Poems from my collection Rota Fortuna, Part I

Child’s Sestina by Water

We stand in shallow whirlpools, freshwater

ankle deep, throwing smooth stones

pushing and laughing friends

until, tender from soaking, our feet are worn.

The sand is soft on your shore. The water ripples.

We must never think of death.

At home I will see the frogs’ little deaths

and catch them. Across the glass water

you net tadpoles atop your stone.

We jump like frogs until we are weary and worn.

You sat still on a rock, unmoving as a friend

to see if the water wouldn’t ripple.

There is brotherhood in the consecutive ripples

of a skipping stone.

Three circles echo as the middle befriends

the first and last, which aren’t acquainted except that water

I realize, bonds all things. And death.

Water and death and everything is worn.

I remember what was worn

by my father in the water

that day I resisted death

by learning how to swim better than the stones.

He showed me that people can make the most ripples

but then, he was my only friend.

Before you were my friend

Father said he needed a gemstone

to give to Denise because she was worn

with us. So I dove under the ripples,

but she never came back and that is the meaning of death.

I looked to you then for life across the water.

Sitting on the gravel pile by night water

with salt-cracked hands, his eyes worn,

Father’s face was mine when I think about Denise’s death.

I wanted to be like you because he needed a best friend

and when he had his elbows on his knees and ripples

in his cheeks I offered up to Father my precious stone.

Worn and fallen to my knees, I can feel death

rippling in these waters

as you, my friend, stand casting stones.

Return to Water

December 25^th 12:00am

They’re waiting for those

late arrivals, the processional clustered

by the arched wooden doors twice the size

of a man. Each looks for one to follow—reader,

altar boy, purple-robed priest. Follow the aisle

toward a gold-cast Christ blooming

above poinsettia gardens red as torturers’

robes, and no sign of Peter weeping at his feet.

But by the pond,

brown blood burns your tongue, your throat,

tickles your stomach like soft feet.

You say it’s the latest the old

folk stay up all year to avoid the church

crowds tomorrow. You throw a stone

to tell me your father is lonely, it’s not a vacation

for your sister in Maine, even your mother

has lost her faith.

You cast in arcs; the stones touch one surface

and sink.

Two Imagined Deaths

The first time I imagined your death

you left the house for errands

saying you would be back in an hour.

When it passed I turned off the television and dreamed

that was when you died.

Some minutes later you found me mourning, returned

like one mistaken for dead who opens the front door,

hangs her coat like any other day and thinks

of the dry cleaning that needed to be picked up

or the uncut grass. The family waits,

saying how they expect her to walk in the door

and knowing she won’t. Only she does

come in, calling I’m home

without looking up, and hearing no response,

looks to see her family at the kitchen table,

lost for words like you were a child born

of a virgin. You couldn’t understand their grief,

even when explained, because you had never left.

But you’d be wrong. You were gone

and were not coming back.

So I waited on the couch, TV off, five years old

wondering how I would tell my brother or

explain to my father that you had died.

It was fear then, death was to be feared alone

because it could be avoided, always escaped,

something that was only an accident.

Now though, when I lay awake imagining your death,

it is never fear, never the terrible pacing,

but dread. Thinking instead of dreaming.

Night

She is accustomed to the dark

and my face and to my breathing.

She breathes my rhythm

because she cannot beat it in her chest.

The roses on the wall curl downward, color of dried blood,

and another bee dances itself to death between the windowpanes.

In the morning my arm will be blue,

the pen exploded in my sleep

trying to scratch my dreams

into my arm.

Searching for a word, or a name,

between smeared fingerprints and cat scratches,

I’ll ask did I say anything, she’ll say

you never do.

How long could you watch me writhing in the sheets

before you touched my hair and whispered

it is nothing darling

it is only me?