Soapbox

I miss the stars.
We gave them away, here in the city,
traded Andromeda for 24 hour Walmarts
and their moon-scape parking lots,
offered up the best of  Milky Way, like Manhattan,
for a few worthless trinkets of neon.

In the country, you can't get midnight movies or 2 AM chicken nuggets
but you have the Pleiades
and the stars will dance for you all night long.
I think I could live in a cabin on the side of a mountain
with no news but the morning clouds’ weather report
and the crow's warning,
tend my garden by day and at night
watch it get well and truly dark,
sit on my porch and catch the all-night sky parade,
featuring the the high-def soundtrack of the cosmos.

The rocks and hills show no sign now.
The trees look the same, greening joyfully into spring.
The wind that gathers does not tear at them, yet-
large bones, after all, are the last to break.

So it's easy for us to pretend that it's over
and we have all moved on,
washed the wound, healed, started again clean.
But the butterflies of Fukushima know what we will not see.

They crawl from their silken wombs still damp with impossibility
to unfurl antennae bent and blind,
wings, in colors unrecognizable, are curled and incomplete
unable to long support their wobbling, jagged flight;
as lacey as our own torn hearts.

We sturdy caterpillars still stump along our leaves,
up and down,
as if we can maintain  forever  this state of  heedless consumption, 
plumply indifferent to the future yet
carrying within us the embers of the bonfire.

Life in transition is always the most vulnerable,
ever the first to be blown off course by the gathering storm.
The desert dust smells of olive trees seeking deep for water
but the stillborn of Fallujah taste the difference in the wind.
Making no more sound than falling butterflies
they  emerge from their cocoons the color of heartache
twisted and blue, limbs fused, single eye weeping,
wearing their hearts outside their chests,
so thoroughly are they broken
silent mouths speaking a truth
which we turn up to TV set and try not to hear.

Butterflies and babies are the unwitting canaries
in the coal mine of human stupidity,
tiny monsters wrought of a monstrous power and arrogance
blinded by blind desires, twisted and melted into the new reality
of life on an earth in the midst of a terrifying internal metamorphosis,
answering the anti-biological imperative of teratogenic technology.
We, blind as the butterflies, refuse to see it, continue to devour- everything
as they scream their warning into the silent spring.

He heels in a way he never has before.

In his now-silent world, I don't know
if I represent security or if simply loyalty compels him,
but when he rises
from the tattered lambswool that has been his bed
for a dozen years,
he walks slowly to my side and waits there
as I do the ironing or wash the dishes,
sometimes with his face almost against
a cabinet or the laundry basket,
wedged awkwardly between leg and wall or shower door
and simply stands, silent, staring ahead at nothing,
ready.
Some days I trip over him a half-dozen times
when I turn without realizing that my dark, rheumy-eyed shadow
has left off his dozing and come to stand sentinel.
In exasperation I'll blurt,  "Get out of the way, pup!"
before I remember
that he cannot hear me,
has no concept of 'the way'.

In his youth, after we brought him in
from the cold of
scavenging ditches and dodging cars
he was afraid of everything:
gurgling water, fluttering sheet, busy broom-
he needed frequent and fervent reassurance that the world
was not about to turn on him again,
end the reprieve from fear we had given.
I used to wish he would just relax.
Today he regards the world with sphinx-like impassivity
wanders with unflappable calm from food dish to water bowl
to back door.
He sometimes tries to jump the steps on to the porch
as if he doesn't remember that his back legs
just don't work like that anymore
and seems stoically clueless of basic commandments like
thou shall sit before I put your leash on.
But when he leaves off one of his frequent deep sleeps
he wanders to stand at my side
in a perfect 'heel'
and follows me quietly as I move from place to place,
standing ready,
protecting me- or drawing security from my nearness-
I don't know.

I have grown accustomed to his presence.
But when I remember to, I leave off what I am doing
bend down to fondle white-fletched ears still silken,
whisper endearments they cannot hear
mindful that one day soon my shadow will be gone.
 

Once, I believed we would be friends forever –
through the years and the miles, the bond would not sever.
When I was sad, you helped me get through
for something in me was completed in you.

Once we picked daisies and played in the grass,
looked up at the clouds and wondered as they passed.
Our dance steps were different, but always in time
I was your friend, and oh- you were mine!

     And your eyes look away from me,
     insist I offer nothing that you could ever need.
     but your heart is not so easily deceived:
     I am your friend, whatever you believe.

Our paths are different but we never cared-
we let those things go and enjoyed what we shared.
I held your flowers while you said "I do"
We shared the wonder as our children grew.

We said that we would grow old holding hands
Two laughing girls become ancient friends.
And I don't believe that we really have changed
Maybe life just distilled us to more of the same.

    And your smile is written on my heart,
    in our dreaming and tears and secrets told in the dark.
    So your heart will always be with me.
    You are my forever friend, whatever you believe.

    Your pain has always made me cry
    so I"m sorry that it hurts you to tell me goodbye.
    Call me a fool and so naive
     I am your friend- whatever you believe.