I held their hands tight,

hugged them to me,

taught them to swim on the pond.

Now I find myself watching

from the opposite bank of a river

for a chance to wave.

 

I want to be in their camp,

to sit around the fire,

describe the gentle night

rain on Macchu Picchu,

the shimmer of dawn droplets.

But they have painted paths

 

across the water stranding me,

as I stranded my parents

long ago on erasable sands,

so many words lost.

I cast about and find

a battered, green canoe,

 

no paddle.  I write my life,

fold the many sheets

into airplanes, launch them

out over the swift water

where they all fall short,

race downstream like speed boats.

 

I gather a few photographs,

place them in the fragile canoe,

and push it out across the current,

counting on a fallen branch

to snag it on their shore

with my postcards from the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

My wedding day was hailed by thousands

of ravenous gypsy moths showering

the ground from oaks and pines with grains

of elemental humus, a real

gift of fertility, not really

a desecration of trees,

but a taking away and giving back,

like the gradual gobbling up

of this woman into the soil of marriage.

 

Had I been showered in rice, instead,

outside the yellow-windowed chapel,

my life might not have drained earthward,

my hands become stained with digging,

mixing, sprinkling soil on seed,

my head bent to the task, my back

an ancient worn-down mountain top.

 

Against all mourning for that woman,

eaten green and recast brown by years,

a leathery leaf with filigreed edges,

against any acknowledgement of omen

in the June rain of green-brown droppings,

I toss the Buddhist pinch of rice

to shower down in earthly seeds

its pings of generosity.