Friday, September 22, 2006

Everything is quiet except distant voices coming in through the balcony door. It’s supper time, and both cats are sleeping in separate chairs on either side of me as I type. The kids have gone to their dad’s so I’m alone again for the week. I called J.D. today and told him I’m desperate for money, so he met me at a coffee shop, bought a cup of Joe for me, and helped make a dent in my mounting debt.

J.D. and I were together for six years, and until about four months ago, we lived together. People ask me what happened between us, and my answer is an honest and quite stunned (still) “I don’t know.”

But sometimes I miss him. It’s taken most of our time apart for me to grasp the idea that we are actually apart. It’s starting to sink in sometimes, but I wonder too, occasionally, if he has not quite fully accepted our separation, either. Oh well, I guess what I have to come back to is “I don’t know.” I’m not going to know for a long time. I’ve just got to take care of me, and doing that is my priority.

I had planned to go to the Jeff Worley poetry reading tonight at Watermark, because I enjoy Worley’s work, but by the time I left the college—since I was serendipitously called in to substitute today—I was tired and shy of people. I came home and lay in bed with Ali who licked my neck, clawed and bit my fingers, then leapt from the bed. Alone, I became bored, so I got up to look through art magazines for grant opportunities. Finding none, I decided to write. My blog grounds me. I love the way it makes me think of the specific. My site helps me focus on my creative work, and I’ve realized I have quite a body of art and poetry. I guess I’ve always felt that I hadn’t written or painted enough (which I haven’t), but I hadn’t realized how much I had created. My blog helps me feel like I’m doing something with my life, too, as despairing as that sounds. Well, anyway, I love it. This site is for myself, but it’s not only for myself.

Even now I hear more noises in the courtyard—a neighbor kid bouncing a basketball, a mother hollering for her child, a dog barking. If I listen closely, there are voices. I am not so alone as I sometimes feel.

Above is the painting “Separation I” from my “Separation” series. Here, though, is a group of poems that at points refers to lost loves. I wrote them when I was with J.D., so he is not one of the lost ones to which I refer. Nevertheless, there is a similar loss I am living now. People I care about often return in my dreams. I cannot completely leave them behind, though I try.

Collage

In Wichita, the wind blows
and the birds don’t fly—
lightning and torrents of rain
over the porch roof where we watch
the sky. Thunder rattles the river black,
the clouds black
then bright with lightning.

* * *

I dreamt of you last night.
Not so much dreamt of you
as had a dream and you were in it.
You had been relegated to a side note,
an off-stage hand and voice—
a passenger.
We were walking to a convenience store.
You were hard to see,
and I was trying to tell you something,
but you weren’t listening.
Then an apartment and all the adobe walls—
white—and terra cotta roofs, and tropical plants,
and the apartment
furnished lavishly, but you don’t
live here now. You are moving. No,
you’ve already moved,
and you’ve forgotten to tell me
good bye. You forgot to tell me.

I choked on my sorrow.
In my dream you did not listen.

I am choking still.

* * *

One year the tree gave peaches—
peaches in a bowl with cream.
I’d never tasted a fruit
with hair.
I pretended to like it.

In those days we had no neighbors,
but cows, when the corn grew up
to the yard and the few trees we’d planted.
In Western Kansas, the dust blows.
Dust peels the sky like a fruit—on normal
days—the people there don’t trust you,
and who can blame them?
They’ve had to fight their way.

The cows watched me.
Then they blinked.
They ate stubble
then blinked.

This is how the days pass in Western Kansas.
You watch the sun move--that one puff of cloud cross
the sky. Yesterday, the Widows’ bought
a tractor. Today, the wheat blows.
There is sky.
And some years—peaches.

* * *

In Kansas is wheat,
but I’ll always remember corn.
Corn—the stalks—hovering
over us like adults—with fuzzy ears.

* * *


Horses. Five horses run the pasture
tilting their heads.

* * *

We kill each other in our cars.
Where are the fields now?

Where have gone the five horses?
Highways slice the prairie.
The cows in feedlots.
There are birds, still—hawks,
especially—perched on road signs
to remind us
of ourselves. Heads tucked down,
they do not threaten.
They do not even see the cars,
and as we pass,
we do not see them.

* * *

Passing Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” on I-70
I asked to stop to get a SoBē,
but no convenience store for miles.
You had a headache
since we came down from the mountains—
too much oxygen.
But I’m thinking of Van Gogh’s ear
swaddled in cotton in a box
just arrived at the doorstep.
The pain was ecstatic—
the tearing of flesh, profound joy.
All I know is I can see his “Sunflowers”
from the highway.
I turn around to watch them pass,
all light and oxygen.

* * *

I was angry at them,
so I got into my car and drove
out on the night highway
to leave them.
I looked up
to see your truck
in front of me. I knew it
by its bright green.
I didn’t want you
to see me, sad and broken up
as I was. So I stayed back,
but you were in the bed
of your truck. That’s how
I recognized you. And you were
drinking champagne. You held a toast
to me, and you were happy.
I was happy for you sad as I was,
and you didn’t notice
my loneliness. In a moment,
you were gone into the darkness
of the highway, and no deer.
Only your taillights receding,
I, alone there, and in my hand,
an empty glass of champagne.