Simply Being | Simple Being
The approach to you is rather tanglesome —
A thin cotton quilt, two thick, woolen blankets, a plump comforter, you.
It’s all layered nice and neat as the lights go out
And thereafter a little unrest ensues.
As the layers meld, then separate, splitting apart
Splitting us apart.
I reach out through the gaps, clasping and grasping at your bony elbow
You are better at this — because your arm makes it through.
It is far warmer nestling in the crook of an elbow.
Give a voice to the voiceless, if only a whisper,
Lend support to the sad and lonely, if only a shoulder,
Share strength with the weak, if only a breath or two,
Fret not or wonder if any of this matters, even a little bit.
Because what you have engaged in is not an act of charity.
It’s an exchange, and what you send along will come back,
Through another’s hands, another’s bony shoulder,
A handkerchief to sop up the tears, a comforting voice on the other end of a cracked phone screen.
These are gifts, countless and endless and nameless,
Circling the Earth, dispersed in the Ether, filling up the airwaves.
We want to give, we would like to help… we wish to express.
It isn’t mine to give, or yours to take,
It is ours to pass along.
Stay where you are, move a bit, adjust a little,
Catch the ball, throw it right back,
Be a player, get better at responding.
All we need is a good wind, a skyful of stars, and the balls keep coming our way.
Girls departing
in silver-grey Merc-Benz cars, sometimes chubby Ambassadors, white and solid.
A rented vehicle maybe, a scarlet red Hyundai, sometimes.
Or a flashy Porsche, bedecked in flowers and streamers,
A shiny convertible?
(No, it’s never that kind of fun for us.)
We leave behind our mothers and dads and younger siblings
As they step into other vehicles.
I sit in mine, surrounded by strangers, one of them more familiar than the others.
I look back, the cars have left already.
I am on my own
In a car that’s all new, with a family that’s all new.
Girls depart to new homes, bearing new names and identities,
New clothes, old jewelry, new ideas, old theories.
My monthly cycle orbits the moon,
in a state of deep devotion and love.
It comes close to the fullness and beatitude, bleeding with the light,
then moves farther and further,
crying silently in the dark, a few months later.
Is it about lost opportunity, dead possibilities?
Or new beginnings, unfamiliar destinations?
It is caught in a divine dance,
it is not fickle-minded at all
it is its own little moon
white, red and dark maroon
shining its light inside me.