She fumbles through
a decade making sculptures
from leftover cardboard cores
(exposed when the toilet paper rolls
run out) with empty flax seed bags
tucked inside them.

Sometimes ground. Sometimes whole.
Sometimes the seeds themselves
become part of the piece.

Predating pandemic solitude,
sunshine would filter through
half open venetian blinds.
She would configure and reconfigure
her found materials
into premonitions

about what the day outside might hold.
Rarely repeating the form
or ink she used to write the words

that would become the glue
to hold it all together.
Always invisible—
mostly sympathetic. Messages
only oak galls can whisper.
Only a little blue vitriol can decode.

And the tallest trees
in urban pocket parks
would bend and moan.

Every poem ever written
is a form
of steganography.

I’ve written of lovers
in the past. Lovers

who were just passing through.
Those who passed on

their wisdom and symptoms.
Some passed on seconds.

Others were merely looking
for a mountain pass to traverse—

any kind of defile would do.
And then there were the ones

who hoped to pass the ultimate test.
The ones making passes

at anyone in sunglasses.
Yet others hoping to pass

as dead ringers for the heroes
I left behind the hotel

on the bluff overlooking the sound.
And lovers who have simply passed.

I dig out the tiny Hudson key, open
the mailbox, pull the contents
from the slot, some spilling
into a puddle
of print at my feet:

clothing catalogs, restaurant flyers,
a credit card application,
a nonprofit appeal for donations,
and one white envelope with
handwriting in black ink.

A real letter. A radical act.
Return address Honolulu, HI.
Before opening it, I pause
to consider the miracle
that is an old college buddy

who has committed to writing
and mailing a letter to a friend
each of the first 100 days
of the year. It’s round two for him.
And I’ve made the cut again.

An art form I once dedicated myself
to with a religious fervor.
Who knows how many I composed
during the peak years
between 1972-1994.

Boxes filled with replies
in all dimensions and thicknesses
stored in my closet.
I’ve saved them all.
Okay, there was that one

I ripped up and returned to sender.
(I kept a photocopy.)

Hundreds from my first pen pal,
my grandmother. Just as many
from my mother. Dozens and dozens
from my sisters, even a couple
from my brother. So many gems

from my father
I still don’t have the courage
to reread almost a decade
since his death. A potent mix
of loving guidance

and mirrored reflection,
soul responding to soul.

And all those missives from friends,
spanning bridges of time,
from elementary school
through college and beyond
to those years

in New York City and New Haven.
And those first few in Minnesota.
Love letters from old flames.
Could there be a greater
romantic gesture?

Postmarked Westwood, Kokomo, Mashpee,
Shaker Heights, Trenton, Indianapolis,
Arlington, Somerville, Madrid,
Cleveland, Auckland, Medina, London,
Lima, Athens, Cincinnati, Lagos.

A conglomeration of little anecdotes
and philosophies and emotions
exposed on paper.
I can hear the voices of the departed
sing with a simple unfolding.

I dwell in the delight
of the slowed
pace of it all.
Then I snap to.
Time to read Tim’s letter.

I know it will sparkle
with light and humor and a deep well
of unabashedly honest thoughts.
It will be a window opened
just enough on a cold March day

to capture a momentary gust
of who this person, Tim, is.

I savor the old anticipation
just a little longer,
then expertly slice open
the top of the envelope with my finger.
Like riding a bicycle.

Sober as a bright sunny, cold winter
morning. Late at night.
She searches beneath a lamp post
for hours without luck.

No one comes to help her.
No one asks her why she’s there
or what she’s doing. And she’s not making
requests or offering anything up.

Hours become days become years
become half a lifetime.
Keys? A five dollar bill?
Her soul mate? A dime? Watch? Trust

in the process? Whatever it was
she lost is lost
to the dark slippage of time.
A rotating jail

of juvenile barred owls
found nesting overhead
keeps her company
for the duration.

It’s one degree above freezing.
The morning sun shines
without inhibition.
The next snowstorm won’t begin
for another 20 hours.

One more blind alley covered
in 3-month-old ice
to discover, or forget.
Everything that collects in the bottom
of the bag belongs somewhere else

to no one
you or I ever knew.

Which one of us ran away?
Which one was left clutching
the handles, waiting
for rope burns
to sting again?

I tied your boot laces so tight
one night, you claimed
you had no feeling left in your toes.
I muttered under my breath:
“What feeling did you have to lose?”

+ we both laughed.
Didn’t we?

Years of foundation shifts
+ wild weather whiplash
warped the hardwood floors.
Missing compliments + pet names
+ a handful of marbles

pooled in the middle
of the bedroom.

Everything got misplaced—
eventually including us.
Some mornings,
like this one,
I find myself

looking under books + in drawers.
I retrace my steps
+ end up 1,200 miles east
inside a subway car
heading too far north.

No one exits the train
at the last stop.

It’s come to this:
She’s reciting poetry aloud
while standing fully clothed
in a clawfoot tub.

It’s come to this:
He’s whispering answers
to unanswerable questions
while lying naked in a nearby grotto.

It’s come to this:
The ball of flax twine slips
from the kite’s talon, lands
on a bluff, bounces, then rolls

over the edge into more thinning air.

It’s come to this:
She doesn’t need to dry off. Instead,
she loosens one screw, and the entire
bicycle seat comes apart. She can’t forgive

herself for such clumsy disassembly.

It’s come to this:
He remembers barnacles,
quickly grabs jeans and a jacket,
packs up his collection of lightning

flashes, heads to the pier.

It’s come to this:
She ties a string skirt around her hips,
reaches across a canyon
for an apple slice, knocks over

a wobbly shale palisade in the process.

It’s come to this:
Wind blows traces of salt and burning
dune grass across the sound
to the only place where they might meet

if it doesn’t crumble first.

the self tucked beneath the broken
cellar door. A message
to all of us who would sculpt
drunken angels from stale snow.
Those of us who would wear ourselves
out on sleeves cut from subway maps,
sewn together crooked of course.
Hand me another bottle
of you before regret
covers my body head to toe.

I live in this universe instead.
It’s riddled with inner islands
floating inside ships
overflowing with irony.
I wait waist high in reservoir guilt.
I weigh recursive lies in motion
against static stick figures
spilling drinks mixed in reliquaries.
Kisses I risked giving in girlhood
collide with this single twisted limb image,

which survives inside itself.

This failed identity.
This littoral outside.
This lifted city.
This rising upside.
This solid illusion.
This storied inside.

Another forgotten parallel world
where we rocked ourselves to sleep
under the waves and trees.

I’ll try to go it alone.
I put The Waves back on the shelf.

I squint to flatten my perspective,
so it appears

you are still standing beside me
on a secret sandbar. We all know the truth.

1,200 miles + more than half a lifetime
separate our bodies.

You always were an island,
no matter how many bridges got built

to attempt to fasten you
to the rest of us.

I’m no island, no bridge,
no wrack line, no bluff, no cape.

Not even a spit or some patch
of tidal flats.

I’m the dinghy

that gets dragged off the beach
into cold water during emergencies.

I’m still learning not to interfere—
to leave the oars behind.

when she will no longer remember why
she came here

when the saddle tilted too much
the wrong way

when she will recall how they were holding hands under the table

when only the right ulnar nerve
has become entrapped

when the island will be covered
in snow

when the left hand has worked so hard
for so long without complaint

when the redheaded beauty will deliver
the scent of rosewater to her again

when the giraffe has batted
its long lashes one more time in the alley

when she will no longer remember why
she hurt herself so viciously

when a loud “no” was necessary + not
always enough

when a full-throated “yes”
will begin to happen naturally

when she used to sit on an open window
sill + gaze at the Bronx street below

when she will turn 59 next
when Virginia didn’t turn 60

when she first discovered
she loves the minor key

when his fingers will do
the remembering

when she lost the callous
on her left middle one

when she will lose her voice forever
when she loved his best

when her love affair
with the Mississippi River began

when will she take the last walk
alongside it

when the ocean was beginning
to die

when where will be
the waves

when she has no more
when’s to give

then it will be time to stop
running away from home

—————————————————————

Note: The title comes from a soliloquy by the character Rhoda in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.

becomes the yolk
trapped inside the yes
of the no longer young
becomes the first yawl
wrecked without a ship this year

when the yawn
of the snow-covered yard
becomes an old lover’s yen
to become the only yowl
true desire might yield

when the yarn
tangled inside the yawp
becomes unreliable as a distant yerk
or another memory of you
becomes what is left to yearn