salvaging

Keep falling for boys that can't love me,
trying to salvage what's left of us,
children of the age where the war is never won—
like backroad trucks pulled by magnets away from ourselves,
sold for spare parts.

To distant from that loss, of being wantneeded in the world,
I salvage
other things—
cedar planks by the railroad tracks
where bone-thin birds nest—
these once were a barn,
held sweet hay, thickropes calmcows
some young man's livelihood.
Piling them in my truck, each splinter
is a hail mary, a curse I let rest
against my teeth. The house of love
is not filled with velvet or satin,
covered in glitter or stripped clean of
bright hair, or even bound in black leather...

As a child I saw houses collapse in upon themselves
like trees falling, some ghosts's life
imploding nail by nail,
sometimes for years.
Houses came down and fences
went up. Dad told me how lucky we were,
to have redwood fence posts,
their invincibilities
while my life continually crashed down
around my ears, left my sparrow bones
ringing shrill as bells.

I could barely see over the
blessed golden grass
that fed each sweet-eyed cow of ours,
clambering over russet posts
I thought I could smell the sea,
the shaded dirt, baby ferns curled
like sleeping cats—I thought
why not build
with this
as the years got leaner and leaner
and the boards on windows I looked through
were torn at by breezes and typhoons,
sometimes pulled off by pianist's fingers and
doe-eyed promises. Saving relationships--
with my father, girl-dog, old car,
these boys that come to me all soft hands
and words that twist like willows
is a dusty age-long fight,
a journey by bus and foot pushing
a shopping cart, folks avoiding
your crusted crinkled eyes, and you trudge
up the road towards a dirt floor
and missing walls and sagging cross beams
and a single chair you could never find
a cushion for, thinking why am I trying
and how will I eat tomorrow,
staring at a pile of redwood planks
as boys leave helplessly,
wordlessly,
one by one.

Some step on nails,
some I send the dogs after.
They never think to bring tools
but termites, magpies come in their wake,
a reverse plague of reminders and constant cleaving.

When the fences go down
the houses will still
be falling, ravens always at the door
as I struggle to lift one
last beam
one steady once-tree
to keep the roof from caving...

"this is what summer should be"

a blackwinged brighthearted fairie ladygirl said about this poem... Not so sure.

-

deergirl summeride-

I know I'm free when I let the wind dry my hair on a sunset bike ride, some ghost-transplant from a mother-tea-tree-teacher time, a city truly connected finding roots in this sun-burn suburbs, let the summer storm air tie knots in my hair and leave them—as markers, a fence against fingers, tokens of a brook-smooth lightning-laced affection.

When the first thing
in my morning
is sleep.

Then sun-tea from stolen packets, my grandmother's glass jars.

That makes your face third— like bronze, like a charm— how I wish you were here, and not. How actuality ruins ideal; the sour taste of mixed teas steeped too long.

Know I'm free when the bike veers off the path as oleanders and jasmine sing my blood to summer and I feel no fear, only enchantment with the deadly fuschia blooms, only humble amusement at the wry twisting of my own course.

When my bike-body follows behind a young mother, quiet as Deer, her daughter smiling into my eyes just before I take that turn, around the twilight cedars, too quick for rational minds to catch. I'm a ghost, a deer-girl, the breeze gentler and sweeter on my shoulders—fuzzy nape of my neck—up those too-long-arms—gentler and sweeter than any touch yes even my own, and I wonder if you see me like that sometime—swift and dear and desirable, like a color or taste from childhood, a joy you could always feel—mother's first smile, your father's spicy-scented sweater you wore that first time to the coast, soft against six-year-old-skin, that decaying-salt-bright taste to ocean air familiar to you as cigarette smoke to me—how deep those images go—wool red, slate-gray mornings, freckled skin—I wonder,if that soul -secret isn't so much falling in love as it is chasing after it, some completeness we cannot name but even scientists pine for.

I know I'm free when I can see my beloved from across a meadow and pick my steps carefully (deer girl drawn to your salty skin, the grain of your bluesweet eyes, what salt waits behind them—vast, dry oceans my feet were made soft to cross) and I am still wary, no matter how much your dog-eyed soul tells me never fear, darling – rose and jasmine sing themselves under my skin a song of summertime without leashes, my tangled hair tying me to the foxtails, dry grass, fallen trees crisscrossing the meadows...

No matter how close I get I can never tell if there are ropes in your hands—I'm always prancing round, caught in some jewelled glass jar, anxieties hot from the sun, glass box of ideal and reality, sunset playing on the planes of your face like a running brook in my mind, a stream of things I wish were like the landscape flying by—deer-girl a ghost at your fingertips, mind far-flung even when our skin makes some wildflower palette put so close together—deer-girl almost out of reach, weighing jasmine blooms a cedar-rosemary-melody, a two-wheeled summer against a doe-eyed, fearful freedom...