poetry lately

You can never fall in love again.
You could die, perhaps
die twice or several times,
then grow a new soul
and perhaps you could love again.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's the simple truth.
All else is shadow.

*****

Aria's voice harsh on the telephone in the morning,
I try to settle into it the way one settles into physical discomfort
And suddenly I remember being nine or ten
My Grandma at her desk in her underwear
The tone of her voice, her meaningless words
Cutting sharply against the rustlings
Of birds and eucalyptus and peach-coloured morning.

*****

I think of her two gray parents,
alignment of apathy and selfishness,
with surprise I remember that she has them.
Must she fight for herself like a colt in a bit?
Fight against a sense of self that
reaches into a time before consciousness?
I cannot remember what it is like to have parents,
only something that rose and set at the beginning of everything,
I, who, at twenty-two, joke about renaming myself,
and of all my blood-relatives feel most tied
to one who lives alone above San Francisco,
renouncing all of us.

*****

Meg's voice goes on and on
Soft midwestern voice
with notes of the guitar
Soon I will not hear and never
understood very well while I did and yet
it goes on and on
"I was searching for...
... see how we rhyme."

*****

I poured the last of the beach out of my shoes in the morning glare.
"Is the quality of white greater if it lasts a day rather than an hour?"
I think not, and so
While I loved the moonlight on the waves and on
my white ankles crossed on the sand below my dark coat
I don't look for these moments again.