Pieces

I've lost you. 

How did I lose

an entire person? 

Someone so much.

Someone so SO?

In pieces, that's how.

First a lost faith--just

a tiny faith--

just a mustard seed.

Just that one 

promise you said

wasn't 

for me. I knew the plans

you had--hope and

a future--but

those weren't mine,

turns out. 

And then 

I lost your voice

on the phone...

The minutes of missed

calls added up

it seems

to words 

that fell into a void...

crossed an event horizon.

I look all over--

the junk drawer.

The dryer.

I take car trips

to where you said

this or that

in case the echo 

is still there. 

The choir loft--

the church's 

rafters seem 

like somewhere

your words might 

have gone bumping;

a balloon

too little 

appreciated.

I find your voice

in dreams.

I watch them drift

into the sky

riding a burning

New Year's lantern.

Your words

in old letters

I keep even 

as I keep

losing you 

in pieces

over 

and over

again.

Grief to Water

I want to take my sorrow to water.

I want to give it to rain

to make its own way.

I want to cast my heartbreak on the river

where stone-skip held-breath 

heartbeats flow to some unknowable sea.

I want to lose my loss in creek beds

among the thirsting roots of sycamores

drinking in secrets of hidden hill hollows.

I want to give my grief to water

to wash my mind cloudless

and leave petrichor behind.

Doppler Shift

When I stir sugar into coffee 
and I think I detect that 
subtle harmonic shift
I remember asking you—

Whenever it’s a question of physics,
I can almost hear your voice again.
When the phone rings—
your name on the screen—
then cuts off…
the sound of silence is no old friend, 
but a cruel Doppler shift

that came with such speed

no intellect could prepare us.

Sometimes, in dreams, I hear your voice again

Sometimes, in dreams, I hear your voice again,
and wake to find that sound is breath and I'm gasping.

If I could fill my lungs with your voice, I would

gladly wait to exhale.

Always before I could embrace exhaustion

and sleep a sleep of silence stronger than sorrow

but now I lay listening, desperate for those speaking 

dreams that come as scant currents in stagnant air.

Forgetfulness

Why would you allow yourself

for even a moment to forget the sorrow 

attendant upon old loves all entangled 

with new and aching knowledge of 

the erratic stone-skip death 

makes upon the surface of being

—oh, because only 

in the momentary forgetfulness

could I draw breath 

before plunging again

Conversation with a Condemned Cricket

 The three-legged, poisoned cricket in the kitchen
greets me, all accusation—Why 
the tempting toxin chamber
—was not my life already so
much more painful than yours? 

It was only, I reply, that 
I couldn’t bear your singing
—not when I wanted to cradle
 —so quietly—
 my sorrow.

Like this, he said, I

cannot sing.

It was only was only the echo

of unbearable should-have-been 

you must have been hearing.