The Summer of No Sleep
Let me sleep until gentle rain wakes me at dawn.
Once I knew a girl who made rainbows out of sand.
Her hands were gold, so supple and fine.
I asked her where the colours hid
before she sorted them into delicate bands
around her tiny hill. She pointed to the sea,
but when I looked, there were sharks in the water,
and far off, a sailboat skimming the surface
as it climbed and disappeared. Later we ate sandwiches
and fruit, nectarines I think, and cheese on dark bread.
That summer the days would never end.
I didn’t get to sleep until late July, and by then
the pennant race had really heated up.
We watched the Cubs or maybe it was the Mets,
some team that made their fans cry.
We cheered when someone hit a home run,
or I think we did. Too many fires, too many
encounters with frightened bears.
I wanted to head north to a country packed in snow.
I wanted to run until my heart lifted me into the pines.
No, she didn’t leave me anything I could use, but one night
I drove for hours, searching for a place to leave my burning hair.
On Crete
I found this in a drawer, creased photo of you
in the Mediterranean sun.
You had written from Greece, the island of Ithaca
because we ‘d read the Odyssey in a class you took from me.
Your backpack lay on the ground by your left foot,
and it really almost spoiled the picture,
settled like a sagging creature returning to the formless void.
Odysseus would have spoken softly to you,
winged words, honey-smeared and you
would have smiled and said, Oh sweetie,
I’m much too young for your old ass,
and laughed as you tripped away along the shore.
You wrote about a thunderstorm,
the dark gathering of clouds, Zeus’ lightening
ripping through the sky. They said he died on Crete,
that he is reborn when sun blurs in the winter sky.
May you travel well as you head west, down toward that wider sea.
Catching Up With Myself
I chased myself down.
I had been meaning to have a chat for the longest time.
I invited my busy self to the coffee shop
on eighth street, bought us each a latte and a blueberry scone.
We were watching our weight, but what the heck?
Afternoon was well advanced and we had walked ten thousand steps,
mostly around our basement, mostly up and downs the stairs.
We fell into a rhythm, I spoke and I spoke.
Such an easy friendship we had, so much in common!
My team had collapsed in the fourth quarter, my favourite jeans still fit.
A woman in the next booth was writing poems on her laptop.
There was a thin line of steam rising from her head.
Her hair was blue and green, her fingers glittered as she typed.
Her companion kept looking under their chair, maybe for a coin
or a cup or a knife. Maybe for small toad that had slipped
from one of the many pockets on their cargo pants.
The radio was playing Linda Ronstadt. It was gonna hurt her
for a long, long time. Then it was night, and somehow it was snowing already,
as if fall had suddenly disappeared and winter lay her white gloves gently on our sleepy heads.
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