Everything

Everything for you

she says, making

separate dinners 

from no recipe 

for each child

two vegetarians

steak for daddy

the baby won’t eat peas

Everything for you

she says, sweeping

floors she wishes away

in secret, guiding crumbs

from dinners the 

children have eaten

all through the house

Everything for you

she says, with every 

move of her hand,

sweep of a strand

of hair from the face

of a crying child

Everything for you 

because my life is

half over, and yours

is just beginning. 

**

I sit at the 

table reading

lift my feet

as she whisks 

the broom

under them

when everyone

goes to bed, 

I will put down

my book and

do all of 

the dishes 

The Yard Interval

This is a new approach to the topic of home (my overall thesis topic) 

The Yard Interval

Playhouse

Big men came with

hammers and trucks

and pulled the garage 

down. I watched from

the upstairs window 

as they tugged at the slanting

foundation-- the rotted 

white boards and roof shingles

fell. I was too young to be sad, 

to miss the old structure-- just a slab of

concrete now where we could 

roller skate until they build the

new one. Then they tore down 

the picket fence that ran behind

the old garage. I watched

them work, the first jackhammer

I’d seen, in the late afternoon sun

blazing orange behind their shoulders.

When they pour the new foundation, 

we get to put our hand prints in 

the wet concrete with the date

and Daddy took parts of the old

wooden fence and built a play

house for us. We will make mud

pies for dinner and dry them on

the playhouse roof until they’re hard.

Bricks for building memories. 

Leafhouse

In autumn the leaves fall

yellow and orange and brown 

and gather on the small front lawn.

Daddy wants to rake them to the

curb before it rains and they get 

all soggy and kill big spots

of grass, or the snow starts 

and they’re frozen over. But

first they are ours.

We sweep the leaves into the thin

straight outlines of a blueprint:

solid lines for walls, gaps where

there are doors, circles for chairs, 

rectangles for beds and couches, 

and at the very edge of the yard

where the sidewalk looms to the 

street, a half-moon balcony. 

A leaf house of our own design

it will last until the wind picks

up at night. And next year we

will reconstruct it. Exactly the 

same way. 

Porch-house

The patio furniture resides

in the screened-in back porch

its legs are thin, but heavy and

the protective ends have fallen

off so when we move the chairs

around they scratch the floor, a

map of where they’ve been. 

The cement walkway makes a

perfect driveway for our bikes and

we parallel park there between 

important errands-- (the neighbor’s 

yard is the grocery store, the garage

serves as both bank and brake-shop)

Mama put our play kitchen out for

us and every day we live several

days there, sleeping and waking 

driving and parking, shopping and

cooking, breaking and fixing,

a microcosm. We decide when

the sun goes down. 

Papa

I passed a dump truck today

a big blue one that looked strikingly like yours. 

A flagger stopped me in the road 

for an unimportant or imaginary

construction project, and I had

to sit at the feet of the enormous

truck. Watch the men in boots and

jeans and white shirts and remember

that you have been gone for eleven 

years this day. 

Relativity

If Einstein was right, 

then there is no long straight

string of time

and everything is cyclical

boundaries in flux, beginnings

and ends mutable, or nonexistent

and who’s to say that as I lean

over the sink its particles don’t

expand to accept a few of mine 

and we don’t become intertwined 

for a moment or few or

that the paste doesn't serve as some

emulsifier between enamel and bristle,

combining tooth and brush

and eliminating plaque in between

and how, then, can I know what

is over? or what has just begun? 

if the events before ever ended

or if we have always wanted each other

brushed our teeth side-by-side

slept together every night 

wished for the same things

but won’t ever end up.

I.

"You want to smoke a cigarette with me?"

"Yea"

We sat in the car, two people

who hadn't spoke in months.

"What are you doing next year?"

"How is the house?"

"When does the album come out?"

We sat in the car, two people

who had known each other for years

and hurt each other enough to be strangers again.

II.

"you take these shears here and cut the 

rose bushes down to the base"

"daddy, there are still buds on these"

"yea but you've got to cut them down 

before the snow comes, so they can grow back."

III.

The leaves weren't even done changing,

and had barely started falling, when

the forecast said snow on saturday 

and the wind chill supported its claim.

The snow would come and kill all 

the potential of the rosebuds

if I didn't kill them first. 

And I had to trust that they would grow back again.

Things will get much worse before they get better. 

Turn, Turn, Turn

I loved that apartment

with its tiny kitchen, your

bike resting along the wall under the clock

like it was waiting for the seasons to change

the ice-slick front steps and

the back door that we always hoped

was open. The two small rooms were

just enough and the bathroom was

my favorite yellow. 

We'd stay up late and listen

to the foreign neighbors, dancing

or fighting, and we'd wake late 

too. Make the short walk to

the corner because you didn't 

have a coffee pot and tea never 

did the trick for me. 

It was cold then. Colder than 

I remember it ever being. The 

walk was not so bad though, 

because the pocket of your pea coat

had a silky lining and I was always

allowed to put my mitten there.

But that was winter love. A cold

and factual kind. And it went away before

spring. It felt right. The same way that

fall creeps up. Leaves turn and fall a 

few at a time. Branches grow out of

them and don't throw fits or beg them

to stay. 

The kind of change that lets you look

back fondly. And say:

that was right, in its season.

Joshua Trees, desert near Kingman, AZ