this is just to say hello again

An unedited poem about my grandma that I just found. Written two years ago.





now I am seeing
the sailboats out on the water,
little cabins
small sleeping,
dreaming,
making waves turn 
into ashes,
blowing the tides my way,
settling in a sleeping window.
all is at a stop,
all is letting this be simple.


the sky isn't what it was two days ago
never light anymore
not a burden but always heavy
and you are still
there
where left like rain in potholes
you were
thinking only the same thing.
never asking what made our winds
strike our faces too hard
when we're not smiling,
what made our hands
hang useless and unwell.


the door closes too softly sometimes,
shutting out something,
a life missed
maybe
love
though
always there.
unsure faces never
let themselves ask the questions
that matter.
my father peddled his bike downtown
for long enough through the day
to see stars in the streetlights
so


it doesn't make the weather bad
or me sad
or children crying over
spilt good nature.


but it's the face 
always wished for in dreams
and finally seen.
I've dreamt otherwise;
black birds on poles near the sea,
white skies turning.
our hair is seen always in these,
heavy, walking, brooding,
only minutes passing since
we were all fast sleeping.
now my fingernails are white and blue
now my eyes are stormy
open waters
and I'm watching freights and barges
in the bay, whispering 
pleasant but ghostlike on the horizon.


you've loved your skin
you've loved sons and lost some.
I am not gone, only away
throwing clocks into the sea
with bones wide awake,
the smell of your bedroom
stuck in time, this time.
poetry is always just pages of seconds
never lost,
feet never buried in gravel
hands in pockets of snow
so I'm writing to you of sky.


it isn't what it was two days ago.
I am not what I was one week ago,
I am crystal.
it seems the sky is always heavy
people never truly passing by
all meditations
all emergencies
all bleakness of paths,
this is
all 
so weary.


but the love used as a word of truth
not lightly
is under my bones this morning
white, easy, honest,
as the last good smile cast,
soft and free in your eyes.
a wandering satellite, and the smell
of dullness, dreaming,
a constant hope never muted
and the winds break, 
wheels turn under,
traveling, blooming this shoreline,
wrestling, all trees shaking
deep in their spines.


you've kept warm in blankets,
made love to softness.
the world is a simple 
breath on your blushes.
a bicycle loves the world it drops into
each time it steps off of a curb,
this is
all
so valid.


nothing mistaken.
nothing lost in meditation
little prayers
finding peace,
little poems,
finding love
cracked and aching but alive.
the birds
lonely souls never without company
don't sing, rather cry
and I am wondering who for,
if I should be crying with them, for them,
against them like a thin stream
but never answering, they are all
in sleeping. 
where is the crying from then?
they are all within dreams
on the wire.
each is a sadness,
the world also sleeping
so nothing singing at all
but they still cry in one sad song.


we don't hear, just see tears soaked
in the morning blue feathers.
they are tied by what holds our wings
ties our ankles down,
holds our dreams together.


finding answers is only one thing
you can do in a forest grove.
when I walk these days
wearing gloves and dirty shoes
I see leaves on the ground, ready.
the last ones on the trees
are deep in the branches,
in the smell of rain.
they are melodies
black and shaking.