Tidal Waves Don't Beg Forgiveness

Owl
my son and i play a game

guess the animal

as I drive him through my stages of grief.
sea creature he says

and I watch redwoods ripping by

in my car
deer, I say

incorrect, be says

lurches back into his car seat
and says why is this happening

why can’t you just

guess

what i’m saying

dad?
and I can’t respond

the curves in the redwoods
are too tight

and my throat is a throttle

of regret 

jaundiced failures

and then

we get to our destination
and I breathe

watch him like a tornado

move back through our miles
as we speak.

confession
it wasn’t on purpose

that night i sat near you

before you left

watching you sleep

there was distance, the kind you see

in between constellations

in younger years

leos scorpions aquarians 

but it did work once.

but i still watched

hungry, haunches clenched

wanting it to be like the

first time

before it was the last

movie

my son’s symphony 

is spelled out in the key

of l and r

unspoken/unadjusted

so we are at a movie 

real life real early

so early in fact 

we get in through an 

unlocked door 

by accident before it’s open and 

he says

“dad we are like thieves”

and I hold his angel head and say

“thieves together”

and later

during this movie

when the finale is 

near

i lose sight of him

lower the chair, this fractal 

chair that was the lost 

piece of myself

and he screams

“under under”

and parts of me break 

as I pick up this phoenix boy

gather him into myself

taste his tears

and walk past the popcorn

and lights.

i’ve been here before

a wise owl, watching over

the young

scrambling into my nest

claws scrabbling

searching for prey to

feed them

lost in the jigsaw pierce of

the night

despite

that

i watch

wait

listen

to the sound of my young.

but im back. testing to see if this works. 😉

forever,adjusted
(for ck)

have you ever traced
the pattern of a wavelength
on your lover’s back
as she sleeps
then wakes up?
forever.

have you ever lost
the ability to speak
when she does something
as simple as loosening
the strap on her shoulder? forever.

have you ever adjusted
any expectation of
this word “forever”
when she stares back
and says yes?
forever.

quotation

and i am
awed at the way we talk
inside of the words of others
our own words coded in the lore
of those before us
the two of us breathing fire
through the singed hides
of our past
and yet–
you are a new verse
one that i cannot
bracket
one that i cannot
contain
nor would i want to.

instead, i will say the word
“map”
as i explore how the parts of
my cartography
meet the parts of
your cartography

we knew each other before this
a quotation in oak or ink
something that was always written.

Author’s note: My grandfather passed just before my daughter’s birth in late October 2009. His birthday is November 6th, 1925. I think of him often.

dogwood
(for vernon wesley gause, sr.)

i think of you under dogwood trees
hands gnarled and twisted never relenting
whisky cupped in your hand seventies aftershave
musked on my small head careful to always
hold an arm out to ward off
whatever phantoms you thought might
try to take me.

this was earlier
before i learned your faults
i remember huddling in
deer stands as dusk fell
as whipporwills celebrated
the descent of the sun;
i was alone, waiting for you, for the
hum of the atv you curled
around ruts in fairfield, south carolina:
i feared you not returning.

it was november, i remember
the call unfurled
it’s time to come home he
isn’t able to breathe any longer
unassisted
and i couldn’t leave
my own golden child awaiting to be born
you waiting and holding on
your own neurons like mine frozen
the grip of the disease on you
i waited for a plane
whose contrails wouldn’t arrive;
i wasn’t that strong.

six years later, she is golden everything
you might have wanted to see; six weeks before
her birth you were gone
and i have
only been to your gravestone
once
but i left the small heart of a dogwood
petal there once
i have traversed sandy dunes in oregon
stumbled through love and loss myself
fucked over the neurons in
my brain
poured whisky over my
past and started again
and i wanted to tell you
thank you
and i haven’t forgotten a moment
and that the ruts you carried me in
muddied then carved into
the clay of our hearts
are still with me
with us.

..i was further north than south (re: “my winding wheel” by ryan adams). admittedly, i still quote ryan adams’ lyrics now, about 17 years after “heartbreaker” came out. what’s the difference, was it a girl then or a girl now? or was it me all along? and was ryan adams really serious about the whole morrissey conversation with david rawlings on the first track of “heartbreaker”?

so then i made a mixtape for her to find out. this stranger i’d somehow known forever with her blue, blue eyes piercing a small part of my lungs, to the point where i could barely breathe when she looked at me.

i mean this in a good way, that way when you’re finally good in yourself and someone sees that and you see it. vulnerable and such. i cooked her pasta for the second meal of the night, both of us naked (again), slipping in and out of our skin. and she leaned over and started whispering to me and we went back to bed, still hungry and in the morning the sky was still bruised, our bodies were still bruised, still wanting.

what was the point of this? i think that i was good for the first time in forever to see someone in my own light, whole, and vice versa. sharing stories. watching her (and watching her watch me) lean against a counter casually after i had been inside her for the first time, after she had listened to me talk about ryan adams and how sobriety could be a good thing for music but we were still drinking wine, after we had stood in the rain with bubbles rising around us.

and then we woke up in the morning and her phoenix hair was sprawled across my chest. and we couldn’t tell the difference between north and south, except for the compass we had created together in the night.

so yes, the mixtape was good and ryan adams would have been stoked about it. maybe he wouldn’t have used the word stoked. but i will. i am stoked because i’m good now and made a hell of a mixtape. and she liked it. and i liked making it for her. but i included “to be young (is to be sad, is to be high)” by ryan adams instead of “my winding wheel” on the mixtape. thank you ryan. i think i got the girl. or the girl got me. or maybe i got myself and she got herself and we got each other. yeah, mixed tapes. they’re great, like me, like her. like us.