The Reflection Pool

I keep seeing my mother’s
hands whenever I look down.
And I dream about giant
sunflowers just before golden
yellow petals begin to appear
and my dream-mind calls
them dwarf sunflowers but
the heads are larger
than me from the waist up.
So my not-dreaming mind
fights the name and says
something clever and
academic like ‘dwarf implies
small and because said flowers
(which are not real anyway)
are larger than you, they
cannot be dwarves.’ And
my dream mind fights
that and I become
confused, not knowing up from
down, left from right,
I become unable to figure
any thing out, so I see
my mother’s hands and I
know they aren’t hers. The
fingers move when I tell my
fingers to move.

Do you understand why
I am confused? Why none
of this makes sense to me?

Walk in beauty, my friend,
hand in hand with your joy.
Sprinkle happiness, a corn pollen
blessing for this ceremony of life.

May your strength radiate and impassion
the world around you as the sun
animates ardor and brilliance.

Walk in beauty.
Walk in beauty.
Walk in beauty.
Walk in beauty.

I want to drive your
nowhere dirt roads.

I want to traverse your
underside, your other side
non-public side.

Become intimate with your
curves. Slide my body
over your bends.

I want this from you.

My arms up under my
face as protection from
you and me,

shelter from our elements.

The fronts of us
coming together.

I want to bear witness
to that which washes, washed
through your gullies
and my ravines
at once, together

we come

to this mixed in this
way as long as either
of us exists.

Our existence is tied up
together, on this,
these ribbons of dirt road
because there is something
more to you than your
plains and prairies.

the poets of
bathroom stalls
in all night
truckstops are
awe-inspiring after
coffee       after four
cups of sludge

under white florescent
lights        the gods of
travel have spoken
to many drivers and
their need to share
has overwhelmed
my 3 am brain

you are my failure.

the bed of unlikely attachments
sits unmade, unused as it should be.
Through all the struggles that are on our paths
that don’t cross, won’t cross.

So we will walk, just walk, side by side
laughing as we can at life,
crying at the rest.
Lost in the vagueness of feeling,
emotions that tear apart
from the inside out.

Soft tissue dissolves, leaving holes that
cannot mend no matter what modern
technologies are in our hands,
tools that destroy in the name of rebuilding
when possibly all should stay in ruins.

Mashing up the pieces to recreate the whole,
brings about a lightness that only
feels like more weight      weight upon weight,
and breathing becomes hard because
I breathe you in but
quickly breathe you out again,
knowing that with each in-breath

a poison is spreading.     It is in the
veins and moving at high speeds
to my life line.
The steadiness of my heartbeat
doesn’t change.

I have the heart of an athlete, steady on,
steady forward as I grope for
understanding and forgiveness.