Tall

Clear-eyed girl you were, deemed too
tall—talking to the old anthropologist
(later—unhinged—she’s beautiful
he’d creak) that summer afternoon,
radiant, your yellow ribbon
windblown—his shillelagh tapped
across the dappled granite pavers.

Astride a cascade of longing
and tethered in trust we’d danced
together nights before, anchored
in love. But that day (just perhaps)
some prescient windward flow
of breeze and heaven kept
blowing us together and (unrelenting
as love) enlivened us that day, now.

Later that year we’d marry, then hop
into the Coronet (you still in your wedding
dress) to tell our love to him bedside
as he lay dying. In sickness and health,
through sweet and sour, a girl’s clear-eyed
constancy still persists and nourishes: the love
we’ve shared—once fumbling at words, waistbands
wedding prayers—rises tall, thriving with mercy.

--14 February 2011

Reverie from a forgotten manilla folder

Notes.

OK--I finally want to write this down.

It's a thing that every parent feels I think. It's something not easily captured with words. But we've all felt it—maybe the same way you sense a quick changing of shadows in a sunlit room, with sun & wind & clouds & swaying branches outside the windows. You can't explain what happened—somewhat startled that something has shifted—did someone just walk by?—a deer?—was it outside? Oh of course: just a shadow shifting. That's how this is—you breathe it in, deep, you close your eyes as you hug your child, that fine head of hair against your cheek. You keep your eyes closed & wish you had the words for it all, for the quick bittersweet heartache & thrill that just passed—the quick shift of the heart.

I just want to pull it all in, I’ve felt it with each of my kids: the smell of the hair, the smallness of form, the promise of her life, the thrill of his days now. He’s in my arms now, I lay on my back amid the strewn toys. She's asleep in my arms, the nightly news show drones on as l enfold her and sense again the whirl of days. The small fears, the tiny cries, the high chatter of pure delight in life—you want to save this, secure it, bottle it, keep it in a safe place somehow, safer than synapsed memory, too soon grown dim. You hear “they grow like weeds”—one on the way to France, to college, to businesses, to factories, to apartments and dorms and homes far from this home, to lives beyond this life. You want that. You want growth and life, and weep should it he denied you or others. Who should want to fawn over a seedling and deny that growth, that full stature, that fullness of life? And so I’ve kept my eyes as chroniclers, my hands the surveyors of blessing, with touch & kiss & loving words to document the sparkle in those eyes, their tears & laughter through these days and nights together. And I want to vouchsafe these records as praises to a God of love, to keep safe & remembered forever, now and far beyond the coursing of blood, the pulsing of my heart, the refraction of light in my eyes.

--Summer, 2001

Nuptial

For Duyen Phan Lovell, on her birthday 27 August 2008,
remembering her beloved mother

Your first year together

a few short days ago--

my son's eyes mirror

the deep, arresting

joy in your eyes,

his beloved. Your heart

beats for joy, God's

joy that pulses true

and full, now into our family.

A year has passed--you first

breezed to this shore,

then off to another--then (unexpectedly

as a wave crashing early) too soon

to another--heartsick, homeward. Praise

to God for you, for your own

mother's heart, your own father's song,

your own voice, laughing, confident,

trembling with joy. Praise.

Winnowing

For Allison, my heart

Maybe it's all so simple after all. A heart hungering,
a giving up, our yearnings enfolded in a world of mercies unseen.
Rainswept we once dashed beneath the maple canopy, lips kissed--
your breath later pulsing against my neck in the dark. One flesh, so long ago
alone, then together, twinned but one--one heart always, now rich with years.

Loving you is so joyous, deep, a true thrill at heart--a mystery no
language can ever ever capture--always faltering with each scrawled runic framing:
I only live to love you true by giving up, repeating the pledge
so long ago banding us: I will love you with an everlasting love.
(Once my darling it circumscribed our joyous nuptial whirl amid jeweler jaunts.
Now uncomplicated as emptying, it encircles the one brimming passion of our hearts.)

--15 October 2008

Itinerary

Not so long ago we two met--so far flung
from our first homes and our first hearts,
rose-bowl boy and dust-bowl girl spun round
in all new splendors, salt marsh grass, moonlit surf—
we kissed and loved forever. We lay that night on granite,
Squam Rock high above beach plum, salt spray—our talk rising
like your lips when we kissed. We sang out our songs full-throated
that night--our love cascaded: lullabies, mother’s milk, whispering hush--
school bus mornings, college loans. Together we two
have loved forever together for years now—hospital halls, the roses
of the nursing home in toddler's hands, memorials, Wisconsin nights,
the roustabout churn of the Mississippi, humid Houston table talk,
Oklahoma bloodlines. We’ve known true heaven in glimpses:
the Los Angeles coliseum, an OKC youth group, a West Gloucester sanctuary,
our Rockport seaside—God’s love there kissed us forever. Your arms are my solace-
I will love you forever, fully and forever enfolded together in God’s arms.

--May 16, 2007

Thatcher's Island, 2001

If you close your eyes just a bit,
And gaze past the dying birch near the road,
Through the ashen spaces between branches
Soon filled with green, or else glance
Over while driving past the swells near Thatchers
Or Good Harbor, or perhaps just squint a bit
Around the room, setting your book on your lap,
The kids asleep now upstairs-if you close your eyes
So the light becomes that gossamer haze of distance,
You can nearly capture this moment, you can almost
Pan out from the room and street, lift far above the rooflines,
The clouds and atmosphere, planets and suns and their coursing
Through the hours, through the centuries. You'll say
"What's that bright jewel there below?" and in an instant
Find shelter there: bathed in faceted light, songs
Of angels all round (heartbreaking, heartening), praises and laughter,
Words of love and comfort at every turn, all swathed in
The distant and half-remembered scent of roses, sea-salt.
My darling, here's early heaven--some pure
And perfect gift, some secret garden we two now share. (I've heard:
"But a foretaste"--but a foretaste of honey is sweet from the start!)
Life together, with you, is the loveliest bit of heaven ever on earth.

--2001

Brim

Beyond your eyes, graced green
and dazzling beyond all spectrums,
comfort comes (in your words, in your laughter) and always, always,
kindness cascades through your love--too, too
often ignored, assumed, a luxury always lavished
upon this family, this man,
this lustrous life we have together. Magnificence,
opulence like this--how were we so blessed?--our prayers
festooned this love from the get-go: garlands of gladsome
amens, heartsick sighs, woeful worries, hushed hallelujahs.
Let's two together remember our only hope (from the beginning
lifting us when we were leveled, afflicted, careless)--that nothing
thoroughly planned out, not the most beneficent strategy
had much success apart from the Love that carried us
in far stronger arms always, always.
So my darling--whose beauty, voice, and grace glances
now like light against everything in my world (my dreams,
our talk, this family, our prayers)--here's praise for you,
winnowing beauty somehow from even drab, shabby days,
tenderly easing children's hurts, bearing more than beauty
ought to bear--carrying, being carried--always, always.
One time long ago we sang out full-throated hymns to heaven's
music and mercy--we danced for a moment--we yearned, yearned together
upon a crag in a seaside meadow, laughing heavenward that night and
chattering from a chalice of hope, uncertain the days ahead.
How I love you, I said: your eyes, your voice. How I love you
forever now I say: a friend fashioned like no other, no
other--a mystery to me even now, brimming with delight and laughter,
radiant, heartening--your breath twinned to my breath, hopes pinned
upon each other's hope in a Strength carrying us together,
singing love songs, lullabies, victory hymns forever, forever

--14 February 2010