How to ease a broken heart

I lean against a mountain facing east,
cool rock at my back,
morning sun in my eyes,
and sink into the schist,
feel myself enveloped in layer
after layer of ancient ocean floor,
until I am part of the mountain itself
and can feel no more.

Mt. Rundle-Canadian Rockies Painting by Lanny Grant

Absence

The pain of partition is no less,
though less often.
A whole day may pass before the memory
of the absent one
rises to surface suddenly, invoked by
a change in scenery,
an overheard conversation, a shell laid
on the dresser,
and it overwhelms with its intensity,
takes away the breath,
the keen longing produces
a contraction
which would draw the beloved
into one’s own body.
These spasms are farther spaced,
building energy
until the next one squeezes the viscera
with its acute yearning.

Crush

She cannot breathe.
She sits beside her crush;
her unspoken longing:
the secret knowledge of dreams,
of busy hands masturbating
where thwarted desire dwells--
enwreaths her like a boa,
not of flirtatious feathers,
but a reptilian hunger
that inexorably constricts
with each exhalation
in its close embrace
until she is overwhelmed
by its steady crush.

Weeding

I squat before I kneel, 

finally collapsing to a cross-legged sit,

my hands busy as dandelions and grass

and false clover come out by their roots, 

some more easily than others. 

The pile of unwanted plants grows beside me 

and the clean, black dirt is exposed, 

waiting for new seeds hanging from soft, 

white, floating umbrellas 

to find their way to fertile soil.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

I stop and push a strand of hair off my brow, 

feel the sweat trickle between my breasts 

and hear the buzz of insects 

as they survey my sumptuous flesh 

in search of a tasty meal. 

There is now a smudge where my muddied hand

brushed my forehead, 

fingernails encrusted with embedded dirt 

that will take repeated scrubbings

to come clean. 

I look at the heap of weeds, 

at the spaces between

hydrangeas and bleeding heart

and wonder who is the victor here,

to whom go the spoils.

The Webcam

You gazed upon your lover today,
seeing the remembered face,
the smile, the white teeth
and lips, those lips you
long to kiss, to touch, the eyes
full of love, looking longingly
at you through a looking glass
of unattainability.

Autumn Letter to a Dear Friend

October 14, 2008


My dear Simone:

It is autumn and the fall colours
remind me of you.
I walk through tunnels of foliage,
limbs overhead, fallen leaves underfoot,
and bask in the luminous golds,
glowing coppers and ruby reds.
The world is ablaze with their glory
and I rejoice in its beauty,
taking photographs with my mind’s eye
that I would send you,
if I only could,
so that you might see them, too,
as I do.

I inhale the scents of the season:
decaying leaves and pine needles,
earth and wood and mould.
I long to send you my impressions,
to have you see and smell them,
to hear the honking of geese
as they pass overhead in their ragged vees,
and feel the rush of their wings
as they fly past.

There are so many things I want to show you.
Today on my walk into town past the cemetery
I stopped to marvel at the maples,
how they were ignited by the sunlight
and seemed to burn with neither heat nor flame,
but an inner luminescence;
and I thought of you.

Coming home, I gathered leaves:
mostly yellow, some tinged with orange and red,
one edged in green with a golden heart.
I placed them between pages of my diary
so that later I might mail them to you,
arranged under glass in a picture frame,
or as surprises,
interleaved among the leaves of another book.

This weekend past I drove for hours
from east to west and back,
and every crimson sumac and golden oak
that lined the long highway
was etched in my memory
so I could tell you about it.
The photographs I took
do not do reality justice.
It is the pictures stored behind my eyes
that I wish you to see;
each is tinged with love,
and suffused with longing.

For it is not just the fall colours
I want to show you,
but the tints of my own soul:
the reds and golds and coppers
that peel away from my heart
and flutter to the ground
only to become brittle
and crumble to dust;
the love I long to lavish
and the words I may not say.

I will not mention this to you,
but quietly accept the inevitable,
as do the leaves that burn defiantly
in the face of winter.

Your loving friend,

Edouard

Dirt

The dark loam pours out of the box
onto clumps of dirt packed close
by winter’s chill and weight of snow
and ash from the wood stove:
rich, life-giving soil from
vegetable parings and apple cores,
eggshells and grapefruit rinds,
coffee grounds and tea bags;
nothing is wasted.
Scrapings from dinner plates,
tips of beans and celery leaves,
corn cobs and avocado shells
all thrown in together
to rot, metamorphosing
in that polyvinyl cocoon
into the black earth
that cradles the new year’s crop.
Parsley stems and tomato cores return
to the soil that grew them;
tough stalks of basil nourish
next summer’s pesto;
and all this flows onto my spade
and I spread it and bury it
and crumble the clods of clay-packed dirt
which, after years of mingling
with spring’s spoils from winter’s waste,
is still hard and rebellious
under my shovel and rake.
A clang of metal on limestone and
shale brought up by winter heaving;
these will not decompose.
They will not become soil
in my lifetime.