POETRY – Keen & Daring

Last year for my birthday you sat laughing in a hot tub

in a rented house in the desert, more at ease with the

friends gathered than with me. I knew for sure.

This year, just this afternoon, you took me whale watching, in the

freezing Alaskan Spring. It was raining hard ice on the water

from a gray sky, and you were violently sea sick.

The boat circled the bay for an entire day for the sliver of a single

whale so black with the sea that it was barely visible.

I teared up with delight, holding a hot chocolate like a child.

I know that you struggle and that you don’t trust women.

I love that you threw up for hours without a single word of complaint

so I could see an illusive creature for half of a minute.

I’m reminded of the lone bear in a tree that we spotted on our

drive to this small coastal village that runs the off-season tours.

You are moving out on a limb, intentionally. I know for sure.

I came to the desert for a home.

Upon arrival I make my way to a small

real estate office to meet with a man

in his mid-fifties, a self-described “land pirate.”

We drive in his open Jeep far into the mesa to a

low tan-colored ranch house, the front

door busted in, crossed with caution tape

and a stern letter from the FBI.

Beyond a row of sage brush I notice

a large container half buried in the sand.

Walking out to it I find the dugout entrance

and peer inside to see rows of empty plant beds.

I think about my grandmother’s house,

a 3-story “colonial” outside of Boston,

with a rose garden dotted with her hand-built

ceramic memorials to the saints.

I am fighting the urge to want that kind of beauty.

Choosing instead to join this dusty tribe of

calloused sailors of the dirt and heat. I am

contemplating how to grow roses, underground.

Category : POETRY