Blame

 I am not too surprised when our oldest 

      let a wound

on her 43-year-old foot fester 

      for two months until it sagged 

to a blue mush, 
      

      until that leg was chiseled

down to half today.

Now I can’t decide whom to blame

for this latest catastrophe.  

She wasn’t dealt a good hand at birth

     my husband always said 

about her disability—this mind 

     that can’t count change,

and trusts too easily.

But I was the one who let her leave

     the board and care home to live 

with the boyfriend. 

Still, how much blame is mine when

      she kept running away

      to him anyway?

I can’t blame the boyfriend either.

     He does all the laundry, all the shopping,

all the cooking 

despite being legally blind

      and on dialysis. 

Blame isn’t black or white.

      It bleeds across a spectrum,

in pale grays and starchy whites,

      and bruised blues 

      like a rainbow.

Blame leads to talking to yourself

     and feeling stuck 

and wondering if things had gone

     better for her 

if my husband hadn’t died.

But blame is also myth-making.

     And offers second chances, ways to build

one more version

      of the past.

My mother-in-law's orchid

 Stepping out mornings into my sunny garden

a different kind of time unfolds.

Coffee mug in one hand, I turn on the hose

with the other. 

Cool water showers the herbs and I hear 

a quiet applause rise

in me for their perseverance—

those deer did not return.

I pinch buds from the basil and the scent

bursts like green confetti into

my nose and move on

to my mother-in-law’s orchid.

It’s lived 13 years without her now —

Lived with her a decade before that

neglected by her and now by me 

who neglected both.

And yet it endures. 

Like her, it keeps on giving.

I’ve pruned my guilt about it but 

it grows back like her orchid’s improbable 

blooms, a sweet gift and a silent 

rebuke.

Back in the kitchen,

the basil’s scent won’t let go.

Each time I brush hair from my eyes,

a wave of green spice fills 

me up and quiets the sting 

of that regret and of children 

who take too long to call.

But when they do, it’s not the basil’s calm

but the sudden, soaring thrill I feel

when seeing that orchid bloom again.

The language of light

The sewing needle I thread to fix

my boy’s belt loop 

drops from my fingers and 

vanishes

into the beige bathroom rug, 

impossible to find until 

I flick on the ceiling lamp and

instantly 

a silver streak lights up that needle 

like a stage spotlight.

I have learned that light consists 

of tiny photons, each one racing off

in every direction

forever

and each one holds a record 

of where it’s been, like a  postcard stamped

with the return address of a star or a moon

or a ceiling lamp

that my eyes read in a language 

I don’t know I know

and suddenly—needle…. there.

A miracle the universe sends

messages all the time, telling me

Look, this is what’s here, 

this is what’s real,

this is what you belong to.

The real miracle though isn’t the light

but that there’s a me

to surmise the wink on the floor.

oh how we hang on

Oh how we hang on 

even to our ficus, making sure it leans

 toward the light and keeps greening up, 

hoping our orchids only play dead and 

will burst back into bloom-- 

and stay there. 

We want every last leaf and frond 

and fern to make it, 

also our cloudy-eyed German Shepherd--

may she sit by my feet forever and 

may the cat keep watch in the window and 

may our kids and friends--all--

hang on—

our own selves especially—and 

leaf out again and again 

without end.

Oh how we hang on.

We sit on the porch and sense eternity —

right here, beside the Rosemary and Mint.

And when the bougainvillea finally gives out,

when the dearest friend doesn’t pull through,

we stare down at the ashes and 

make something infinite 

out of that smoke, see a world 

glowing at the edges

 without end.

Oh how we hang on.

Grief gets strange like that—rank and holy.

Even though we follow the science,

and nothing about forever makes sense.

My husband died ten years ago.

His ashes fell soft as snow into the sea—

no words fit for that world beyond 

atoms and forces, yet mind holds 

him intact and some part of him 

keeps glowing in the dark.

Oh how we hold on

and pray for the soul to slip

into the sky 

like a bird let out of a cage,

and there is a lasting flame 

at the center of things 

that never goes out.

Oh how we how on,

tell ourselves that flame was never born,

so it cannot die.

A whole forest of priests agrees with us. 

But it’s the wind through the oaks and 

the way the moss clings to stone that 

persuades us we will hang on too.

The part of us that longs for 

the ever ripe apples 

in our never rotting hands.

I don't know what to call it

 We raised him to be all he could be.

He was a boy who seemed spun from light.

A firefly caught in our hands--winning

ribbons, trophies, hearts--

as if it were all just games he was born 

knowing how to play.

He made it look so easy.

We thought he’d go far.

Maybe to the moon. Maybe past it.

We didn’t see what would catch him.

I still don’t know what it is.

The vulnerability, the break, the hidden thing.

I don’t know what to call it — 

the thing that caught him.

If I could name it, maybe I could fix it.

On my worst days, I want a reason.

Someone to blame.  A fix.

On my best days, I let the mystery be.

He’s a natural at everything that doesn’t pay.

Telling stories.

Lighting up a room.

Giving things away.

Not a natural student.

Not a natural earner.

Not a natural builder of a safe, steady life.

When he asks for money now, I say no.

I tell myself it’s for his own good.

I tell myself it’s for mine.

Tonight he texts: he’s sick.

Can’t work.

Needs food.

And my wall starts to sag.

I want to throw open the door.

I want to buy him a week’s worth of groceries, 

a year’s worth of groceries, 

the whole grocery store.

I remember the fake Christmas tree.

The way he stood there, 9 years old, begging

for a live one.

I’ll buy it myself, he said. 

For our family.

I think about his birthday money spent

on teddy bears.

One for every girl in his class.

So no one would feel left out.

I think about the boy who told me his classmate 

Robert Garcia was the best runner, best swimmer, 

best student.

And when I said,  I'm sure you’re the best 

at something, too, he grinned, I am.

I’m Robert Garcia’s best friend.

And now I don’t know if giving to him again 

saves him — or sinks him deeper.

I tell myself it’s a boundary.

I repeat it all like a prayer.

I don’t know if no is love.

I don’t know if yes is love.

I just know he’s asking.

His parents were sending him somewhere he didn’t want to go

We were in 8th grade and Dennis didn’t want to go 

into the seminary next year, 

though he looked like the type of boy 

who ended up there—fair hair already thin 

and splintered at 13–

surely he’d be bald by twenty–

and he was chubby. 

I thought who cares if they make him

go—no girl will want to marry him. 

I think now he might have liked me 

in that queasy boyish way because he played 

so many pranks 

and isn’t that how boys that age 

show their love? 

He had 5 brothers and I had a crush on the oldest —handsome Paul— 

already in high school. 

I would call his home just to hear his voice 

and hang up when he said, hello.

I heard on TV that his father had a hard time untying 

Dennis from the closet rod where he was hanging 

from his own necktie. 

In Catholic school, boys had to wear suit 

and ties to Mass 

so Dennis surely had a few. 

The rumor was his brothers wept and 

wouldn’t return to school for weeks. 

Paul met me in the park one Saturday 

and still could barely talk. 

We sat side by side on a wooden bench. 

I hoped he‘d hold my hand, daydreamed even 

of a kiss. 

But I could smell his sweat, 

see his brown eyes open

yet blind. 

He didn’t want to go.

That’s all Paul said. 

I feel shame now that I brought 

my 8th grade graduation photo to show him. 

Hoped he would call me pretty, ask

 if he could keep it. 

I tried different ways, believe me, 

to get his attention.

But he was weak from no sleep.

So I gave up and 

sat quietly beside him, 

thinking about Dennis. 

His round face and dumb laugh. 

And remembered the last time I saw him. 

How he ran up to me outside school and 

grabbed my books and stuffed them all

into a mail box. 

I wailed at him, Dennis Glouster!

You’re gonna wind up in a cemetery 

before you ever get to a seminary!

I wish I could say grief stuck in my throat. 

But it didn’t. 

I thought only of the irony. 

And opened my mouth to tell Paul 

but shut it quickly, remembering

It is a sin to speak ill of the dead. 

And so we sat there, the silence 

of our breathing hovering over 

that park bench. 

Me in love with him, he in love 

with Dennis.

In praise of mothers

Praise mothers who stand guard around 

the merryground of our children’s lives 

for as long as we are able. 

Praise our moods that bob up and down 

with our kids‘ own happiness 

and praise us for the love we stubbornly give 

and for all the new languages

we must learn 

to keep up 

with their evolutions

Praise us for showing up for duty 

as often as the stars

 in the Milky Way

and for seeing the light 

in our kids‘ eyes and 

helping them to dream

praise us for accepting their strange desires 

and relearning our own courage 

Praise us for letting them run barefoot 

and shirtless

For being the oar guiding their boats, 

for teaching them how to get good deals 

at the markets, obey speed limits, 

pay their bills on time 

And for not saying 

Damn I told you so when 

they fall for a scam the first time 

knowing how hard it is to live 

well in the wild

Praise us for waiting in the dark 

for them to come home from

those parties—whether or not we snapped 

Praise us for the good lies we tell them 

when they ask, Do I look fat in this suit? 

and for helping them create— like a snail

 —a protective layer

and praise us for not drowning in the sea 

of their reproaches, refusals, tantrums 

Praise us for knowing the world finds its way

in no matter what we do

Praise us above all 

for when there’s a warrant out 

for their arrest and 

we don’t erupt into flames

Praise us for tiptoeing out of their lives 

when it is time—quiet as dusk— 

but praise us--for leaving 

the porch light on.