later

The truth of these photographs

 Forming there in the monitor 

Ghosts, evanescent in time 

They will vibrate into another moment

 Up ahead in the unknown mists

 When today becomes the day 

Reds and greens will fade but never these

 Around that bend of the clock 

 There, in some strange and unknown place

 We will see the forms once seen

 In morning mirrors as catastrophic

 And say: “God damn I look good!”

 We will see what we took for granted

 Calculating the years toward oblivion

 With increasing care 

But enjoying the thump within 

 Later

Without Looking

Across the kitchen table her dyed black hair shines over my natural red

 She does not see the light in my eyes, looking down

 Forgetting the un-done dishes,

 the cell phone arguments at midnight

I feel the old, familiar thumping of similar hearts

 She doesn’t know, I don’t say 

Washed clean are the ragged wounds of teen nights

 Sleepless and pacing then with imagination on fire

 Jolting me from routine, snagging my medicated passages

 I remember holding her up to see the monkeys at the zoo

 Her little body like the melted butter of love

 Dropping her off at school and watching her

 coltish strides away from me Away from me it has been for years now

 She drives away now from the sunken hull of my youth

 Down the hills to a world I will never know

 I ache for the smell of stale quesadillas, 

the wadded paper lunch bag thrown in my back seat

 I pass her money and muttered complaints

 She ignores almost all of it 

I hardly notice her thankful eyes, looking down

 That little calf look that endures

 Our cats are the bridge of what is left of our days together

 When we drove over the hills to Ventura 

Calling out the Christmas lights and laughing.

kites

Little sister just remember As you wander through the blue The little kite that you sent flying On a sunny afternoon Made of something light as nothing Made of joy that matters too How the little dreams we dream Are all we can really do In the middle of the night The world turns with all of it's might A little diamond colored blue In the middle of the night We keep sending little kites Until a little light gets through  "...will there be someone to remember a little place that we loved how the music played all night and day through the windows up above how the birds sang in the morning how the dog barked in the yard i guess that's nothing much but everything to us and that's what seems so hard" both excerpts from songs 

by Patty Griffin "Kite" and "Dear Old Friend"

School Prayer In the name of the daybreak and the eyelids of morning and the wayfaring moon and the night when it departs, I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace. In the name of the sun and its mirrors and the day that embraces it and the cloud veils drawn over it and the uttermost night and the male and the female and the plants bursting with seed and the crowning seasons of the firefly and the apple, I will honor all life —wherever and in whatever form it may dwell—on Earth my home, and in the mansions of the stars. -Diane Ackerman