brackish waters

     That place where you feel grief dropping off.  It’s kind of weird, you know, because it’s like letting go.  You don’t want to.  You can feel guilty. You wonder, is it lack of love or loyalty?  Or you wonder, will you forget the connection, the feeling of that person in your life?  You go through this different kind of sad.  It’s different. I just think how, having gone past that, it’s like that place where the fresh water in the river meets the ocean.  My ocean, ma g’ocean.  The ocean, the mother of us all.  My brother’s ashes thrown into the curl of a wave.  We picked just the right one, me and his partner. Soft, but a rider. 

I used to say, in my pride, that I loved the ocean more than my mother.  Now that my mother is gone, I can tell you, it was never true. It’s a different kind of love. I didn’t know there were so many kinds of love and I put everything into a hierarchy that doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.

the wild blue poem series, from the first section on grief. the entire book is available through Amazon Kindle at:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E2UU19O

whispering their names

     When my brother was in hospice I saw him and his partner of 30 years holding hands. It was the first time I had known of them to allow anyone to see their physical tenderness for each other.  I also remember that they slid their hands apart when a nurse walked into the room.  Now I know that all the nicknames they had for each other, all of them quite funny, were a way of touching and sometimes the only intimacy they felt safe to use in public.  We don’t have to whisper the names of those we love.  But if we do, it should be because it is a way to reach through time and distance and to touch them with the gentleness of our voices. 

the wild blue poem series, from the first section on grief. the entire book is available through Amazon Kindle at:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E2UU19O

Straight man blues

I miss having him walk me to the car

and you know I didn't need that.

I miss knowing he'd drive to pick me up

when I was stranded, no matter when or where.

And one time I really needed him.

My straight man

knew every

gay man in the county.

He didn't invite his own brother to his own wedding,

because he said he was a homophobic son of a….

Nobody else can call me

Jew bitch

and make me laugh.

Or tell me I wasn't really gay

because I didn't know where the bars were.

And because I didn’t know where the bars were

tell me I had to get a life.

My cb radio in work clothes,

would advise me what he learned

from his school of driving, listening to audio

tapes and developing the incredible powers

of positive thinking

between service calls.

Every month he had a new program

he'd install into his life plan; then we’d meet

at Georgie’s in Asbury and he’d show me the latest notch on his belt

from the weight he lost.

I can't help it, I miss my straight man.

I know he had a wife. I know her too.

But he was my straight man and

now I have the straight man blues.

~

Some things are too beautiful to look at when they’re dying.

~

Since my sister died, I’m too aware of life and death. 

the wild blue poem series, from the first section on grief. the entire book is available through Amazon Kindle at:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E2UU19O