Morning Light

Morning Light

For Jay

Perhaps it was a Sunday

I can’t remember because it was one of those days

held like the sun’s heat in rocks

that precious, sometimes unexpected, welcomed warmth

but it was morning, and I had slept in your arms,

and I didn’t open my eyes hoping for love

because, like this morning, everything seemed right there

and at breakfast I felt light cascading

across the Westport River, through the cottage windows,

onto my face, my tired, pregnant body

while I was drinking a little coffee

with milk and cinnamon

and eating pea greens with my fingers so I could see

closely such intrinsic beauty

And I was looking at you (though you were looking away)

and I was thinking of you and how I could spend all my days

with this feeling of sunlight, with this palpable love

with your not needing to go elsewhere, but here

with you sitting next to me,

drinking coffee in the morning light

with those pea greens, that green against your eyes: serene

---

Some days I wake up not knowing how to feel loved.  It isn’t as though love isn’t there, but rather that I am so sensitive to words and touch.  And so if the day doesn’t begin with “I love you” or a thoughtful kiss or embrace, I am yet to know how to feel the assumption of love as something strong enough to sustain.  But this morning was one that made me feel whole in terms of love.  I woke up on his shoulder, swaddled in his arms.  I woke up feeling his body’s warmth and feeling so comforted by his smell.  And then came, what seemed, the first warm morning sunlight of spring.  It flooded the space, seemed love itself, simplifying the room into an essence that couldn’t be retracted.  And in this space it felt so good to drink coffee and eat pea greens and look at him and think what I always think, and yet today to also say so silently into sunlight, I love you, I love you, I love you.  I would spend all my days with you.    

---

February Tulips

February Tulips

I bought these tulips in February

because they matched the sky

the day you left, that slight orange

fading, folding into cloud layers,

another sunset that we look at

from different angles, places

and now, with you gone,

I wonder as I trim the stems

if there’s a way to arrange them

to forget these thoughts of her

whose daughter sometimes stands

here, wanting a flower for her room

I move petal upon petal to hide

images of how you, perhaps,

you looked at her pregnant body

felt her skin, drank her milk

bought her tulips to look at

while you were there, at sea

and she was left with a baby

your support, and flowers that maybe

reminded her of the sunset

on a day you kissed, left,

and yet I suppose there is no use

in rearranging flowers to forget

the sadness of an always leaving is

all I seem to know it seems

a series of passings, of sunsets

of sunrises, told through flowers

and here I am, perhaps another

version of another woman

who held her pregnant self

and trimmed tulips to see

something more than transience

something as present as this

this deep beauty in February

these orange tulips against baby

---

There’s a certain intrigue in the contrast of holding bright flowers against a grey New England winter sky.  The stark grey, so enclosing, and, to me, so oddly comforting, juxtaposed to what seems a color so foreign, that it all becomes so arresting.  Fourteen years ago I bought yellow daffodils in February, and I still haven’t forgotten how their yellow changed the course of my late winter.  And now these: these orange tulips under a February sky.  They spoke of her, of departure, of the cyclical nature of life, of love, of a flower. I saw in these the sadness of feeling a repetition, just another version of someone’s pregnant girlfriend.  I saw every kiss they must have had, every flower he must have given her in the midst of winter, the way he told her he loved her, the way her must have felt her growing belly before saying another goodbye.  Though, simultaneously, though I saw such a pattern, distilled things into the mere simplicity of category, of night and day, and sunrise and sunset, and love lost and gained, I too saw each intricacy.  I realized that I had never seen this day, this particular light, that I’ve never held these flowers, that I’ve never seen my body like this, that I have never loved a him or he a me, and we have never loved each other on this day, under this light, with these flowers against my pregnant skin. 

---

If Words Could Be

If Words Could Be

Looking through glass at this

February sky threaded with cold

grey-blues, slightly softer lavenders

imagining if words could be

muted like this, this sunset

that so subtly whispers toward closure

and if they, like persistent noise,

could find a certain hush

under this, these crystalline drifts

you see, I don’t know what to with these

words that fell as simply as this

this snow that shifts everything I knew      

yet they seem a more solid something

something I can gather by hand and place

under this, these white layers

and let them be as something under snow,

a handful of auburn leaves there, suspended

matter under the seen surface 

maybe they will become as winter’s leaves

something of spring, folded into the structure

of globed beauty, the sun, the early daffodil

that spherical reminder of warmth, of words

of the heart’s topiary that does, with time,

as this sunset, this snow, those leaves

---

I was a few months pregnant and washing dishes at a house that isn't mine, on a holiday that often reminds me of how little close-family I have, and thinking about how my father used to hide the glass pickle in the Christmas tree, when someone quite casually said to me that the expectations are quite high for the baby in my belly and that I could only hope to have a child as wonderful and beautiful as the one my boyfriend already has.  Not wanting to be impolite, and quite frankly too struck by the comment in the first place, I softly nodded and smiled and carried on scrubbing, all the while wondering why someone thought that an appropriate thing to say to a pregnant woman who is not the mother of the referenced child.  Now perhaps if I were the mother I would have viewed the comment more as a strange compliment, but since I am not, I saw in it my boyfriend's past with the woman he impregnated, I saw a mother who created a child perhaps more wonderful and beautiful than one I could raise and develop, I saw competition and comparison.  And though I wanted to shrug them off and let them slip down the drain with all the particles from the pan, I found too much pith and stone beneath all the word layers.  And so these I've held onto throughout this winter, throughout this pregnancy.  But it seems, as a few months have passed, that I have allowed myself to bury them enough to give them space for transformation.  What will come of them, I do not know.  But as I look out at these winter landscapes and sunsets, muted or not, and as I feel my own body expanding and creating, I can only hope they are nothing more than matter for another wonderful and beautiful contribution to this world.  

---

Still Within Each Other

still within each other

for Jay

You’re gone

there, at sea

perhaps only a horizon,

distant thought of here, of me

though I’d like to think

you’ve seen me, my

silhouette somewhere in the wake

somewhere in the line

between sleep and dream

as I see you cast into this

winter sky, this shallow light

these familiar trees, always

you, it seems, standing there

as something more than memory,

you’re so far away that all I have is wish

and I wish you could see me today

as something more than picture

something more than transposition

something more than reflection,

than subtle dissipating fragments

because today I see myself as more

than a filament of doubt left by mother

I see something more of this light

and perhaps if you were here you’d

see in my eyes what I rarely see

and you’d fathom another depth of me

  yet perhaps you see me always

as whole, as something more

than I see myself, than this

sadness from a mother who worked too much

who tried to love and did but was tired

and you see, this is what I’ve been seeing

when I look down at my pregnant body

I see myself as her, her never seeing herself

as something that could be enough

as something whole, as something of depth

and now this, this heartbeat within me

has brought me to see a certain grace

and I feel untangled from a part of her

though I was once a pulse within her

as she was within her mother and

I wonder if she looked at her pregnant skin

And saw something more than a mirror

reflection within of a mother who clung

to bitterness, who left her with this,

this fragment of an unexplored self

that grew as concentric circles in water

unknowingly expanding toward distant horizons

and you see, though you can’t see me,

today I feel separated from mother after mother

and have shared with this other

this exploring, this pulse of earth

this feeling of rock and snow and happiness

in the depth of a mountain’s silhouette

and I just want you to see my cheeks

after the cold, and notice how my hair

held the snow in its curl, and how it shaped

my face and how when I looked down

I felt beautiful and loved and seen

as though you heard me hundreds of miles away

and reached out your hands to brush my wet hair

behind my ear, to warm my cheeks, to kiss my lips

to make our hearts beat a little quicker

as we, so distant, are still within each other

---

Though there seemed a vastness in the night sky, there existed within it a space as enclosed and tranquil as this distant landscape framed by nearby pines.  And though my route to reach this narrowing space might appear the same day to day, it is part of this natural world and part of a rambling mind, and thereby filled with such intricacies and changes.  There is a certain comfort in choosing the same approach, as it becomes meditative.  My mind can relinquish to the grace of breath and movement and being.  Today the air was winter-thick,—damp and warm—,and here it smelled richly of evergreen.  I thought of how many times I’ve arrived at the same place, and how many times I’ve arrived alone.  I thought of how many times I’ve looked into that distance, through these trees, between those mountain silhouettes, and felt a sense of awe.  Yet today, 22 weeks pregnant, I could feel the slight movement of another body within me, and had such a clear realization that I was sharing this heart’s experience of night and light and rock and mountains and breath so intimately with another.  It was the first time in my pregnancy I was able to feel as though I wasn’t just a replica of my own mother, bound to repeat a cycle.  I wanted you, there at sea, to see me as I experienced this.  I wanted to look at you and tell you what I felt as I looked into tonight’s night sky, and I suppose I did, because this love does have a way of drawing something so distant, so close, so as to be so beautifully enclosed within.

---

I Want to Tell You How

I want to tell you how

I want to tell you how

orange emerged from grey-blue clouds and how

the darkened ridge became your cheek at night

                    and the glow, the unspoken safeness of your skin 

I want to tell you how

this orange span of light is the sadness of distance, is

absence stretched across the sky, lined reminder of

                    looking up and looking out without each other

I want to tell you how

this orange is my thankfulness for you, your presence

for memory offering the past in this present

                    to walk through my days with only these distilled fragments

I want to tell you how

this orange is seeing summer in your blue eyes

mercurial sky, and I, held there in iris, in water

                    where I never knew I could feel such solidity in love

I want to tell you how

this orange holds a depth of connectedness

one that was, no longer is, absent under the grey of our winter

                    and so now I see you on the surface of every flower

I want to tell you how

this orange is my love for you, this love is as color

constant pulse of absorption, a phenomenal reflection  

                    a gift so overwhelming, so encompassing, so drawing   

---

It was a dusk of enrapturing light and wind.  I was held by grey-blue clouds to the west, by burning orange to the north, by a sherbet streaked sky to the east, and by a rising moon slightly south.  The orange in particular compelled me to think about the first nasturtium I saw this summer.  When I saw it, he was out to sea, and we hadn't yet had the chance to behold a flower dabbled space together.  And so though I felt love for him, I did not see him within this, and so my mind traveled elsewhere and to a familiar line about a circular orange flower.  But now, having spent these warm months together, having cut flowers for the dinner table, having made crowns and worn them in our hair, having them as a backdrop to home, I see him in every nasturtium, in every flower.  This proximity in absence allowed by seeing someone in all things seems like quite a gift, a painfully beautiful gift, one we can choose to keep unraveling and unraveling as deeply as we dare to know.  

---

Quiet Pulling

Quiet Pulling

that sun rising

from the overlook

the narrows in the distance

perhaps

two ridges enclosing as arms

forming

a space both vulnerable/safe

perhaps

it was that sunrise that became

            this sunset

here so far away

           days past, though

its orange-yellow glow sounded

with each movement

over snow at sunset

suspended moment where it may

be falling or rising below/above

the ridge, here

leaving, too, an orange-

though violet path 

its narrowness regarding

it held me in its view, let me

be there, again, safe in closing,

opening, thin strand I

thank you, it, for

letting me be there before its quiet

pulling

away

that’s always

coming.

---

The sky: orange-violet-golden, calling. The colors of the present drew me, quietly pulled me toward a distant memory of a sunrise thousands of miles away.  And so, in that arc of the darkening and merging ridges, it seemed for seconds that two worlds unfolded to hold me in a comforting suspension of time before quietly pulling away.      

---