The temple bell is done
But the sound keeps ringing
Out of the flowers
~ Matsuo Bashō
The particular movements are familiar. Hug ground stretch and throw a leg over, curl up to sit. Melt down again. Hello moving body. Hello studio walls, torso, arms, legs, breath body.
Wind shakes this second-floor window.
~
Six years old. Lying in the poster bed with white dots on the bedspread in the house called 97—not my house. That’s what was on the door, found at low tide, now the front door. The white foam colored house with black eaves and waves below. I count to focus so I won’t hear the wind sobs: ten, nine, eight. And my body large with atoms and small with small atoms. The world not so solid. In-between wake and dream images: seven, six, five.
~
Hello small green shell back turtles in aquarium on the kitchen counter, hamster in his wheel.
Hello field. Hello horses across the road in their field.
Hello groups of women living in the same college house.
Hello waiting for bus two, trip two in front of Susie Schatz’s house.
Hello to Carters cotton pull- up- to- your- waist white and corduroy pants from Sears and solid brown shoes rather than the frill skirts and black buckle shine ups Liz’s mom put in their shopping bag with handles at the new indoor mall.
Hello white lace up boot, skate blades, ice, back crossovers (whoosh whoosh) and figure eights.
~
I rest my cheek on the floor and cry to the violin. (I think I should call my class Crying and Moving.)
~
Hello— hold up the body wrapped in Indian cloth. (I’m almost out of Indian cloths there’s been so many bodies).
I place Sage’s dog body in the hands of the vet too soon.
I give Charlie’s dog body to the crematorium people too soon and then go teach a retreat and sprinkle someone else’s ashes at the end.
Hello sky up and water all around and tea in the morning cup blue blue with white.
Hello small soft animal bodies from another country all the way across the world (pulse breath). Hearted pups come trembling in crates.
Hello hello my pale lover profiles of men. Step up to your truck and drive—
through the trailer park and out on Broadway. In seconds you are so gone.
I don’t know, is this my hand as it touches the broom handle and sweeps.
~
(“Going in seventeen minutes”, I say part out loud. I can hear myself say it. That’s how long Brian Eno’s “music of the airports” has left to go).
~
Stand. and drift. and then clench. and now spiral arms throw torso and head around. I see a ghost in the white curtain in front of the wall length mirror (that’s me).
I see horizon of tops of mountains out the thin up window (that’s me).
~
Hello my parents living room with everyone gone. Roll up rug, slide away the big soft arm chair and lie on the pine wood floor. (Hug ground, stretch throw a leg over and sit). In the picture window there’s me dancing in the room, and then I dissolve into dark pines and then layers of me and pines me and pines me and pines.
~
On the painted wooden horses going round. I can’t stop from smiling when I see my parents. There they are smiling, and waving hello to me, when they see me. And it is such a thing to see them and then see everything else, the rush of the world as I go round, and rise up and softly down.
~
And now I am ready. I step, step, and spin and curl and spin and go and run backwards.
Stop. Stand. On the floor breathing in and also out.
Maybe I could dream a little future. A kind of forward thinking.
Sun comes at a different angle, it lows, like cattle.
And music is now piano when before, it was violin.
~o~