wordswim

[wordswim]

diminution

when the mountain was small it wasn’t a volcano ash and soot trees lined it the rain gently touched its slopes lava flowed birds chirped and celebrated over head leaves sprouted then it blocked out the sun with its enormity fields of wild flowers stones hurled with tyrannic force judgeless at once oceans boiled it was only a small hill they looked over their shoulders and would never know

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Sojourner

the bee sees the flower the way he sees her flowing soft color silk strong and beautiful (she knows)

the flower sees the bee the way she sees him strong and colorful his wings cool her his legs powerful but gentle, and soft to touch

(but he’s not ready)

she feels smooth, and strong under his wings her pollen is pure and ready she yields it to him she gives him everything  

(not really)

he takes it with him she lets him rest on her petals he lightens her and lifts her she closes (he doesn’t realize she never opened)

and the next day the bee goes to find her happy after his work is done the flower waits with new pollen for him every day, and for all eternity

(why don’t men ever really get it)

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Leaves

This is what it’s like when a tree sheds its leaves

And the ground underneath yearns for them

Silently waiting

Inviting them to drink morning dew

Waiting for the singularity

When the tree sleeps and drops one hair

One drifting downward floating

Fluttering

Sideways and upside down

That one landed in the grass

Stupid grass

This one on a flower

Lucky

The tree shakes its head

They're only leaves

- cebridges

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attendre

strawberries. strawberry kisses.

strawberry fingers, and eyes.

strawberry love and touch, and soft kind words.

strawberry soul and long lived love, unrepentant and pure.

love. whole and all that fills a world near anyone who sees her

when I saw her.

all I wanted to do was leave with her and never come back

even though something in me began where we met

but something’s ending newly

the old grey staid me

so I’ll wait for her outside until we meet again

wishing I could see her sooner

imagining what it will feel like to hold her hand in mine

feel the small of her back and her breath in my mouth as I hold her close

kissing her strawberry lips

wishing the kisses and hand holding had no end

wondering if this is what heaven is like

- cebridges

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the still winter’s night

In Brookfield where we lived when I was a little kid

The basement down one flight of stairs was a wonderful place to be

I loved being there. We had a family room built into it

A couch, some folding chairs a table and a TV 

We watched Sonny and Cher, the Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie’s Angels

And my older brother and sister and I laughed and fought there

All together on family nights we ate TV dinners and watched our favorite shows

My Dad’s shop was in the laundry room

There was a wall dividing it from our family room

My Mom taught me to lick my finger to grip the lint from the lint catcher

My Dad’s workbench with his nighttime tools was there in the corner

And a small gas furnace for heating bits of metal to red hot

He worked at home at night sometimes to finish jobs

Dinner time was sacred at my house and it was at 5pm

Dad came home from his workshop near the town roundabout

He walked most times, and carried his important rush job with him in his jacket pocket

And after dinner he sometimes would be heard working in his shop

I sat upstairs on the carpet playing, or tried to help in the kitchen

And I’d hear the “tink-tink-tink-tink-tink” tapping of delicate hammer to chisel

In my Dad’s masterful hands

As he converted a blank piece of steel into the boldly beautiful face of a coin

To be struck at any coin mint that had commissioned him

JFK’s face

Malcom X

George Washington

Every president and every celebrity

Their faces all reinterpreted by my Dad’s hand into drawings

Into steel, from his sweat, and the pain in his hands, while we slept

He did it after we moved to Arizona

He did it for 55 years and put us through private schools and college

Today his tools have fallen silent and his ears grown deaf

His thoughts are no longer fully under his control

And he can’t move as much

Nor remember as much

And he suffers

And if only I could suffer instead and take it from him

I’d give anything to be warmed again and drift off to sleep

By the sound of his “tink-tink-tink-tink-tink”, and his footsteps up the stairs

- cebridges

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dream

I'm not sure I like looking down

I prefer to look up on my walks so I can see through the trees

When I look down I'm only trying to be careful not to trip over something

But when I'm walking in the Marais or in New York

I tend to look in front of me or up

Without thinking

Because things look interesting and I'm less afraid of tripping 

and I’m more concerned about missing something amazing right in front of me

But I’m not grand or anything in my ability to dream and think lofty thoughts

I don’t and don’t feel like I am

I have to work at feeling whole like anyone, maybe more-so, maybe not

I only know what I know, and my memories serve me

And when I see something beautiful in front of me I instinctively record it

A couple kissing

A kid running and laughing

Someone or something odd and beautiful in it’s way of being out of bounds

So when I bother to listen to myself and observe instead of plodding through every moment with my eyes down on my next footsteps

I feel the sensation of freedom from the mundane-every-moment in front of me

Freedom from the fears that can guide us

Fear isn't a very successful tool for building happiness

And it sure fucks up dreaming

- cebridges

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a warm bruising sun

divorce is a death without a body

losing someone that close to you is losing two lives

but neither of you are dead, you’re just not there

and all of the words and places, things familiar, all around you

are no longer yours together, or yours separately

a cup of coffee, a plate with a restaurant’s name on it from your trip to Italy

the kitchen knife you bought for the dinner you made together

the silence of your new place, filled with the things that came with you

it’s a mind fuck

and an all over bruising

like being beaten by a prize-fighter

only to anticipate the next beating tomorrow, but you don’t know when 

sometimes you roll into the pain and lay there in it

other times you tell it to fuck itself

and you get angry about it, sad and cry about it, and angry again

that you were you, and who the hell were you

so you wind up living each day just walking through time

people tell you things that are supposed to help and usually don’t

so you avoid them

and people ask questions that make you relive everything 

just to fill out words in the air, as they try to help through their inability to do so

but with kindness, working from what they are capable of providing

and you appreciate that they are out there somewhere

waiting for the time when you might want to talk with them 

about something else, other than this endless grey shit you’re walking through

lovers aren’t the cure but they help to stave off being alone

drink isn’t the answer but it dulls you

my therapist once told me to go get drunk

I wasn’t getting out, wasn’t having fun, too serious

and I didn’t look up

sunrises do happen again

and someday I might allow the sun to warm my face

- cebridges

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Rain

If it rains all day like this

I might not leave this coffee shop for a long while

A man just told me that my book was incredible

"A Movable Feast"

I told him I bought it in Paris

"Even better"

But as I put this book down

I know it's purpose is to guide me somehow

Provide instruction to some purpose

My coffee is cold

I don't care about the rain

Just the walk home

Which will bear me to an empty apartment

Made emptier by the actions I'm taking

That will remove the one from my life

And make this book a parallax

To the sadness he felt and I will feel

Leaving my Paris behind

- cebridges

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lions in the air

do you want to walk to the park?

or enjoy the shape of a leaf?

i’ll sing songs to you

and suspend disbelief

your name will be a riddle to steer your life

but there will be many moments of loss and strife

all the world is at your fingertips

and ships and airplanes will send you

anywhere you want to go to

let’s walk to the library and find a great book

counting to 20 on the way

finding the squares in the sidewalk

and on friday we will go to the zoo

feeding the bison, hearing the lions roar

and feeling the coolness of the crisp autumn air

remember,  your life and your hope are made to soar

each day you make all of your tomorrows, and much more

- cebridges

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pain et de la pluie

we’re not even together in our heads

it’s just too much sometimes

yet it’s all I can think about, because she’s too near in me

and too close to all the things important to me

with everything under analysis

it’s hard to find a way to navigate through my thoughts

they’re just too many and conflicting

distance can be conquered physically

but not emotionally

unless we both want to have that proximity

not just sex

not only familiarity

holding hands, walking in the rain in Courcelles

getting bread where she goes

eating food where it’s good near her village

where people have walked hand in hand for centuries of bread and kisses

everything changes when life creeps in between the cracks of distance

and time isn’t a healer

- cebridges

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Keys

I used to think I’d get to a certain point in my life when I’d have too many keys and I used to think old guys were strange taking big jingly wads of keys from their pockets with shaking hands why didn’t they just get a few key rings optimizing what they needed to use each day and then I realized that I am one of those old guys now old in my wads of keys and when you have that many keys it’s because you use or need to be able to use at least half of them every day you keep them all with you and if you separate them it’s easy to lose them becoming little lost souls left behind from the long years of hard work over years you spent connecting yourself with all the things those keys unlock and you don’t want to forget about a single one

[wordswim]

Apologies

when we say, “can i please have another?”

let’s instead say, “i’d like another”

there’s enormous power is in the smallest words

let’s stop asking permission to live

[wordswim]

Coffee with Picasso

she asked me where I took the beautiful photo of those stairs how did I find it? "It’s high up, in a low building”, I said you have to climb to the top of these stairs but before that, you have to have gone to Paris and you went there because you were trying to forget, and to remember, and to replace something you wanted to lose so you get there by starting in Los Angeles eight years before and you walk out one night into the rain, carrying nothing but a backpack after talking for the first time in ten years with the family you lost and with that backpack you leave your home and life behind and feel a stillness, and the white whip of crisp night air on your face while staring up and finding that you don’t actually want to die tonight because your footsteps sounded firm then your job becomes your refuge and you sleep on your office floor this is the best rest you’ve had in as many years as you can remember and you repeat this night after night for a while until you see someone and until they see you, and more in you than you and this is who brings you to their couch cooks for you loves on you takes you into their bed into their life away from yours and into and through two years of depositions, and money draining divorce and you escape with this love of yours, and with your Mother, on a trip to Paris and you walk half bent over and have a seizure in Paris, in the airport, but refuse medical help you just want to get home and all the while you feel so damned lucky to not have the old pain and all the while you mistake that absence of pain for true love because this person found you because this one is special because this one so you marry them so you publicly love each other now and you go to Paris, again, for two weeks to live your honeymoon but it’s not what you thought it would be and you’re not what you thought you would be and you come back to your lives For two years you both try to make it but you're both broken so it slowly, and painfully dies but this pain is less than the old pain so you ignore it and you know you can't be hurt like you were before and so you live forward, take risks that could make you lose her thinking things will work out because you want them to but you drink too much wine think too much of the time accept the fact that that she likes to be alone, in her thoughts, in bed while she winds her hair and seeks advice from others and turns away to go to sleep to begin another day and when August finally comes, your birthday is the last time to feel married September brings divorce and a new wonderful, great, accomplishment job but you’re more depressed than you thought was humanly possible because that life died and the hope of it and hope with it so you go along with the divorce, finally, after months of depressed struggle trying to accept the paperwork and the final paperwork arrives and is ready months later like slow water drops, filling a pool, it finally comes to its level the dream job delivers a chance to speak at a conference in Russia and in the back of your mind,  you allow yourself to consider diverting your trip back, to stop in Paris even though your broken heart lies there in its streets and you go to Paris on your way back from the cold of Moscow and rent an apartment in les Marais, two blocks from where you honeymooned because you want to stand with your face into the wind and see and feel all of it With all its pain, without her so each morning of those five days in Paris, you eat an omelette and drink Americano in the same cafe you went to on your honeymoon now thinking and being alone, considering what to do each moment without your companion a walk down to the Seine, or is it too early for a glass of Bordeaux? and the morning after you arrive in Paris, you walk to Notre Dame Cathedral and attend Easter Mass because it’s possible, and it’s there, and so are you staring up at the ceiling, looking out at the crowd, feeling alone but alive you cry and afterward, get up, walk out, and around, and back, and have a coffee but you enjoy the peace and feel some bits of the love you felt for Paris again while each morning brings the last day closer and the love for Paris replaces some of the pain of losing your love you ask your apartment owner for the closest business that can help you send your divorce papers to the US and you walk there with your divorce papers and sign them and send them two blocks from the cafe where you went every morning, with your lifelong love, on your honeymoon and you sit back down in the cafe and feel nothing but want to feel everything and instead feel resolved waking up on your final day, you go to the one museum that was closed on all of your trips to Paris the one that was closed on your honeymoon The Picasso Museum And you remember how much she wanted to go there and you miss her again so the museum turns out to be remarkably close to your apartment and you enter, and see all of the exhibits, and slowly, methodically enjoy your time it’s only your time, yours and when finished, you see a sign for a cafe up on the very top floor of the very old mansion that houses this museum and you climb the spiral stair reminding you of the spiral stair in the Latin Quarter hotel where you first stayed in Paris with your fiancé, and  your  Mother, on a wonderful trip And you remember the time you took a photo of that stair at the top, but it included your shoes, and you regretted that so after climbing these stairs at the Picasso Museum You find yourself at the top of them looking down being reminded of that first Paris trip and of every trip you took with your lifelong partner who you just divorced with a pen and a scanner In the cafe from your honeymoon and with tears in your eyes and a lump in your throat with this being your last day in Paris you aim your camera downward but you avoid your feet And with deafening silence filling your ears “Click"

- cebridges

[wordswim]

Two Words

I saw the man standing utterly still It was the most terrifying thing. ever Was this real Could he hear us Did he see options And as we watched, the propeller slowed to make a lighter chopping sound Its wind felt crisp and fresh on our faces On his face Beguiling he and us of the severity of his situation Wind cool and crisp with the wetness of the rain-soaked asphalt Sun dull and muted, allowing silvery light to rain down all around us We all drew silent I went silent, all throughout The man walked closer to the blades He stopped and turned his face toward us, for moments, and looked at each of us in the eyes Each of us And the pain that overcame us translated this differently At first it was a narrative for horror and sadness, of grief and rage Now it was transmuted And we understood The pain of a thousand losses, and the knowledge of no more beginnings In all of his more than 60 years With all of his wisdom carved into his deeply lined face, like record grooves playing a history of torturous pain We all felt it And our hands unclenched And our jaws relaxed And our eyes changed from saucers to pools of tears Chop chop chop went the blade Quietly as if it was shushing the air around it to a reverent silence Chop chop chop Filling our nostrils and his with the richness of fresh bread from the patisserie behind us And with the melodic fragrances of ladies’ perfumes Women gasping near me without daring to move Chop chop chop The man then said two words to us, before turning forward again Before moving to his fate Before moving us with his fate “Lean in” - cebridges

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vos yeux souriants

When I saw you you smiled and waved Drawing my attention to your peaceful, soft demeanor Vos yeux souriants You were on the next street And the next after that Until my heart knew where to go And expected you to be there With your soft hair, curled around your ears and gently swirled to perfection Beguiling me of my intention with your bedroom eyes Leaving another life behind to try to steal your kiss Another vin rouge? Yes. Another. And a walk around every arrondissement You're in all of them I'm there somewhere Underfoot and waiting and walking Stretching my hands to your buildings in the night air Listening to laughter Witnessing private kisses on your streets Letting the warmth of a single lamp guide me to another place to sit and and drink And wait to be ready For you to make your entrance -cebridges

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the sawgrass pondered

the sawgrass cut me, and the coolness of the brook made the sky bluer, and the wind milder (my hands reached the water) the barn behind beckoned with mazes of hay

days found new labyrinths, and old decay met our youth, a willow tree danced its flowing locks in our faces, wind combed once, there was slow walking, hands in pockets, silent thoughts, displaced by decades, learned eyes stared at the fields, ears listened to the silence of birds, and trees, and machines books found hands, and someone gazed long out a window toward miles of years

the coolness faded, and the stones felt round and smooth on my toes a familiar hand held mine as we walked, knee deep, and we climbed onto wet soil beyond behind us the path, ahead, newness and promise between the fields, toward the train tracks swirls of pies in the air, hot and sweet with blackberries and the sounds of dinner echoed near sunset dusk, and the fields swayed their way to night

who really knows what is to come (when we have moments of perfection) sky was never so blue as before it rested my feet have never felt so loved as then by the softness of the earth and its smooth stones behind us, the sawgrass (pondered), and the brook waited in coolness until a very long tomorrow

- cebridges

[wordswim]

melting ice

if you try to sneak up on it it will spring away finding a new patch of shade to hide in but if you sit quietly breath easily think kindly believing yourself because you are truthful and honest and just then it will slowly raise its eyes to you meet your gaze even if its ears are pointed backward and it starts to smell the air to sense if you are true and real if you’ll hurt it if you have something to feed it and then, slowly, like winter ice melting underneath the new spring sun it will raise to its legs still bent and ready to bolt and gently softly move its nose toward you taking a deliberate chance to be met by a gentle touch from your fingers and if you are very still and very understanding of it it may put its head in your lap so you can scratch its ears and take care of it the greatest thing is that it won’t forget your kindness if you accidentally startle it because you feel fear or angst or self doubt it will run but the next time when it hides in the shadows and you sit very still, in calm lovingkindness it will come to you sooner because it remembers and knows you are true it missed you

- cebridges