Into the Burn Pile

And were there, in the end, diamonds?

One stumbles into the realization of who and what they are, makes peace with it, goes on. Death was hard to countenance in Fall River, it was cold and everybody had a story to tell. Trees creaking, crows flying off under the lambing moon. At a late juncture I find myself wanting to live in a city, a place to sit with coffee writing poems, a library within walking distance. Sit with me a while?

Rice noodles fried in sesame oil, tossed with leftover chicken and broccoli. It feels good to be forgiven and even better to forgive: this is a law. What is wrong with my heart, opening as it does for dogs and falling leaves and little else? Grocery shopping with Chrisoula on Friday evening, happy by the seafood, happy by the crackers, our foolishness (our foodiness?) our salvation.

Cloud-busting with the kids at Child's Park, later getting ice-cream at Bart's, eating it on the steps of City Hall. I get teased for talking about the hippies but I saw it how I saw it and was saved accordingly, to what else could I possibly witness? Looks can be deceiving indeed. Finding that old notebook in which the sonnets I wrote in my head while driving back and forth to Hartford are kept, my handwriting hard to decipher, flipping through before tossing it into the burn pile. Imagine fearing children.

I was happy on trains in Europe, and driving alone around northern Vermont before dawn, and with Denise who was beautiful and wrote better poems than me, which she did not know she could do until I showed her how. White birds flying into the light. I've lied a lot about New York City and what we did there. 

No is such a lonely word. This river has carried me to the sea a thousand times and here I am saying again, again.