I saw two lawn chairs facing a fallow field under an angry sky…

They like to watch the weather

More than forty years, 

side by side under a changing sky

cyan turning gray

they watched storms from folding chairs 

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I was happy

I was bouncing off the stars 

but none of this was mine

Everything would wash away

like sunshine does each day

I'd sit down to cry

just counting passing cars

Prop me in a lawn chair

you can walk away

a heavy heart will keep me there

to wait another day

I knew the joy would blow away

I stared at the sky

its staggered moon a-waning

tired from the strain

tired, and so am i

prop me against the sky

where i might blow away

or drag around a heavy heart

that might rise again one day

Summer

Daylilies like flames brighten mid-summer fields while overhead thunder shakes. Raspberries' ruby fruit ripens, coneflowers' petals pinken, and Queen Anne's lace crowds the roadside.

It's everywhere, she said, everywhere. 

By noon wild asters sag in the heat. When will summer's lazy breath grow short, stagger, and sigh? When will she sense the fall and hasten her days? When will the humidity and hurting flies let the dogs and I through without breaking skin?

A wall of quiet moonlight broke, shadows rippled, and I thought of you.

Just A Picture

Just like you on a hungover mid-summer Saturday watching the room rippling while wild flowers bend in the heat, a girl like me has gotta hope.

But I remember your face. You were not thinking about me. Maybe I'll center yesterday's empty wine bottle on the linoleum floor and erase it with a hammer.

Should I do it?

Should I daydream?

In Long Island on a road following the beach and pink sunset on the sand I strolled, stretching my thrift shop jeans.

From a phone booth I called Noah and he picked me up for a fundraiser. Everyone was steeped in wealth. Half of them had AIDS and the music was bad. I didn't mind leaving money in the pot, but I didn't want to stay.

She's creeped out Noah, said his friend, and so am I.

So, what's your name? his friend asked me.

We met that day on the beach. They followed my prints to the water where I was stepping out of the easy bay surf in cut-offs, walking toward my workboots in the sand. Noah had long black tattoos slashing his back and ribs. 

We work for MTV, they told me. Me? I was just looking for something to do.

Seventeen years later I still remember telling Sean that I had lost Noah's number. When Sean came back from the phone booth he handed it to me, but I didn't call again. What would I do with MTV?

The summer stuck like honey. Cool barrooms filled with drinkers in a fishbowl and a girl with sunburn and seasonal rent. I was waiting for September to brush the vacationers away. 

Tomorrow is the first day of school, I said.

It is? asked Will. Well, cheers, he said. 

A few weeks later he would nearly die turning off Sunrise Highway headed for my driveway. A speeding car hit him and knocked him off his motorcycle. I didn't know about it until I overheard his friends asking why I didn't care.

I didn't know! I said.

He rolled over on his stomach on his hospital bed and I counted more than 30 staples along his spine. They put rods in it, he said.

Clubs had rolled up their banners by late August. When I went back to school I bought lunch with couch change and read Baudelaire. Stinginess, sin, stupidity, shall determine our spirits' fashion… and we shall feed on the corpses of our remorses, he said.

Looking backwards nearly twenty years I don't see a stingy girl, or sinful, or stupid. My daydreams had always shaped me, and still do. My spirit lives and dies a hundred times a day based on my hopes and imaginings. I can see where we would feed on remorse -- the one thing left when failure leaves us in the void -- but I am not so sour. I am not there yet.

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Just A Thought

I was standing in a bathrobe about to light a fresh cigarette.

He wore fuzzy slippers in the camper doorway.

Maybe he was shooting a movie.

Maybe a makeup man pushed gel through his hair.

Where is he? his beautiful curly co-star would ask.

Drunk, I think.

After He Left

Small dark hours when longing creeps in

I miss him

as summer's marmalade sky thickens

wild flowers ablaze in blue and white

i wonder, does he think of me?

July's deepening green trembles with heat

an early emerald morning

where is he?

holding my breath in the dawn i wait for dreams to come

or dreams to fade

away by the time a crescent moon

sews its sliver in the sky

with humid thoughts and a crooked heart

i pick through my day

what if i had softened my lips

instead of turning away?

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I saw the strike marks on Anne's house where she smashed her cane against tired asbestos shingle.

Help! Help me! she shouted on an early autumn day at 4:30 in the morning. I sat behind her where she lay sprawled on the ground, and propped her against my knees. The police flashlights soon picked us out of the dark. They were good about everything. They called her Ma'am and shined the light in my eyes. 

I live next door, I told them. I heard her yelling. 

Where is my son, Anne asked. Check the car. My grand kids are stuck in the car.

Her children are grown and gone, I told the police. Anne, they're not here, I said.

Then check in the house. Check the bed and see if it's warm where he slept.

I said, no one is here Anne.

Police called for an ambulance.

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I had often been to her house where she shuffled through heaps of old, stained, scribbled papers. She was saying, what's your phone number? What if I need to call you?

Flies buzzed over raw trash piled in a small container next to her couch. 

You gotta get me some of that bug spray, she said. Flies are everywhere.

Anne, can we clean out this trash?

I brought groceries to her. She shouted her list over television noise. We struggled with new phones, threw angry glares at the fuzz on her TV, or tried to work her medical alert button.

You know anything about this? she asked me.

Her house is empty now, and a wreck. The plumbing is bad and social services took back a furnace they lent to her, while her kids had hauled out the wood-burning stove. Looking at Anne a few years ago in her sloppy house dress and combs in her hair -- a small effort to be normal, be pretty, be a woman -- I knew I would be standing in her empty house one day, wondering if I should make an offer to buy it. She has been in Florida with her daughter ever since the ambulance drove her away. Today I stood there, looking at the couch and rug stains, wondering if I should call her. Wondering if I should buy it.

I woke up to a meringue sky…

you thought I was your forever girl

but something's awry

I can't see the future anymore

wiped the dreams from my eyes

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On a mercury dawn of fluid light, silver filled the almost morning. Seconds before  sunrise sparked on the hills I slipped in the door and you were waiting. Boots on and keys in hand, you were worried, and you were mad.

But it was an old trouble, something awry under a meringue sky.

Six Hours And Six Minutes Ago...

Graduation day:

Dreams are as easy as kites

keep chasing them

whatever you want to be and think and do,

that's you

This week I watched an intern folding pages in his notebook, then glance at people pushing out of the antique General Store.

Excuse me, he said.

They looked.

He paused.

Would you answer a question for me?

I added, we're from the Bee…

What advice would you give to graduating seniors? he asked.

I watched people's eyes search the sky, trace cracks in the ground, then squint at the intern who waited with his pencil touching an empty page.

I did not answer, but I thought: the world sparkles brightest after senior year, burning the last residues of childhood daydreams. Everything is smooth skin and tan lines. Girls glazed in Coppertone doze on the sand chewing gently on recent gossip. Or maybe not. Maybe there are time clocks and supervisors, flat tires and break-ups. Maybe there is rent due and work is scarce.

So, what's my advice? Dreams are as easy as kites … but they'll crash to the ground without us. Open your heart and bleed a little. Do something just to see if you can do it. Learn how to walk away smiling after failing terribly. Don't do what makes sense, do what makes you happy. That last one, that's a toughie, by the way. 

You Told Me This Was Crazy

I'll tie a ribbon in the storm

wild rain can't erase me

i never believed it was crazy

I'll tie a ribbon in the storm

so save a place for me

when you're somewhere else in love

and truth sits me down hard

save a place for me

If you remember me

remember you're not alone

when summer fades to snow

remember you're not alone 

A little was not enough

i'll save a place for you

a ribbon in the storm

even if you think it's crazy

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I usually see her with Dave on Sunday afternoons.

I pour two vodka martinis with a splash. Make them dirty, they say, and they laugh. They split a burger and joke with a man sitting next to them, watching late spring sunlight fade. 

Maybe just a beer now, she'll say. Dave smiles because she smiles.

Me too, just a beer.

Once darkness seeps into the sky they say goodbye. Always on a Sunday.

She arrived amid happy hour on a Friday squeezing between waitresses carrying wings, and groups jostling extra chairs to a table. 

Her eyes shined.

She said, Dave died Wednesday.

I bought her a martini and sat with her while someone in the kitchen prepared a burger for a woman who would take it home and eat it alone.

We were divorced, but we lived together, she said.

I smiled.

We were married years ago, then Trevor was born, she said. When he was seven we divorced. Trevor is 20 now. We got back together when he was 14.

I had boyfriends, but I kept them in the closet. They would ask, when can we meet your son? But they never did.

I couldn't imagine what it would do to Dave, or to Trevor.

Dave, he was like gum on my shoe, she laughed.

Her order came out and she sipped her drink.

She said, he really liked you. So do I. He liked to come here and see you. 

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