to change, for you, as shorelines do, and to find beauty in that kind of defeat.
‘this is life and love, son’ what I am leaving out is that this is also the aftertaste.
This is the nights without sleep, this is your mother in the kitchen with the same dish,
this is the storm in the eyes of your sad brother, this is the man reading a paper
on the park bench, this is the voice of the train conductor announcing the same stops
third, fourth and fifth until he grows old or retires. And this is the relief when someone else’s
heart gets a lift by what might only be the hands of one thousand tiny hummingbirds,
all small and fit.
The only time I have seen one was in South Carolina walking to Battery Park,
high on drugs, heartbroken and hell-bent on some red headed man that did not
love me as I did him. Watching the constant flutter of the hummingbird I knew
only something that moved that fast could quite carry me then. There was no relent,
no pause to take a breath, no sideways fountain sip. And it was only yesterday
that I read in a magazine that a hummingbird is the only animal that can fly but cannot also
walk on land; this is a fact that I see to fit.
Still I don’t yet know what love is, if it might be this or if it might be that.
And though it is much that I know my own heart beat and sweat I don’t know if I could marry
and never ask any questions. Could I be silent as a saint in marriage, could I even love
a middle-aged man? I wish, sometimes, that I could be reinvented, that I could say things
like love, won’t you climb to the highest platform of the stairs,
meet me there, or in the city,
or out on the streets.
And don’t get me wrong, it is often that I fall for men on TV. But to stay in love,
to actually love a man forever, well I just don’t know about that.
What I really want, I think, is a new idea of God, something I can place my fingers on,
solid as the soles of my ripped up rubber school shoes. Those were always so nice
and navy blue. Sometimes I’m scared all of this affection is too great for me to bear.
And if I could, I would love you so handsomely.
But it is poetry that can save me, often I’ve said this to myself as if in prayer
or in meditation so consider how then I could carry on in this dearth where I found you
and the art escaped me. It left me feeling lonelier than the petting zoo goats feel at night
hours after visitors pass and they are left only with the disgruntled farm hand whose eyes
are larger than Africa and deeper than its silence.
Once I heard someone describe a storm by saying the only thing that stood
in it’s way was a Persian cat and a sixth grade boy. In the alley I see them all around
and in between us too, it is in the calm, and it is in the ways we don’t let
one another in. and all I’ve ever wanted was understanding, acceptance,
and something that’s richer than the smell of upturned soil, a love that feels holy,
and lately I just don’t know, if that is out there for you,
or is out there for me.
It is Godly what I want; it is in the kind of power; it is in the depth of a storm.
And these mornings I’m only but a child who looks out of the window and hopes
for rain enough to flood the streets. Floods so deep I might lose it all in a current,
my faltering feet, to fall in love with you again, to drop my needle and let it end where it will be,
to change, for you, as shorelines do, and to find beauty in that kind of defeat.