The Sixth of July 1984

You fall through air,

a wounded bird,

down, down to rocks and water,

a dark baptism,

you who were not born to hatred.

That strange catechism.

I remember my own learning.

Math, writing and especially social studies,

studying the social.

Social awareness,

the bitterness and confusion,

why and because.

A boy is different, a boy is himself.

Born to love his own way,

his own choice until the

ragged words tear at your clothes,

the fist holds a stone, and

you take flight.

At the George Floyd Memorial Protest, June 19, 2020, Rockland, Maine

A voice calls out

lie down in the street

when the alarm sounds

face down

hands clasped together behind your back

eight minutes forty-six seconds.

So we march in silence until

the alarm sounds

then we all lie down in the street

face down

hands clasped together behind our backs.

I’m a grown woman

but I’ve never lain down in the street before

don’t know

it feels like fear

feels like humiliation

like being a child when your father

takes off his belt and says

pull down your pants or maybe

some guy at work comes up behind you

traps you between the counter and

his chest his groin and you

squirm and plead because that’s

what a caught body does

trying to get free.

I’m a grown woman with a grown woman child

but I’ve never cried in the street before

don’t know

the tears are just the first surprise

don’t know how soon a face

face down how soon a chest heavy on the hot

asphalt burns to lift how soon a neck

stretches to hold the lips above the grit the dust

this is how soon

shoulders pulled back ache to slacken

hand holding wrist and wrist held

strain to break free

to make an arc of grace above

the shame.

A breeze off the sea ripples my shirt.

I turn my head

watch a gull

sail cool and sweet until

a voice calls out

he said

I can’t breathe

and our breath stirs the dust

he said

Mamma, Mamma

and we invoke love

he said

some water or something

and we thirst for justice

he said

please sir please please

and we pray the names of our brothers and sisters

and I watch the gull skim the air and disappear until

all I can see is

the cloudless the blue the empty of all but light

blind

bright

sky.

I Am Now an Understudy

for the part

I was to play this spring

A flurry of cancellations—

classes book groups dinners Passover Seder

No entrance to rooms I would have inhabited

Instead, in my house, I move from room to room

straightening as I can’t

the mess of the virus

And what’s under study—how

to stay steady, how

to replace the term for what we’re doing—

physical not social distancing—how

to find pleasure—so much more time for baking and walking—

without eclipsing the dark source

of this new found time. How

to go deeper

into the mystery of time

taking time saving time losing time

And what about the eleventh hour?

I remember the long car rides, how

my parents laughed

when before reaching

the Holland Tunnel, I would ask

Are we there yet?

Whatever’s Offered

As I listen to Beethoven’s late quartets,

I find silence

is not the absence of sound.

Eyes closed. Time vanishes.

The emptiness at low tide,

it too will refill.

Listening, I vow

to take whatever’s offered—

a crack in the wall, the smaller piece of pie.