Notes from June II

I have seen I move in seasons.

To arrive at the season of making
I must first learn to live the waiting.
I must live sticky limbs, heavy spine.
I must live desert days.

In my room I have hung
a gold ring
the size of my cupped hands.
It is what I want to go through
when I am able to be
a column of air.

Its edges reveal dark
wood, no shine, but so
do all edges. No matter
how thin the metallic
slice, how pure your
vision, how sacred
what you made.

I have found hard edges
in recent seasons, and frequent
reasons to complain. I have sat
on a chair and been afloat. 
I have wanted not to be.

That season is passing. Mosquitos
line this new air, leave bruises on my
skin, but look how brown my limbs
when they can dangle free.
I greet summer with fruit
and fizzy drinks. I smell
a magnolia over a fence,
swing across a branch to
somewhere new entirely.
It is pleasant to be.

Notes from June I

Again I break my heart.
Again I spill
ash on my wrists.

A lover leaves. The leaves arrive.

Everything is early, even when long
overdue. I must pay my dues.

My head clears slightly, I open
the maps. I read every language.
I learn new things. I learn that
I failed at everything I did not
know. I failed again.

I want to go to the mountains.
Somewhere with a small river.

If I could go with my mother
and my friend, I would say
      what I feel
and they would hear.
Everything might be easy.
Eventually we might
have to say no words
at all. River silence.

For now, everything fails.

Which is to say
we get to try again.
I get to try again.

The words feel flabby,
all stretchy skin and no insides.
Still I say them, six hours down.
Overdue, but I arrive. Here I am,
still writing. Here I am, loving,
even if wrong. Here I am, all
failed and flabby, all hurt skin,
all the same words each time.

Will something break?
Will something grow here?