Backyard

When the trees shed their leaves I can see the headstones climbing up the hill behind my house. Though I don’t intend to be buried there nor anywhere, the idea of an epitaph is appealing; I already think every word as if etching it in stone. But I know my grave will be empty, and I know the marker will either be blank or filled with all the things I felt guilty about not saying. I want to be cremated like my father. His ashes were heavier than I expected. No one will carry me as dust back to bones of my ancestors, no I will be dumped without ceremony into the garbage can of a church I’d never been to in life and am not welcome in dead.

Write Now

What do you want me to say?
I’m staring at you, eyes red,
Mouth open, loudly silent,
And you’re still mostly blank.

I look away like I want to be distracted.
But you know, don’t you?
You know me, I think too well,
But we’re still in something like love.

I don’t know how words could ever be enough.
I think that means I’ve given up.

Diving

My dad used to tell me to go up when he wanted me to scroll down, and my mother has started doing the same thing.  I’ve realized today that we swim in place while the birds, the sky, the horizon, the people looking in from some windows at themselves, the people looking out, and the people on the ground all fly up up and away.

Serendipity

It begins with waiting, not anticipation.
It seems like it’s been a long time.

Next there is the moment of decision.
Next is the moment of creation.

But it could just as easily go the other way.
But even if it did, and this does not,

Here is the action.
It doesn’t do what you expected.