Bears Ears

Cross a ridge and step into a different eon, time travel in the blink of an eye. The desert continues to amaze, you tell him you see a punishing landscape, he says this is lush, this is full of food and life. You pinch sage brush between your fingers and the air comes alive. 

Later, outside the fancy ecolodge they built in the gulch, you sit in Adirondack chairs along the dark side of the building, looking at the night sky. You see a shooting star and do t tell him, it is yours alone. Don’t make wishes, only promises, only exclamations of gratitude. The universe is neverending in both space and time, you are insignificant in comparison. 

That is the gift. 

You keep it wrapped. Bring it home. Revel in the magic inside. 

Dine'

You don't write, though you should be writing. Your days are all airplanes and road trips, all sunshine and changing seasons, are fodder for stories. Spring explodes around you and you drive ever south, into Red Rock Country, into a back country that feels like it's written into your spine though it is not your heritage. He looks out over the buttes and mesas, the hundred-mile valleys, says this is where my people come from, this is where my art begins. She weaves tales of her people into the tapestry, but says there are stories she cannot tell us. They are not for the summer season, she says, as explanation. He tells us of a tornado that pullled through a few years ago and says that when he asked his family elders, they simply said, That is where They walk and left it at that. 

How can I write when stories like that are being told around me? I am all ears, no voice now. There is no money in my account but am I not on the road, am I not working in ways I neved dreamed possible before? 

It all crumbles around us. Best enjoy the crumbs.  

Rocky Mountain High

The alarm rings at dawn but you are already awake, already a step ahead and one foot out the door. Your driver is Palestinian, you commiserate over choosing this country but his sons are both about to be doctors, what regret could he have. I go back there now and I don't think I could live there anymore, he says, and you rummage through your own calculations to see if the answers line up. 

It's April now, the trees in New Jersey begin to bloom, and even though the Rocky Mountains are snowy and cold, you see it in the sunlight, it's happening here, too. A road trip awaits, a new horizon awaits, this week I lost a job and I haven't had it in me to be sad about it yet. 

It's spring now, my darling. 

In spring we are not sad. 
We run.  

Chuppah

It's the part where they are hoisted into the air on chairs, when the music gets frenetic and the celebrations peak, when you think your own fears would not endure this sort of elation, that's the part you like the least. Maybe only because it does not bring you the sort of joy it's supposed to, and it's the discrepancy that chafes. 

The part you like the most is when you sweet talk the house manager into letting you take a bouquet off one of the tables, and you walk home through Red Hook in canvas shoes with an explosion of flowers in your hands. 

Your doctor looks you over, says you look good but you know she sees only ligaments and veins, only charts for an age group you have yet to reconcile with. There's a group of young girls in the corner of your writing bar who come in to knit together, and you adore them. You, too, decided Mondays were meant for creative corners. The bartender only wants to talk about Europe trips. She scowls every time a new patron enters the bar. You adore her. The youths only order Diet Cokes or bitters and soda. It's hard not to complain about the generations that come after. 

It's sunny out, it's warm out, the people of New York peel the layers off themselves and emerge with smiles from the wreckage. In like a lion, out like a lamb. Everything happens too fast. 

The part you like the most
is the one where you're around to see it.  

Sweep

There's a stillness in the after, a sort of grace in accomplishment. You wake early, lighter, out of dreams of moving. Your cousin says maybe she was wrong and spring was the answer all along, somehow her illness faded with the coming of sunlight. You relish her relief. Across the river, a darkness has rolled in that the seasons cannot excise. Across the ocean, a war bellows, a tale as old as time. 

Somehow, we live our little lives in the immense tornado of the big picture. People have children in the middle of war, people fall in love in the middle of collapse. They call to say he proposed on the other side of the world and their joy is so simple, when nothing else is. 

You feel yourself returning to the world. To life. You know May waits around the corner, for once you believe it will come.  Everything is falling apart, except it isn't. Not everything. 

The four-leaf clovers are just about to sprout.  

Step

All day, mired in deductions and expenses, a mind wrapped tight in focus, a spring sun climbing higher yet across the sky. Only an hour's break between. In the old days, you would've laced your shoes, would've taken the chance to unwind your strangled thoughts, would've reveled in the sunlight along the water. 

The thing with old days and new days is
they're all a figment of our imagination. 

The thing is if what you want to do is lace your shoes and 
let your feet think for you, 
you still can. 

So I did.  

En:dure

Your flight leaves at 7 a.m., he says. I couldn't figure out how to add a bag. You take a deep breath, run through the annoyances you needn't say and ignore the news that tell you security lines are beyond the pale. What is reality, when there is starlight and happenstance out there? When there is whimsy and surprise? 

You speak clearly into the room that you haven't an outlet, stand impatient in the midst of your shortcoming and haven't yet reached the problem-solving stage when he fixes it for you. Just like that. Sometimes you think being seen is the greatest gift we can give each other. She runs into the bar to for an encouraging hug, before it's time to go home and tell the children. We do not use words like stages, like prognosis, like five-year-survival rate, but they sit at the back of your throat like a vise regardless. There's a weight in your belly that you do not think you can get rid of now, in my dreams I take care of babies and puppies but fall down steep cliffs, the symbolism hits you over the head, she writes from across the Atlantic to say she is bed ridden and can't remember how to breathe. 

We are on our last legs, March. We are doing what we can, but we are at the end of our carefully tied strings, please. Give us one foothold at the edge of this cliff, please, give us one solid push onto dry land. 

The heart breaks and breaks 
and breaks and breaks and

one day surely 
you'll come out alive.