A New Poem

Hold Onto Me

When did we lose our breath?

I am standing in a field of crab grass and moss,
life choking on life, ants building mounds of dirt,
mansions of earth. We play baseball until sunset,
running over used car mats with balls shredded
by lawn mowers. The mats smell of worms and snakes,
the underground, the innards of life. Those beetles
that roll up when you touch them. Even a pinky
can be dangerous. Even life.

I am watching someone leave home again, a sibling
who lives somewhere else now. We were four, and then
I was one. Over time, I remember the memory of them
fading, ghosts or old sheets of music. Slowly lost, ink
bleeding into sun-faded symbols. Hieroglyphs
of old friendships. I turn around and understand
the roots beneath my feet were mine all along. I
hold my own branches and boughs aloft, the wind
blows. I am breathing in the morning of it.

I am holding my mother’s hand as we calmly ride
to a meal after term papers, to share memory, or
life blood. We stand in forests sometimes and hold
onto the pure being of each other, onto shadows,
silhouettes. Other times we walk side by side
and watch the evolving orbits of our relationships,
parent and child, guide and follower, friends. We
hold on, we hold on, and let go. Exhale.

I am returning from another home, another place,
a land that felt more like home
than home does. The moss
is long gone there, the mats
long destroyed. The earth
reclaims her bits and pieces,
a forest full of swirl-marked dead ash,
the purple-brown winter
of Michigan, fields with no end.
Until it ends.
I am exiting the air-ship, walking down the well-tread paths
upon return; I hold the air in my lungs.
But nothing
happens. No exaltation.

No sudden shout of steam, the mark
of breathing in the cold. When
did we become so desperate?
I have run
through forests searching for a mystic gateway home.
rummaged through old, musky closets
in search of hidden pathways
through snow-light, Turkish delight. I
have walked down roads
I never dreamed or imagined I could
pass down, scanning soil,
every speck,
for something familiar. But
the body grows cold,
the lungs constricted by the eerie certainty of living.

I am sitting in my bedroom as the sun reveals her petticoats,
a goddess obscured by land masses
and buildings,
by asphalt and the heated discussion
of global forces,
winds and jutting eddies. Humans being. I
remember the texture of life in my child hands,
a wild feline with matted fur, I could spend hours sorting through
his troubles. I could watch the sky blend blue, black, red
into a sense of completion. I recall the promise of that,
the blue neutral sky and I just sitting with each other,
the green-warm love of earth and sun and wind, and breathe.