is it
grasping or clinging
to try and remember
his voice?
shattered / fragments [4]
1 Reply
Author Archives: bussokuseki
shattered / fragments [3]
His clothes are waiting.
There’s a pile on the floor,
tucked into the corner
and ready to be washed;
another on his chair,
haphazard but clean.
A few others sit in a basket,
neatly folded.
He would have picked through them
the next morning,
getting ready for the day.
I pull out a pair of black pants from the dirty pile,
notice a bungee cord strung through
as a makeshift belt.
I fold them slowly,
tuck them under my arm,
and, for now, leave everything else behind.
shattered / fragments [2]
A police sergeant
stopped by the house this afternoon
with my son’s wallet
and an accident report
we don’t ever have to read.
He’d been first at the scene that night,
then sat in our living room
while my wife called me
in Los Angeles.
Today, I offer him a cup of coffee
and hope he’ll stay with us for a moment.
shattered / fragments [1]
I now understand
the meaning of
shattered.
I can’t even tell if it is okay
to smile at my wife–
but I’ll go for a walk,
and while I am out,
get her the box of chai
she was searching for.
—
I don’t know where to begin. I’ve lost my son.
I don’t know where to begin. Perhaps deciding to simply sit here, inside this not-knowing, inside this feeling of being shattered–perhaps this is something Zen gave to me, having turned out to be nothing I was actually looking for.
I don’t know where to begin. Except to return here, reach for my pencil and scratch out a few of the fragments I find.
Dear Mom
There’s a hurricane coming.
Before the rain begins,
I’ve cut some rudbeckia for you—
I found a few faint coneflowers, too.
but most everything else has passed.
I arranged them just now
in an old glass bottle
like the ones you collected.
The wind is picking up and
the birds are calling.
Every once in a great while, something emerges. I suppose it happens quite often. Every once in a great while, I notice.
untitled
the afternoon sun is strong
even though apple blossoms are weeks away;
only the slightest hints of early-green
appear on the knoll horizon
smoke drifts from the pile of collected brush
as my father points out streaks of grey
in the stubble on my cheek
—
i always wonder if there is more to come
ten
it was a purple one that first caught his eye
as we walked through the field—
perhaps some sort of clover,
but i don’t know the name in french.
papa, he showed me,
adding the smallest white daisies
and a few others i don’t recognize—
a tall thin grass, and
even dandelions, too.
they might not last the car ride home,
but they’ve once been collected,
spilling gently over the edge
of the vase he made of his hand.
—
My first post here in more than eighteen months. I think the moments have still been with me. Perhaps I’ve been better at not becoming attached—or perhaps I’ve been neglecting to pay attention.
Rudbeckia
the rudbeckia aren’t usually still in bloom,
so close to my birthday,
and even these are brittle –
but in the patch near the small gravel pile,
perhaps sheltered by the overgrown viburnum,
a few stragglers remain.
if I’d noticed them last year I might have arranged
one more vase
and placed it by her bedside,
so she could have turned her head
and thought to herself,
how I love those black-eyed susans.
Square with Rounded Corners
The picture of the two of us,
pulled from my suit-coat pocket,
leans on my dresser.
Square with rounded corners,
faded blue ink–
Kodak May 1980–
printed on the back.
I scanned it for my lock screen, too,
so I can see myself
leaning up against her in the slanted spring light.
The first few days after
Mom taught me how to die
were simpler–
but when I walk outside,
leaves are turning,
afternoons are darker now.
I Peel an Orange
Our home is a pale shade of blue,
one you might find looking west in the spring
minutes after sunrise,
or in a robin’s egg whose green tints
have been replaced by gentle grays.
It was once a deep red,
more readily apparent in recent years
from the street-facing, sun-bleached southern side,
where spots of peeling and chipping have grown
past neighborly size,
reflecting the same inertia
that has kept me from replacing
the almost imperceptibly dripping basement pipe.
I peel an orange –
the fruit itself is disappointing and dry;
my son pushes the lawnmower
back and forth across the lawn,
glancing to me each time he makes a turn.
It’s the first time I’ve stood back so far.
bussokuseki 