Invasive, and: Sanctuary, and: Forsythia, and: Intimacy

Invasive

What's the thin breakinescapable, a sudden thudon the porch, a phonevibrating with panic on the nightstand?Bury the broken thinkingin the backyard with the herbs. Onelast time, I attempt to snuff outthe fig buttercup, the lesser celandine,invasive and spreading downthe drainage ditch I call a creekfor a minor pleasure. I cando nothing. I take the soil inmy clean fingers and to sayI weep is untrue, weep is toomusical a word. I heaveinto the soil. You cannot die.I just came to this lifeagain, alive in my silent way.Last night I dreamt I couldonly save one person by sayingtheir name and the exacttime and date. I chose you.I am trying to kill the fig buttercupthe way I'm supposed to accordingto the government website,but right now there's a bee on it.Yellow on yellow, two thingsradiating life. I need them bothto go on living.

Sanctuary

Suppose it's easy to slip              into another's green skin,bury yourself in leaves

and wait for a breaking,              a breaking open, a breakingout. I have, before, been

tricked into believing              I could be both an Iand the world. The great eye

of the world is both gaze              and gloss. To be swallowedby being seen. A dream.

To be made whole              by being not a witness,but witnessed.

Forsythia

At the cabin in Snug Hollow near McSwain Branch creek, just spring, all the animals are out, and my beloved and I are lying in bed in a soft silence. We are talking about how we carry so many people with us wherever we go, how even simple living, these unearned moments, are a tribute to the dead. We are both expecting to hear an owl as the night deepens. All afternoon, from the porch, we watched an eastern towhee furiously build her nest in the wild forsythia with its yellow spilling out into the horizon. I told him that the way I remember the name forsythia is that when my stepmother, Cynthia, was dying, that last week, she said lucidly, but mysteriously, More yellow. And I thought yes, more yellow and nodded because I agreed. Of course, more yellow. And so now in my head, when I see that yellow tangle, I say, For Cynthia, for Cynthia, forsythia, forsythia, more yellow. It is night now. And the owl never comes, only more of night and what repeats in the night.

Intimacy

I remember watching my motherwith the horses, the cool, fluidway she'd guide those enormousbodies around the long field,the way she'd shoulder one asideif it got too close or greedywith the alfalfa or apple.I was never like that. Neverfelt confident around thosefour-legged giants that couldkill with one kick or harmwith one toss of their long heads.To me, it didn't make senseto trust a thing that coulddestroy you so quickly, to reachout your hand and strokethe deep separatenessof a beast, that long gapof silence between youknowing it doesn't love you,knowing it would eat the appleswith as much pleasure fromany flattened palm. Is that whyshe moved with them so easily?There is a truth in that smoothindifference, a clean honestyabout our otherness that feelsnot like the moral, but the story.