Notes for the New Caregiver

Notes for the New Caregiver

Some days I will eat a big breakfast, some days I will sing.  Some days I will obsess about my socks, some days I will share my grandfather.  Some days I will walk down the

bike path, I will tell you my secrets or call you my own or leave you for dead or tear you limb from limb and ask for breakfast.  Some days I will ask you to apologize

immediately, though I was the one poking you with a fork and you will do exactly what I tell you because I was never anybody's father or patient, God dammit.  Some days we

will share a towel some days we will find the sanctuary some days we will fold all my clothes into triangles or find our seats along the first base line at Wrigley and I will beg to

get high with me and take me to church if you know what I mean and put gas in my car and sign your own check.

Some days I will preach to you in pure Bohemian and you will plead with me in Hebrew.  You will bless me and I will kiss your feet and defend your family and change your

tires and fix your sight and mend your heart and walk you home and long for less and give you my dreams and then have to pee and forget what I said and lose track of

time.  Some days, I'm so sorry, it will be all be up to you and later you will miss it terribly but never tell me.  You will negate me and ask me for a raise and put my shit

together and hold me up as a sign to the centuries,...

and then some day, maybe not unlike this one right here, this one with birds in song in the yard in the green in the hope in the light... we will we... we, we will... oh God yes

we will, we will

DECLARATION OF A PENTECOSTAL HIPPIE

Oh my beloved, all my beloved, go my beloved and find my beloved...

It's as though your heart just breaks wide open and pours forth pure love... ALL PRAISE... radiant joy... and the tears just flow and flow, I weep sometimes fitfully and then sometimes careen into laughter, laughter of heaven, ecstatic LOVE as though you were at a funeral, a really good one, at a wedding, present and aware at the rising of a dead person.

Here come my hippies now with peace, ready to love me and send me along on a journey in the Spirit.  Here comes the juice from day one baby,

Little Sun has spoken:

HERE COMES THE SUMMER OF HEAVEN!

I ASK FOR HELP

I ask for help

And squinting face aglow I pray a spark-lit midlife of the

Creek, exhale her nations humble witness, ache for new frost

bare feet my walking as she's only known, raised up at first light, how to taste

the day naked and grateful as willow in song and ask for help.

See the speck of an eye aglow a face, do you know what it takes for the sun to reach through your morning window and pray you awake and squinting?  Your eyes are midlife slow unpasted, a grain through the night your molars grit from supper spit and finish your spark-lit note thank you for being Joy.  And the yard's while you slept become a pale frozen face never knowing the sense of your naked feet your flame hurling your dance and dawn up alive and gathered as a man, a sense from cold oaks standing witness pale and silent.

November creeks and burbles its new frost witness.  I crave the northern birch, pray tongue to my teeth and the cold dark stream coiling the dune pale and down the mile or two as I could walk away, crave the dew fallen by degrees and the taste of craving snow.  I'll day away, exhale I fear and lose the sense and midlife ache instead and humbly paste the trees inside and never face asking.

Because it is not easy being Joy or how to taste, because my walking eyes witness how a spark-light travels its course its trillion prayers on pace to keep on going to kiss a 

raised up moon and trail its naked way to earth and landscape coil the song of mountain willow walk and wake the oak and bare your home-light window through the pain to taste your face.  

Because the tall waves gone to seed to feather tip the autumn beach grass held its place as without feet or seed you did pass by all Indian sewn and through a sky the summer gone.  Because by grateful day you frost and trail for song and evening snug the ocre bowl spun clay fired sweet for squash upon your plate. Because I cannot touch the willowed world without it, taste the bending near and grateful tree held pending in its grace for now I raise it up as Creek in nations song as joy and fallen dew as ache, I naked thank and crave and praise and ask for help.

RECOLLECTED


Don't try to remember.
As it turns out

in denim and bloodstream
suede as buckskin I was -- only

sunray, snapped twigs and scar, one
stone and a stream warriors
get to to weep, a journeys

end and who you'd want waiting
with a way through tall grass, a
blog trailing cabin smoke out line

by vanishing line, its

chimney whispering dreams
it woke to at daylight
in the new air of morning.

I was what sighed

heavily whenever you wondered
mountain trail, pined in a warm
glade, met metallic thunks of the

shallows at the bottom of the boat, fuel on water making
rainbows at the surface of a soul,

what swam deep as though sent, threading

lines beneath placemat pads of lily, flys
sly green landings in the sun, what had
a notion of a sunfish with boy-gills, who knew the way

of mermaids, tackle at the fingertips, burning
to tan and given how to sit still the million years it took to get out
on the water, far enough, they could not call us back.