There's something I need to tell you

March 1, 2014

There’s something I need to tell you

I want to tell you

about the caterpillar.

You know the beginning:

the creepy crawly caterpillar creature

inching on the ground, munching leaves, growing,

growing, shedding skin after skin, until

one day, she hooks herself to the soft underside

of a leaf, and peels off her final skin

to reveal the chrysalis hidden beneath.

You might think that metamorphosis

is like hibernation, that the caterpillar curls up

snug and asleep, and in her dreams

she sprouts one wing, and then another,

until she awakens and finds

her butterfly body

has simply bloomed.

But this isn’t so. Instead, I want to tell you how,

without hesitation, without doubt,

the chrysalized caterpillar dissolves herself,

bit by bit, all soft muscle, each tiny foot, breaking down

into a swirling white-yellow mess of cells,

and, somehow, these cells

reorganize themselves, restructure themselves

into something completely new, something

previously inconceivable, forming antenna after antenna,

wing after wing; each nerve and fiber,

each piece of the heart,

re-imagined;

rebuilt.

And the old crawling creature, whose body

has been transfigured—this being has not died!

No, miraculously,

this young winged thing remembers

the thousands of leaves she herself once traversed,

the broad blue sky she once longed for,

and everything she ever learned

in her caterpillar days.

All of this I need to tell you,

all of this you need to know, because

what I’m really trying to say is

for you,

my love turns butterfly.

Sun shower

February 25, 2014

Sun shower

Walking with the dog down the canal path

through a light spring rain, not exactly minding

the wet, only smiling at how

I didn't think to bring a raincoat

as the ducks are quacking happily.

Whispered thoughts and curled fists

June 12, 2010

Whispered thoughts and curled fists

Somewhere in the past, lightning

tears silently at the sky

until a sort of insatiable thunder rings out

and tumbles down.

You heard it.

I saw you, flinching like a jack-in-the-box,

you and your wet

artichoke heart.

Charisma, you spat.

That’s all we have.

You began to throw at my feet

every compromise you ever made,

and crushed them under your toe

until they resembled the residue of that marrow bone

your dog chewed for hours

yesterday on the hardwood floor. 

You imagined any possible

tetrahedral, stained-glass afterthoughts

we might have had,

and threw the biggest rocks you could find

until it was all just a heap of shattered stars

in our heads.

But let’s face it:

we both did.

After all,

we dreamed up such big futures for ourselves,

much too grand for the lives we led,

and for the overwhelming reality

of the way we are.

Way before us,

a thin rain starts to fall.

I needed a good storm.

april

February 23, 2011

april

there’s something to be said

for the first glimpse

of raw, wild green

after endless months

of sick, chalky white,

for warm crayon-box colors:

the dandelion sun, the robin’s egg sky,

for the first sharp, biting breath

of a spring rain

as the frozen rivers dissolve

into a magical confusion

and rush,

for the rainbows on soap bubbles,

for the graceful arc of a red swing,

and for the chaotic ballet

my heart performs

whenever you throw me a smile.

boardwalk

November 8, 2010

boardwalk

at night,

seagulls ride like embers above bright white

roller-coaster fire. 

the people on the ground don’t look where they’re going because

there are too many mesmerizing

lights

littered about like sunspots.

and the people,

they pretend that they’ve not yet been

blinded as they count the money

still left in their

tight hands. 

the shops are all full of things

that they’ve always wanted, and the

vendors with their sharp wolf eyes watch

with smiles that everyone else takes for

happiness. 

the people on the rocket rides scream

like the seagulls burning above them.