Rainbows have always let me know everything is going to be ok. I moved this year and the rainbows were extra supportive!
Moving
As I dismantle my house,
my life,
my house,
moving after 17 years,
I begin to spill things.
A full tumbler of tea when with a client.
I miss the toilet when I pee, flooding a stall floor.
I have spent a lifetime accumulating.
Books, clothes, kitchen things, linens.
Each represents a hoped for future
and now I ask
do I hold onto the ruffled velvet jacket,
perfect when seeing a Shakespearean play,
even though I’m not much for Shakespeare?
Or the clogs that represent the earthy girl I was,
but threaten a twisted ankle?
An eyelet tablecloth for imagined tea parties I have yet to conjure?
Rather than boxing such items, I”ll release them
adding to my keepsake kerchief, the soft smell of cedar,
the resident owl that found a mate
hooting during the last days as we loaded boxes.
They mingle with relics from other places I love and left -
the Pacific ocean, oak trees, jasmine, both star
and white jasmine with its pink petticoats of petal and stem,
lightning bisecting black, deep thunder.
I visit my eldest son and his new family across the country.
I sleep in their twin guest bed and live out of a suitcase.
I feel age sixty, seventy, eighty, age six, seven, eight,
paring down to pajamas and a book before bed.
I watch videos made by a 60 something fashion model
who lives in a tiny studio by the sea,
surrounded by pashmina scarves and moon shells.
I watch videos of people in Japan sleeping in pods
slightly larger than MRI machines.
I found a small wood box of ashes as I was packing up the house.
My mother in law’s, Eva’s.
Her daughter bought Eva a big house in Virginia to spare
her New York apartment’s three flights of stairs.
Eva quickly declined without the wafting of a neighbor’s pasta sauce,
the pilgrimage to the laundry and mailroom, saying hellos as she went.
We only visited once, briefly animating
the two guest rooms, living and family room.
Eva never walked to the gazebo overlooking the picturesque pond.
This is the first poem written on my phone.
I didn’t hate it.
With thumbs instead of finger or pen,
each letter is a seed poked in soil.
I move from the east to west side of town,
passing homeless encampments.
I wonder at the trash,
what is all that shit accumulated and strewn?
while I guiltily take load after load to the thrift store and dump.
The spilled tea hit the wall, seeped under a book, the tissue box.
My client was in crisis and I brought my attention back to her,
told her to keep going, my cells attuned to both tears
and the water saturating paper, carpet, paint.
As I release dear/near decades,
meaning is distilled to photographs,
journals and offerings made by hand.
Children’s drawings, a pine carving of a sun.
There was a ceramics phase, for both my kids and I.
My pieces were fine, thin vessels with fancy glazes,
specified moss, hyacinth, fern mist, iceberg.
They are all long broken.
My children’s are heavy, little crude saucers and dishes,
when dropped, they dent the floor.
One is big enough for only an olive,
for ten years now, others have housed sugar,
salt and bars of soap.
I turn them over and smile at the names,
carved without curves, into the rough bottoms.
As I pack, I don’t cushion with tissue,
but let the creations knock around,
like a bag of geodes
or stones I might someday polish.