recollection (dreams blossom like a garden)

recollection (dreams blossom like a garden)

The dream of your trees and my dream

still flow together in the night…

“The Flow of Memories,” Jorge Luis Borges

yes my darling a dot
 on the fathometer is
tinkerbelle with her cough
"Knee Song," Anne Sexton

is writing recollection

creation

correction

or misdirection

in my dreams

with no Freudian eels

no Jungian Morlocks

no paintings stretching around the room

you transmogriphy

not like a mermaid off port

but a shapeshifter

among these women i have failed

these recollections from

eating greek yogurt laced with honey

walking down the aisles of grocery stores

listening to Marvin Gaye we never shared

finding an Anne Sexton poem in your hand

i am in a perpetual state of remembering

drafting and revising the pieces to this puzzle

that reassemble a map to all these places

like a memory called and recalled in a dream

in these words i recollect

i create

i correct

i misdirect

here is my Secret (shhhh)

here is my Secret (shhhh)

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers…

[since feeling is first], e. e. cummings

so my life is filled with backhanded compliments

about all the work i do

“You write so much” comes my way again and again

intoning the weight of volume

or “How do you get so much done?” in exasperation

and maybe disbelief (or anger)

well here it is: this is my Secret

time is like a vast and even endless desert

if you are willing to notice it stretched before you

and love is a blossoming oasis that draws you

into its fragrance and warmth and soft embrace

an oasis so comforting and this thing called living

but there the desert disappears no longer endless

ok that’s not the secret but it is the start

here is my Secret

i am surrounded by sands dry and vast

no blossoms of love or even a whiff

i have more time than you tangled in love

and that is the source of all this work

an endless stream of words pecked out

where a beating heart prefers her warmth

so i’ll leave you with this: which would you prefer

a mouth filled with sand and endless volumes in hand

or the dizzying lull of lovers intertwined among the flowers?

Fisherman and The Siren (vortex of desire)

Fisherman and The Siren (vortex of desire)

this fisherman fully clothed and hatted

finds himself no longer in need of oars

a siren nude lying head turned back against him

and reaching for his shoulders and flailing arms

they are caught by Knut Ekwall’s brush

in this blink of painting and vortex of desire

the siren’s red hair mixing into the spinning water

swallowing the boat as she, the fisherman’s heart

we have only his face and her white body

to speculate about art and myth and desire

but we know what this sounds like and how it feels

to let go and spin away into the heart and flesh

i, no fisherman and you, no siren but all the same

we know what this sounds like and how it feels

this abandonment of being drawn into the depths

and facing the inevitable slide of you and me

breathing the water of us

these boxes (an antiquarian's Valentine’s Day card)

these boxes (an antiquarian's Valentine’s Day card)

"So it's all over with Julie. Over before it began. And instead of sharing a future with someone, I am back again with the past, with Desdemona who wanted no future at all ... Everything about Middlesex spoke of forgetting and everything about Desdemona made plain the inescapability of remembering."—Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

my chest remains anchored to you and these boxes

you asked me not to collect

last night this box of names and initials

lit my sky like fireworks or meteors

so in my dreaming i added this 4^th of July

and then put it back on the shelves i manage

beside the others that sit there inside me

patient as wax paper or powder-sugared lips:

Box A

“everything i never said or did”

(like a wall of stones or capsized boat)

and Box C

“all the things that led to this”

(like bread crumbs erased by bluebirds)

and here is Box P

“the henna tattoo i never drew across the curve of your back”

(like pheromones or honey)

or Box Z

“every moment we were within arm’s length”

(like a dyad sweetly on fingertips)

and Box III

“a broken shoelace”

(like the hiss in trace or bee’s buzzing)

and even Box DDDD

“the heaviest box of all”*

all your clothes and shoes i’ll never see

and the dreams you’ll never retell to me

and your palm never again warm against mine

as we walk along a street we’ll never share again

(like dynamite in a honeysuckle vine)

* although this is poetic hyperbole:

the stuff of Valentine's Day cards or

something like a lie or coping strategy

for Tourette syndrome or craving chocolate-covered raisins

hidden behind these boxes and shelves masking

the meticulous cataloging of an antiquarian

who dares not dwell on

“songs that make me cry&smile”

“holidays we’ve never shared”

“books i want to read lying near you” and

“my growing problem with verbs and apostrophes”

confession:

the box i cannot move is labeled

“i love you”

(like red letters on a tiny pink candy heart

hummingbirds in the thoughts of Adam Lonicer or

a Siren’s song in a Knut Ekwall painting)

autopsy

autopsy

I like your hands
All full of glory...

"Low," R.E.M., Out of Time

the doctors had never had this request

an autopsy while he still lived

but the results were even more unusual

since he himself had to explain

that the trace minerals they discovered

were the remnants of always her

•

“Please excuse this,” the doctors began,

“but may we ask…”

“Yes,” he said, knowing this was coming,

this prodding to examine.

“What is this here?” they began.

“The day she asked if we could still kiss

although I had a cold.”

“And here?”

“The pale blonde hair on the back of her neck

and tracing her stomach.”

“Here?”

He winced against this and then:

“Her ankle bone in the circle of my hand.”

“And if you could, here?”

“Her laughter, yes, I mean,” he paused,

“her laughing.”

• 

and this was the autopsy for hours

this tracing always her and the gone
until 

"And here?"

"She is wearing a swim suit top and wrap—"
he paused, "and carrying her bag."

"She is walking to the beach to read," and he smiled.

"You mean she was?"

"No," he said, his eyes far away,
"she is."