Compassion Camp

It has rained for five days
running
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning
to cope
a young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen sun
forget
and drown easily.

For months my daughter carried
a dead monarch in a quart mason jar.
To and from school in her backpack,
to her only friend’s house. At the dinner table
it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast.
She took it to bed, propped by her pillow.

Was it the year her brother was born?
Was this her own too-fragile baby
that had lived—so briefly—in its glassed world?
Or the year she refused to go to her father’s house?
Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?

This plump child in her rolled-down socks
I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me
and carry safe again. What was her fierce
commitment? I never understood.
We just lived with the dead winged thing
as part of her, as part of us,
weightless in its heavy jar.

Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

I.
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.

And the name of every place
is joyful.

II.
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities

III.
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping –
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.

IV.
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?

V.
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,

VI.
and probably
everything
is possible.

My body is powdery white and round
I sink and bob like a mountain in a pond
The hand that kneads me is hard and rough
You can’t destroy my true red heart

Kick a slipper in the air,
Let it reach a star,
Let it fall again.
Pick it up,
Hold it to your heart,
Put it on.
Dance in it, walk in it—
Dance all day, all night;
Walk for miles and miles;
Any pavement, any grass, any rocks,
Puddles, swamp, sand.
Put it on at night if a child should cry,
Kick it off, go to sleep—
Heel down, toe out,
The slipper will grow old,
The buckle will grow new,
The slipper reached a star—
Rhinestones will shine.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m undone, 
a big spool of yarn 
rolling down a steep hill and out into the street,
down the garbage-gathered drain. 

Other times, I’m standing in front of Ramon’s
apartment building in Mexico City. Remember
when I broke that bottle of Tequila Herradura.
It shattered in shards and slivers. 
¡Hijole, y fue uno de los Buenos! 
the doorman lamented, watching the smooth 
white liquid spill onto the sidewalk. Lost. 
I wonder what people would say about me 
as I fall and crash to smithereens. 

I want to laugh out loud when I see 
I’m as solid as a snow cone. 
As if I could be slurped up, tossed out or simply melt away.
As if I could be a sweetness craved, a crying child’s prize
on steaming summer days. 

Prescription: Wrap arms tightly 
around chest, imagine freshly baked challah, 
imagine a Friday night when you allow 
yourself to rest your shredded senses, 
and put on that white lace Brazilian dress. 
Do not think of shards, 
think instead of strong vigas, high 
ceilings, an unobstructed view 
of the Big Dipper, Leonard Cohen 
carrying your darkness in his secret chords. 
Sing Hallelujah. 
Sing Heneni 

I am here.

The night has a thousand eyes
And the day but one,
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

  if you have had 
            your midnights
    and they have drenched
        your barren guts
           with tears

  I sing you sunrise
         and love
and someone to touch

(In the Expected Manner)

Enter April, laughingly,
     Blossoms in her tumbled hair,
High of heart, and fancy-free—
     When was maiden half so fair?
Bright her eyes with easy tears,
     Wanton-sweet, her smiles for men.
“Winter’s gone,” she cries, “and here’s Spring again.”

When we loved, ’twas April, too;
     Madcap April—urged us on.
Just as she did, so did you—
     Sighed, and smiled, and then were gone.
How she plied her pretty arts,
     How she laughed and sparkled then!
April, make love in our hearts
     Spring again!