Embrace

You know the parlor trick.
wrap your arms around your own body
and from the back it looks like
someone is embracing you
her hands grasping your shirt
her fingernails teasing your neck
from the front it is another story
you never looked so alone
your crossed elbows and screwy grin
you could be waiting for a tailor
to fit you with a straight jacket
one that would hold you really tight.

-Billy Collins

Put your head in my lap.

I'm halfway through a book of sad short stories about miscarriages. Two a night, on the front stoop, with a mug of hot coffee. Why can't I stop reading? What is God trying to teach me about marriage?

the poet sees the thing you cannot name

Her language mimics yours, but it isn’t the same.
Sounds are softer, longer, rhythmic.
You carry the world around in pieces and snapshots,
She sees it all at once in blurs, and that is enough.

Those strange scenes you dream?
Visions of unsolved mysteries,
The dancing bliss, the envy that you’re too frightened to speak,
She knows them and recalls them
And long after you’ve given up and left your haze,
She’s painting them stark and perfect
On sidewalks in yellow and gray, in the shade
Of maple trees, in permanent ink.

Her world spins in blues and dark magenta,
A little deeper than you’d like to believe,
Thick like summer air before a storm.
A little rough around the edges, but serene.
The dewdrops linger for a longer while,
And you might not notice the smile in the sun but she does.

An image, a thought—each iridescent strand of rain, each echo of tears that no one else hears—
The song in the chirp of the cricket, solitary but alive—
Tries to elude us.
But the poet knows it when she sees it,
Through her stained glass crystal window
While you’re stuck at the door.

You wake in the night and shove your nightmares away;
The poet wraps herself in a blanket of pure sense
She wakes and pens the language of dreams.

-Allison Chopin

Who loses and remembers?

Who keeps and forgets?

May

T H E R I C E - S P R O U T I N G M O N T H

A month of seeing almost all of my favorite people. It was a treat. Difficult times, wonderful times. So it goes.

at the end of freshman year:

at work:

in books read:

at Loel Lierman's memorial service:

in Colorado:

in California:

on San Juan Island:

Seattle Theater Group commission: