My son has been fascinated with the idea that humans are all made up of atoms. At the Foothills Learning Center on a day with heavy snow, Aimee taught us the difference between an atom, a molecule, and a compound.
The Stranger: Aimee
The Word: Truth
The poem I wrote:
I tell the boy the spider is dead; I found it in the washer with our clothes, and I left it on the table. Come look. From another room, I hear him scream in a way I have never heard before; I run to him. His eyes are wild because he has seen a ghost. The spider is alive, he says. It walked. The wind, I think. I look where he points to the spider, as dead and crumpled as it looked in the washer. I poke it; it walks across the table. I want to scream but don’t because he is watching. Instead I hold him in my lap, all of him, his legs folded like spider’s legs into the solid web of my legs; I hold him until we are both sure of the miracle, of the living-bodied-walking-truth of it, and I let him go before we both stop being afraid.
The Challenge: Do you have a poem in you on this word? Write one here.
February 21, 2020 at 2:22 pm
A Good Omelette
I know why you love the truth
and it’s not about virtue.
The weight of ambiguity
has worn you out.
Truth speaks a single voice.
It is seamless,
monolithic purity.
Will have no false gods before it.
But there are always other gods
and surprises…
an unlikely choricero sauce
on your omelette.
You used to grab a bite
dashing through the kitchen.
I remember laughter
and wonderment.
How long ago?
We should know
when we die,
but sometimes we don’t.
February 24, 2020 at 4:29 pm
Hello Poetry for Strangers.
February 26, 2020 at 7:04 am
Truth is a an empty word
Without expectation
Without demands
Without needing something to be other than it is
Truth is a simple word
Full of beauty
For it looks no way
Truth is a binding word
Mortar between our actions
Building freedom up
Because
Of this
Truth is
A Full word
Truth is
An Expansive word
Truth is
A Liberating word
Because
of this
Truth is
February 28, 2020 at 9:11 am
Truth Is
In another life, we say, and step back three paces.
Truth is, Sugar, I don’t even know what I want in this life,
Else I woulda gone after it by now.
As a kid I pulled taffy with buttered hands:
Stretched it over and over ‘til it made something of itself,
Sweet and firm and just how taffy ought to be.
All this pulling and stretching ain’t making me sweeter
And that can’t be right.
In another life, I say, but my bones know
I’ll be lucky if I never see you again.
February 29, 2020 at 10:06 am
The Truth of Oars
So much truth, so little mind
To tend it. My oars do not
Break when they break
The water line. The mother
Does not break when she breaks
From the hospital where she tends
Her daughter month after month;
Her smaller girls do not break
Into tears, stone-faced at home
Or sitting on a small rise
By Braes Bayou. And I
Do I break? The truth of oars
Is that so much breaking is illusion:
My boat will answer
My oars’ question and break
Through waves against great
Gusts of north wind that lift
Tall waves into the manes
Of white horses.
April 3, 2020 at 9:43 am
For better or worse
Sheltered together
After thirty-seven years
Is challenge to truth
June 1, 2022 at 8:34 pm
Your words are your alibi
But your words don’t match your eyes
They don’t match your fingertips
That beat against the tabletop
Click, click, click
Your alibi is waning
Because I am reading in between the lines
Darling why do you lie
Why do you bother
Click, click, click
If you don’t speak truth
Who does?