Preface
Most recently, I’m met with one I’ve met before a few times.
Well meaning, an observer encouraged me,
“Live in the moment: Just see what happens,”
Any number of other western aphorisms for the liberation of anxiety had already come and would come yet still.
But my winks in the courtly love have now become twitches. The restraint aches ecstatic in the child.
And I’m still young, but I resent the distance
that is the single moment bound up unacknowledged,
the expectations you think you share. There is a room I have not yet entered.
Claire
Grace had a banjo and a dog named Gandhi,
And brothers and sisters too. She had wonderful parents,
And I took my fill. Her mother’s house, a bungalow in Clayton.
Her father’s, a twostory on the Hill.
But bearing all, I think I liked the bungalow best
for its living room rocking chairs and its sunroom in jade.
That was Grace’s room, and it was Jessica’s when she stayed over.
The fixtures were all low and the windows stretched from corner to corner on adjacent walls.
One of them was north, but I don’t remember which.
And though the house and the room were not austere,
they had a desert feel and a gentle pitch.
Small pots and planters: mint, succulents, and spices rest along the light of the diffuse, cool L.
To them it’s no resistance, Just a charm.
A retreat, the time spent there.
And the whole house felt like a back porch.
Grace had a stickshift too, A messy, faded Subaru.
So we all went to the park.
The train’s just a few pleasant hours.
The beach is cool and bright,
But we will paint from a distance instead.
And hike our own glaciers and wind along through
What we’d be better winding together.
I want Grace for her family, and I want her too.
I want her for the beer and the porches, and I want her. I want Grace’s body too,
Which never seemed distant. Tall and thick, judging me and holding me.
Totem and taboo.
R i c k h a d F o u r Q u a r t e t s o p e n o n t h e c o u n t e r .
He picked it up and in my way, he praised it,
As if surprised by what he held in his hands.
I don’t find the language playful like The Wasteland.
It’s heavy mystic stuff, not exactly pleasurable to read. Perhaps it was Ash Wednesday.
I may be mistaken.
Ash Wednesday, I’m certain now (and less certain even later).
And we were making dinner.
At this point, I wasn’t quite sure
the two of us had actually met.
I was panicked, in fact,
as Jessica can tell.
I was rinsing romaine, and I was physically trembling.
It’s this moment that I would return to later, As I began to understand how I loved Grace.
Once at his house, a woman, his girlfriend, taught me how to make a gin and tonic.
She and Rick were later engaged, I learned.
Some years later, I assumed that they had married, But Grace told me that she had died.
I hadn’t spoken to Grace in years, but I knew I loved her.
I’ve had those moments before.
I’m ecstatic, and there I feel so proud that I’m on top of things. I’m attentive and involved,
And all of a sudden, I’m certainly not.
Once I called out for Adrienne. I hadn’t seen her in a year.
I was home from college.
Sitting smug on the coffee bar at church,
And truly ecstatic. (I loved Adrienne too.)
And when she came down from her choir practice, I called out her name.
First and last.
But it wasn’t her last name I called.
Instead I shouted the name of a different Adrienne, But one she also knew.
I didn’t love that one, and I shake my head still.
This time, catching up was the excuse to talk to Grace, But it was not the purpose.
And catching up was what you asked for too, Claire. Soon I will be honest with me intentions. May we get ahead instead?
May we glide through the night on laughing gas?
Tabling discussion and drinking coffee, but measuring out nothing? May we stroll and fall and maybe perhaps be akin to those days?
Because certain as I would be Grace’s, certain as I would be Adrienne’s
Or Dolly’s or Ashley’s or Ariane’s, Lauren’s, or Meredith’s,
Certain as with all these, I am with you.