Define any thing:
A summer breeze, a tin roof, a
Snowflake drifting, a girl, a father,
Your boyfriend or your sister’s new shoes - a teapot.
Create its place, joy, sorrow:
Draw lines around
Its embedded time, and sound, and forms - what did you
Make for each? A name,
A face, a scent, a flower-
Filled field on a perfect
Day, the moment of tragedy knowing, looking
Down, (always down, then,) or looking straight and up, (always straight and up - When a then carries a belief,)
A background, a time unmoving, a
Movement, an alternative, a feeling, a fear, a safeness?
Am I this teapot, topped
With a dragon, tail curled and
A living flower tattooed in Yellow-green pigment on my body?
Am I an implication, only: the space of a teapot,
A space needed in
A time needed with
A movement -
A sideways moving, discretely, inside – so like a thing among other things, defined.
We make a warm drink together, you and I,
In society,
Blending the flavors of
Dried things that don’t become,
Not yet, until
You no longer need the space I hold
And I no longer need
You to create the teapot
I am, yet with you, in
Society, we remain – dragon, tea, and all.
December – home for the holidays
I. christmas shopping, charlie
It’s everything,
False and true,
Bing and Elvis,
Blue and White,
Nip in the air,
Freezing as
It pulls within
As I step
Over, reach and
Open the
Door – inside it’s
So-o warm,
With so many
Things to
Hope for, Gabby
Would so-o
Just love this and
John, I’m sure,
Would not expect
That under our
Big, fresh pine -
A good one, this
Year, filling
Our main room
With Christmas scent and
Red and gold,
The same bulbs, the
Same lights – oh,
I should properly say
Which, which lights
(The lovely drums
From Venice,)
What gift this, (a
(Beautiful
Set of colors:
Oil, Rembrandt,)
That (eighteen
Hundreds, a Belgian
Teapot,) who
Is Gabby, (my
Beautiful
Sister,) and John
(Always, of
Course, my John,) and hurry
Through the line -
I’m meeting her
For tea and
Scones, blueberry, at
The Starbucks
Near the exit:
They’ve come for
A stay – Gabby
Makes me think of
Cinnamon,
Vanilla and
Fresh nutmeg,
Her nearness, so
Close – sometimes
It can be
Cold in the
House with the two of
Us alone, John and I,
But not now, not
Today or
Tomorrow or –
I should text her,
I’m running late, a
Little: whew,
She knows, always
She knows, her
Beauty is that
Quietness,
Finding warmth
Through judgeless lips
That remind
Us: we belong.
I so like
To feel her smile.
II. christmas tea, gabby
This is not a 'my' place, this sort,
The filtered music for this part of town
Chosen in a room of men and one or two
Too tight women in too tight suits in too
Tight heals that tend to follow
Rules tightly within tight days
And tight nights and tight meters
Well defended enough to tie
The world in one tight knot – I
Breathe with a pause and consider,
Sometimes, each breath
For itself, for the moment, not
This not that not him or her -
I am not a Starbucks woman
Though I, to, find a thinner part
Of me bounded sometimes.
It’s not only fears delineating
My world of doing but carelessness,
Our disease, our era, un-careful
Of moments and places – still
The unthinned parts yearn and love and
Want - my husband’s chocolate body
Engulfing me into the night, inside
(Oh, he is large, sometimes clichés
Correspond) and out, held close, un-forced,
The safest place on earth for me, for
Those my moments never broken.
Ah, there she is, my dearest Charlie,
Heavy-packed with heavy bags with
Hope-filled gifts and big teeth – my Lord,
My sister has the most disarming smile.
I’ve yet to tell her, you know. Sometimes,
Like I said, I pause though sometimes
That pausing may be an excuse for the coward
Functioning through me, an odd sort of
Cowardess, unaccompanied by fear:
I wonder, it says, though I know:
A piece of her would break and will,
At first, in the knowing I carry a child. A chill,
The evening will move away from such warm cuddling
As squirrel cubs in their tree-den – she’s always done that,
Re-making past moments and wrights the
Best she can, sitting close by the fire, Mom and
Dad were still around and here, then – but
His scent, father’s, old tobacco, nutmeg, mandarin,
(Clive Christian Number 1, oh,
He did have such the ego, the world and more
Would not withhold such a voice, unresistable
Still Mom resisted behind and so and so and so again
The gnaw of all those other perfumed scents
Through his suit, his skin, his
Cock – Charlie would purse her lips and frown
If she could hear my dipping bitter there,)
But she tries and it’s sweet enough, warm enough
And through her trying, still,
To compromise her life into uncompromisible
Roads, she reaches, almost,
That gone world, a little, wine, women
And song, (Mom would play her Steinway then,
So many hours in the days between,)
But we are here and so are they and
So the piece of them I carry now –
It will be a girl, I will name her Charlie,
Less to lessen the sting than to say:
You, to, are here and will remain in me:
I hope my daughter’s teeth and smile
Are oversized – there I go again,
My coward’s way as my barren sister opens
Her chocolate-like mouth,
Smiles and waves and ‘Hey,’
Hug and squeeze and squeeze again,
‘It is so-o cold out there,’ the coolness of
Her red-tinted cheeks meet me and I:
‘Yeah, it’s almost perfect,’ and
‘Did you find,’ ‘No, but I,’ ‘What do you,’
‘Definitely – not!’ ‘How’s John been,’
‘You know, it has its ups anddowns,’ ‘Yeah, hey,’
And on we’ll go enduring these nearly perfect days.
III. christmas day, the teapot’s memories (belgian, 18th century)
Yes, a sort of silence
Held as the night eased through –
Though beneath the humble plane a
Crescendo of colors in the topology below:
You could hear it, like winter fireworks reflecting
Off ice-covered rivers and ponds and snow-powder
Drifting away in the light-shimmering winter wind,
Echos of the coming day already mixing into
Those of days past, songs and sweetened wine,
Laughter and suspended sorrows.
Held in tight, beneath, I waited, listening,
Unsure - though this is not my first, I thought,
I’ve been to so many such a day – I am so
Old and older than the brightest moment,
And remember them I do,
Days and the people in them,
The faces in such a long line: dukes
And merchants, wives and servants,
Slaves of different colors and hair done
In too many ways – maybe I don’t remember everything.
Then the first easy shouts of the morning,
Timid but pregnant with return,
Longing reaching through the smart wrapping,
The clean-scented box, (red, it was,)
I’d been laid within to satisfy suspense,
Extend pleasure, create surprise – it was so,
Once hands slowly revealed me – his face
Revealing in turn: the white-to-blush,
Opened gray eyes, a slight tilting back, after,
The instant before the feeling is shared.
In the sharing, a joy and lessening, the letting
Go and letting in of unmoraled humility –
Then the hugs and ahhs and the kiss,
Wrapped in arms as I was wrapped in my box
(To extend pleasure, satisfy suspense,)
While music played – always music
These days with at least less hesitation: choral, waltz
Soft and harmony vibrating the metal
That marks my form – whereas I
Am only space within, a teapot’s volume.
Shrieks and sighs of the happy kind,
Then soft appraisal, the rumpling of
Papers, the taking of gifts away and back,
And away I was lifted to my new place and there
Listened, hearing the spaces within
Their forms of holding, people, that in turn hold distant
Others and faraway places: fathers and mothers
And their parents still, moments that tilted
The volumes that changed their holding forms that
Oozed into the next new and next again, until, well, they,
The newest they, though newest and oldest remain, always,
Those voiced spaces still here. I taste them
In Charlie and John and Gabby – I know their names,
I always have, somewhere - they feast
With each other in shared grace as big
Plates, rich and colored bold, the Christmas meal
That doesn’t end, taking all those here
And there through the end of days, gone and
Yet to pass, through song, (women and wine,)
Into the evening, drinking, holding, sipping my tea.