All is burnt. We rebuild.

I walk through walls of advice, run into either/or questions I look for your face, your hands, all I find are more questions We sit in circles, toss the stories lightly like potatoes Grass stains, wet feet, and the core questions Some of us are small like a poem, a pot of soup Some of us are wrestling the peace and war questions We march the avenues, decade by decade the parades Ancestors make it look easy. Grandchildren roar questions Here, my little pantry. Box of rhymes, jar of honesty Here, inside rotting rubber bands - here I store questions Because the roads were blocked we had a party in our minds The guests wore sunshine. The groom wore songs. The bride wore questions The wished-for child dances at night to an unwritten tune I shiver. It’s late. And we wait for your questions

we are in pieces, we have so doggone many parts to us the rubber bands kaput that held our sweethearts to us our feet go marching one way, our songs just the opposite the map runs off, it scurries back, it feints and darts to us oh don’t feel bad you missed things - there wasn’t much to miss this skittery new campaign recalls the old ramparts to us faces to the sky we navigate free but still disjointed learning from babes who bring the undiscovered arts to us our card tables in the sunshine, we squint and shuffle and hope there comes a rebellious wind and flips the ace of hearts to us

I wanted a minute’s breath to quiet my hectic own self I wanted the voices held away from my frenzy-prone self I thought, let me close my eyes and hold my face in my hands Just like that I was in a world apart with my unknown self It was meant to be only a moment, to still my jangled thoughts But I stayed there, unhooked, unplugged, with my dreamzone self I’m a little girl. I’m a gawky teen. I’m a weird aging woman I’m a dancing fool sitting stone still alone with my own grown self Just me and the quiet. Just me held safe in my own cool hands A circle of peace around this jangly shaky-bone self The magic is usually deep in the snaking threads that keep us webbed Tonight I cut them all to spend time with my sole lone self I’m a silent rebellion, a party of one, my face in my strong cool hands A prayer of my own in this alien world, hauling home my far-flown self

By day we ran barefoot. By night we bathed in her cascade of words Pinocchio, Little Boy Blue, and all that wild parade of words The room with the wandering beds where we were little girls on boats At bedtime floated away into a fairy place made of words Oh they felt guilty they’d taken us from the land of milk and Kellogg’s So they tied us to home with their endless golden braid of words Daddy read Bibles, biographies, Newsweek, and sometimes Le Monde But Mommy read mysteries, novels, poetry, in every last shade of words Of sewing and cookery, cleaning and wifery my mother taught me nothing We traveled a sparkling world behind our enchanted blockade of words Our homeschool had number cards, sundials, paper-bag horseheads But the fabric of delight was sung, recited, and prayed with words She opened her golden throat and crooned us a universe of witchery Her free-range children built of song and stoutly homemade of words

Late in this world I’m alone in a house with my own sister Strange to find ourselves here, one rooted, one far-flown sister We started in the same place, but was it? Never quite truly Where you stood just shifted from me by a stone, sister We have seen the same things from behind our different faces Looked from different heights at this life, my first-grown sister In our two bodies we lived quick, pudgy, alto, soprano Family bath, family choir, family work, my bone sister In my view there was always you. In yours, I guess: me? Homeworlds drifted. My airplane, e-mail, phone sister. The people of earth hold their breath, one continent at a time And once again I am breathing alongside my windblown sister How am I me and not you? Whose are these thoughts, this skin? We are us and not us. I am free but not fully, my lodestone sister We’ve scattered parents, furloughed husbands, full-grown our babes It is a new time. Here I am. Here you are, my lo...

wake up, child, and in your biggest scrawl right now write me what makes you sing most of all right now we all need a happy thing, our fireworks to keep us going everything is so big and everything is so small right now how alive are you, child? is this day your size? can you grab it? we badly need the goofball, the curveball, the oddball right now I’m living from explosion to explosion. You too? I watch the squirrels leap and the kitchen ants crawl right now child, keep your eyes open, please remember these times we are witnessing giants rise and fall right now are we heading for rebellion, reunion, redemption? oh my child, let us breathe all for one, one for all right now

I’m a bad mother, my good mother said to me Snug and wild as she steadily read to me Worrying over skim milk, my thin mother called herself fat Handing down thick-food calorie dread to me I’m lazy and wicked, my tired mother said, up at dawn Boiling kettles. Her whip-judgment spread to me I never did what mothers are supposed to, said mine, Best of all possibles. Such goofy love fed to me She could not remember presidents or politics Oh but sonnets and songs she gave instead to me Late she told me, I never know what to say fast enough Clouds of sweet honey, breath of warm bread to me You turned out all right after all, said my confusing mother I wonder still what frankness was left unsaid to me