The First Noble Truth

 The bird I am hearing sing these days is the Anna’s Hummingbird. High pitched, not biological sounding. Repetitive like a regularly irregular heart rhythm. They can be hard to spot, though have some favorite branches. Near the top of the spruce he must be king over the junkos and maybe even the blue jays. The thrush are silent. It just happened one day, just as suddenly as the first day they sang in spring. My hens sing the blues, especially at dawn, not full throated, just a moan or a pondering while pecking here and there. I cannot picture eating them. Today they got our past-ripe bananas, since none of us likes banana bread all that much. Bananas are eaten in phases in this house. Apparently this past week was not a pro-banana era. Grocery stores giving us fruit on demand makes it easier to ignore, I imagine, than it would be if we could only eat it in season and if it grows locally. People do line up at the Farmer’s market for early summer strawberries which bear no resemblance to the monsters shipped in, picked long ago and far away. Peaches probably create the longest queue. Masked produce-seeking neighbors, patient in their single file peachophilia. Yesterday on the way to the beach with my dog, a semi pulled into the street, stopping traffic in both directions. Forward, backward, into a fence, forward, backward. The man directing them had an infant in a sort of football hold on his forearm. Some behind me pulled out of line and turned around to seek another route. Dog and me just waited. We did not delude ourselves into thinking the truck driver was separate from us. When we are the truck driver, we can only keep reversing and pressing the gas until the damn thing can be extricated from a cul-de-sac it should never have entered. Today we went to the beach again. My dog smells like shit so after the beach I stopped at the pet supply store and purchased this $17 shampoo to deodorize “doggone” smells. The bath was warm and he was completely sudsed up. I trimmed nasty dreadlocks and scrubbed every canine nook and cranny. Now he is asleep in the sun and smells at least $17 dollars better. Has this been a productive day? Week? Month? Life? Prior life? Future life? I almost have Liszt memorized. I ran 20.8 miles on Sunday. I walked with Nancy and swept my front porch. I watched Schitt’s Creek and sat zazen. I hugged my husband and found myself aware we are both going to die. I seem to crave chocolate chips. Then tomorrow I step back into my patients’ suffering, which I never really left. The blue jay is screaming. I cannot decide if they are angry or the lead singer of a heavy metal band. Either way it is loud and difficult to dance to and I assume never once featured in a Disney musical. I doubt anyone has considered the suffering of unquiet avian minds. Or vice versa.

I am-bic pentameter

 I am the girl with braids the boys would pull. Perhaps they loved the power, my heart, my brain. The way I could outrun them after school. Skinned knees bled while my hair glowed in the sun.

I am the girl who lied that I had horses. I tripped a boy in a second grade trust exercise. Stood up for fat girl the class would often torture. Both my parents got sick and almost died.

I am the girl who never finished high school. I dreamt of wearing tails at Carnegie Hall. I got drunk in Spanish class held on Bascom Hill. My professor brought sangria for us all.

I am the girl who has a child in prison. The methamphetamine, like Stephen King. I thought fierce love would be enough to save them. The monster in the book will always win.

I am the girl who sees my letters in colors. A synesthete, afraid of missing gems. The bird, the fugue, the book, the unopened door. The Boston marathon. Achieving zen.

I am the girl I am the girl, my father quipped on my forehead curl, I no longer am sure I know what matters. I am not even sure about iambic pentameter.

The Probability of Impermanence

Panic due to unfamiliar birdsong

Time is running out

May never know the species 

Or learned and forgotten 

Among neurofibrillary tangles

A plaque in the birdsong storage site

Synapses devoted to well tempered Bach

Knowing every note 

Memorizing came easy 

When sleep was less vital

Now fugues slip away sulking

Downcast by my lack of devotion

That child skip-running toward me

Might have been real

Or time lapsed me 

Message! Message from the past!

Do you not recall

That this is why we run?

Frantic at the bookstore

Northtown which is

North Star in my night sky

Outside of a dog

Too dark inside and

Cannot read fast enough before I die

When he snores a light touch 

Prompts position change without waking

Then deep silence

So must I reach out 

Verifying breath

Palm to ribs slowly expanding

All of which is

To say holding tighter

Holding tighter to say

Each breath is 

One closer to a last exhale or inhale

Oxygen bound to no destination

Pocketful of Rocks

 This raven upon the tree that used to look like a grandmother in an old style of dress but has weathered into an artistic rendition of a pitchfork 

Will hover in the air when dog approaches

And dog looks up and they appear to be yelling at each other

Raven dips down and up and down further but always out of reach

*

Then this runner feels the packed sand or molasses sand or silky sinking sand up Achilles to gastrocnemius 

Hamstring to glutes to core

Breathe with beating waves retreating, heart meeting fish and salt’s smell and taste of nostalgia 

One mile ago is never happening again 

*

Phone rings most times regarding my role as physician and reminds 

Me not to think I have my own life 

*

This stone calls also

So I stoop to gather it 

Pocket full of rocks 

*

Dog twirls in air arriving fresh having fully known this was going to be the best day of his life so far

No last time or next time compares

*

I can run from this factually literally sensationally until the parts that ache forget their sorrow and the parts that sit idle remember their purpose and

While a powerful man who brags about pussy grabbing- as my transgender child with addiction and mental health problems serves thirteen years for a crime committed at age eighteen while high -is acquitted despite trying to kill our so-called democracy

This anger upon me dissolves into just being a mother and a doctor and my dog’s companion

Taking stones to my garden

Never quite able to get all the sand out of my running shoes or my dog’s tight curls