This is a belated birthday present,
and it likely isn’t any good as such.
One more year, one more year.
wind turbines dot California hills,
and most days they spin slowly, massive and quiet.
Thick fog rolls in and they’re lost,
save the slow flick of the blades out of the mist and into view,
some useless giant trying to slice through,
and sometimes even the responsible forget to turn on the lights,
and there is nothing in the fog.
Object permanence is more suggestion than anything,
any child knows that.
There are people in this hospital living their own tragedies,
their casts all range from prime time acceptable to the fringes,
and sitting in a waiting room you can’t help but look up–
at the mother crying because her son’s school made him a fifty foot banner,
because the surgery had some complications
because a grim faced surgeon just explained the risks of what’s next
because the out-patient routine just became a major procedure.
you should know none of this.
you shouldn’t notice how calm and neutral the man next to her is,
how all she wants is someone to make all of this somehow better,
and she’s screaming behind her tears, in her head:
and how and how and how can he be so damn calm, so damn calm about this,
and he grimly watches the television envisioning ancient rocks and oncoming tidal waves
hold fast.
you should know none of this.
you know none of this.
read on.
This is a belated birthday present,
and it likely isn’t any good as such.
there isn’t a whisper when you’re gone,
I don’t know if you’ve got wind mixed up in the blood,
or if there’s more going on than you care to admit to some stranger,
but you flick in and out like a dust devil in the corner of some buildings down on first,
move things around for a few minutes,
and end.
And to look at your work?
You’ve got this deepsunk skill twining around your fingers,
it oozes out of you with your careful structure and delicious turn-of-phrase,
but your concerns are so far devoid of mine,
and I don’t know if it’s youth or distance or context,
but time, but time, but time
One more year.
I’m in hospitals watching my sister drag herself to the bathroom,
and it’s so draining for her that she barely has energy to breath after,
so they put her on oxygen as she takes her shallow sleep-fed breathes,
exhausted the way the weary dead are when someone finally sets bones to rest.
lifetimes and lifetimes of work in fourteen insurmountable steps,
and on and on and on she drags.
she just wants to walk on her own again.
at seventeen.
you want a poem for your birthday,
something that makes you cry with the truth of it,
so the truth of it is,
I care nothing for your pain.
From what very little I know of you and your wind-hewn ways,
things may well get better with time,
one more year, one more year,
you’re only just over a year older than her,
and you know none of this,
and you should know none of this,
and I pray you never know this.
but time, but time, but time,
and hope solve so many things,
and it’s useless to point that out.
This is a belated birthday present,
and it likely isn’t any good as such.
