moving day eve

moving tomorrow
six good months
450 square feet
of freedom and
barely manageable
monthly bills

it's time.
we packed the dishes
and brought the milk
crates overflowing
pages of my precious friends
flapping in the gentle
early spring chill loading
into a borrowed jeep
my beloved temporary
chariot, vessel of desire
quenched and satisfied
rumbling and huffing
and bouncing merrily
down each of my wandering
ways these last several weeks

tomorrow early I'll do one
final load of laundry; all
of my underwear is dirty again;
in school i used to walk into
the ville and buy new underwear from
the gap, but now i just make myself
do laundry once a week
then i can spend more money
on pastries and subsequent yoga
classes; it's a good system i feel

i'll get the laundry started,
sheets and towels, jeans and
dish clothes, and then honey
and i will take one final walk from
this particular dwelling along
our path of the last six months
often traveled, early and late
to our spot, the tiniest dog park
in texas in front of a cafe
with the most quaffable cappuccino
in this caffeine mecca i call
my home, my chosen place
my twenty-something, growing up
perhaps less of an ignorant asshole
zipcode and voter registration
precinct. three minutes down the road
no stairs, just down a long hallway.

honey dog and i will walk slowly
to the cafe. we pause to inspect
various plant life and cacti along
the way, now that it's past valentine's, i
stop more frequently than my pup
to put my nose in the air, eyes
closing, softly, unaware of anything
beside the drifting scent of longing

our destination; a raising of steaming
beverage to my lips, elixir of awakening,
this is not 'having' coffe, but the way they
do it in france of 'taking' coffee, cradling
it in my small hands and taking in its essence,
consensually devouring it sip by sip.
i allow it to enter me fully and do whatsoever
it chooses. sometimes i regret this decision,
yes, but i am content to have consented
to partaking in the taking and being taken.

we will walk home, irrevocably changed,
taken, given, and i'll drive over the first load
of my small collection of worldly possessions.
i'll wonder, probably, what will be taken from me
in this new house. will fear and anxiety be gifts or offerings?
will love and courage be prizes or burdens? What dreams
will i dream with my new window looking out to a live
oak tree in the late evening and early morning what prayers
will i unknowingly offer siting outside on the back porch stairs
what hurts will i give back standing silhouetted some night soon
by the flames of a fire on our tiny patch of green earth
what tendrils will i nurse up out of the forgotten ground
rejoicing, and hopping barefoot in the dirt, taken up
by the daily joy of the ritual of being alive.

staying is good, but moving is better
i'll practice the art of it tomorrow, no
matter the weather

oscillation: a variation

day to day month to  month year to year
my body changes; my hair curlier my calves
leaner, my arms stronger but today shakier too my mind
sharper, contented, but cautious, aware of so many facts it cannot hold
i'm finding myself forgetting the scent of my highschool boyfriend'ss jeep but
imagining it was cotton hung on the cottage line where we took photos for the senior
year smiling with a navy criss-cross lace blouse i wanted to wear every day that
summer i don't remember when it was i got rid of that garment how quickly
the ornaments of a life shift while only a few remain always a watch
my brother gave me the summer after i finished college a hand-
written note on a sheet of notebook paper folded, hidden
under a  velvet pillow in the dark brown box i opened
for no reason last thursday; the note fell onto the
floor of my small room no one else there to see
stooping down slowly to retrieve parchment
remembering, suddenly, the moment i read
the letter the first time, seven years ago,
in my first apartment the one on
commonwealth avenue where
the above-ground subway
train rumbled by every
forty-five minutes
and the sunlight
came in green
waves in the
springtime
when i

was almost ready
to  be happy again.

a monday

gray morning
coffee & key lime pie
dark-winged bird-filled picture-taking
sometimes you need actual family (blood and
bone and smile lines shared) to make art
with you to feel how good it is to be
alive making art
every single day especially
the gray ones the shudder of something
you lost something you forgot something you
dreamed and somehow
loved
tiptoeing along clavicle and elbows
hushed, tender, murmuring, then
taken up, away, away!
in the february wind