Life Lived Happy (Vacation)

There is no Where to look on a Great Big Boat in a seasalt breeze and not see Life lived happy.  There is no space without a dancing man (his head burned badly, bald) and a laughing woman (the openheart chest scar white down her middle).   There is no place the phone will work to call a dead father with news of the weather, to tell a dead mother the sunset would please you (when I remember NOT to call them) on a great big boat in a seasalt breeze there is no Where to look at the happy Lives eyes dry.

Skeleton Crew

We gather together to talk the logistics
Of where we will meet and when
And to whom will be given the tasks
That surround the collection of
Turkeys and trees.

Fewer gifts to give this time,
And fewer places to together in.

We carry it heavy as we make our plans

And our knee-bones bend,
Their fissures full of grief.

Some Yesterdays Ago

Johnny Cash sings us across Missouri and into Kansas. I whistle Ring of Fire above the roar of windrush. Dad taps out the rhythm on his knees. His fingers are long, like Picasso’s Old Guitarist. I think about injecting his insulin the night before– readying the needle and depressing its contents into an arm of frail bone and fragile flesh.

I remember different days in another time when he would make a muscle and swing me suspended, three feet above the Lucerne earth, both of my arms wound around one of his.