That old girl won't run anymore
and it breaks my heart.
Moon, I see you forever
in one orange second on that beach.
Not even the Pacific is as blue
as your eyes.
The sea swallows huge gulps of air
But you dance on the edge of dreams
twitching in your legs
You know the way to eternity.
-----
1.)
always the legend of what I wanted life to be, embellished constantly with myth.
(it could have happened, but doubtful) the gospel.
when Julia was alive, anything was possible, practically speaking in tongues- all the superlatives, over the top, and so many of us will remember it and you, and the cancer, and the charisma so unadulterated, appealing; all the seduction, the career that never was, the death; stolen from us at the zenith of your influence. Jesus!
O God bring back the dead ones, all of them. Julia, the great, bright light; and father Lowell, the ultimate teacher and giver of love, (the God-alive man) we had waited thousands of years for your lessons carried to earth (no mistaking messiahs), in reality, this is mortal flesh with a too-soon expiry, only finite years and words finding threads to be woven through generations, (seen now, very much alive, in comet eyes) red giant too close; too soon gone; you were the birth giver, once removed, now a soul-mate who lives on, with your passing, exquisite, only in memory.
grief subsides but will not pass.
and we are all still waving goodbye.
2.)
strong grandmother enigma, you cannot be disfigured by time, your Eastern European face won’t go to ether, nor will your reality be defined by the living, even by those with your flesh; it is obviously pure legend, descending directly from mystery, questions met only with a polite change of subject, a change in focus, a mirror suddenly turned to expose what? we are forced to look another direction, the moment before is lost to an ocean of time, swimming away barely missed, a shimmer and some familiar notion at the very root of it all. (in the pit of my stomach) and there you are a beautiful little girl, now long since passed and only beginning to live in some of the descendants.
how your eyes still blink in this world.
3.)
sugar beet fields are certainly a part of my legend, backbreaking work behind a mule, only imagined as your reality, but that is accurate, in truth, there is part of me that dripped as sweat in those fields; no one can take that away from me, it is where I existed first, before this. and who could have known then you would die before my very eyes? face blue, death eyes (all the many years later, clear, bright, the same) ;
my own father trying to save your fast fleeting life, only to falter himself in some divine mimicry (genes, oh sure), a serene European golf course his eternity door and the electric foreshadowing; a 1970’s bathroom floor. shuffle on out, shuffle away, but we are still watching, all of us in the house, we see you (no true escape from legacy); father of my father, it rolls off my tongue, and will like poetry.
4.)
dead ones, I will not stop resurrecting you for my sanity.
bring me the Jews. bring me the Christians, the nonbelievers from all birth lands, bring all, and not just the memories, but flesh, bits of bone, sinewy decomposition; we can embrace any truth! we stand for it. detail the sea you loved, the waters you fished as the near-ultimate pleasure, the San Francisco Bay, the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea? what did you feel the first time you heard you would see another generation? (not knowing, of course, so many would follow- so many blood descendants), the boys with your face, destined to carry the other features, easily recognized as yours, and your laugh is tons of thunder- your jowls and belly seize, certain to span the lives, shooting through other decades and bodies-so like yours, big as the blood mixes/ retaining science (unchangeable: no amount of prayer will alter a double helix. that is fact) and you are with me this moment.
5.)
bring me jars of jelly from the Colorado plains, pickles, sweet and straight from the dirt to your earthy-smelling basement. balance? your absence leaves me with blank canvasses on which I can hope to dream, there are so many questions to ask you, if only face to face, can you give me one afternoon? (busy as you are in eternity) I would look you straight in the eye, humbled though I am by your knowledge, corpses don’t often talk, but I have higher expectations of your once attached soul. we share a secret, don’t we? there are not enough hours for me to contemplate you, and the rest; explore all the music history, family tree, photos and my many questions for your other world wisdom. are the traits I most dislike in others those I cannot tolerate in myself? how do my dreams materialize from black holes? imagination’s sperm and egg; always the aggrandizement becomes reality, that is the mystery only you will explain, though not now. in the end, aren’t we, individually, alone, each a tiny floating vessel of chaos? (the underlying goal is interconnectedness, but that is the exception, the rarity.) in the end, the loss of you (the collective) is beyond all the oversimplified self-help. oh words. (oh, all the great power we assign; it is our mistake) it’s over. I’ll find the shaman on some other soil, to fill my veins with food, but not here, not in some highly compared, criticized, unimportant farce. (not in public, please)
6.)
and
in the end, isn’t this world just an excuse for potential’s half-open purse?
one imagines so.
but your voice from the grave is hope for the alive world.
we are rapt.
-----
you don’t fear
the old man in the mirror
speaking
while your lips move,
time chasing you down
as prey,
shaking you in folds of your former self.
how could you see your own ebullience?
glowing on the soft gel of youth
while the old man
watches,
a certain chasm,
a gulping ocean,
a black hole,
for you.
-----
