8/30: For Noah, who tried to run

I may have my detractors, but you must
give me this much, at least:  Never
were any children more clean,

more well behaved, more perfectly still,

more faces of angels, more Sunday best,

all arrowstraight and godliness.  What is a bathtub

if not a baptismal font, scrubbing every speck

of sin away?  My three boys, the disciples, John,
Paul, and Luke one by one and then Mary,
sweet Mary, the baby that broke

this camel’s back.  Noah saw her there, floating

face down in the holy water, Noah my firstborn,

my eldest, my king

                                         of troubled seas
and he was afraid.  I sang to him to coax
him back, and I sang to him as he struggled

beneath the waves, then placed him there

in the waterstorm he was named for, holding Mary

in his arms, my Alpha and Omega together

and my three straightarrow boys laid out

in the quiver of the bed where I made them.  I loved them
more than I loved God, so I sent them home to him
so nothing could come between us.  Their earthly father

loved me still, told people he wanted me to smith
more for arrows for him and for God.  But I failed him,
failed our quiver, failed God.  My babies stumbled

because I stumbled and when I let their souls fly

I gave them that gift at the cost of paradise, knowing

full well that eternity shall deliver my reward.

6/30: It's Okay.

It’s okay to eat nothing

but cookies, or boxed macaroni

and cheese; you’re grown now,

an adult, as they say, and now

you can stay up late, you can watch

all those films your mother said no to,

you can brush your teeth or not

brush your teeth, you can have dessert

first.

You can take candy

from strangers, you can go home

with strangers, you can fuck strangers

until they are no longer strange.

You can confess

intimate details of your life

on the public transit

or on the stage, or on

the blank page.  You can cuss

to yourself, or in front of children,

you can still

dream about becoming an astronaut,
a mermaid, 

You can find sneaky ways to get

on top of buildings, you can stand on the roof

and scream at the clouds,
I am here, look at me,

you gods and devils;

I am arriving

all the time.

day nine, all apologies for messiness of draft

Most mornings you woke before me
to begin your sacred rites, first
bringing a glass of water and leaving it,
just there, on the nightstand that instantly
became an alter with your offering. Then,
to the kitchen to brew coffee and sometimes
I'd wake with the smell of it, stretching
into its earthen scent, the hazelnut creamer
you knew was my favorite.
If that was not enough, you'd bring out the pans,
the tongs, the spatula, and cook a breakfast
that would almost certainly coax me out
of dreaming, convince me to leave the comfort
of cotton and down. These
were your rituals, your prayer beads,
your communion, each morning kiss
an ablution, a baptism, a benediction.

I've never been good with the concept of the divine.
I left the church at age eleven, had a talk
with God to apologize, said I just couldn't hold
the idea all at once in my mind.
And so, on the rare mornings with you
when I woke first, all I could do was stare,
my heart trapped in my throat, wrapped in awe
and fear and rapture like a cloak, my eyes brimming with love
and wonder, too frightened to move, afraid
even the smallest ripple could shatter it all,
that you, like God, were just a fragile dream.

The other day I ran into God at the grocery.
"Listen, God," I said, "I've got a question.
You remember that dream I had
when I was like twelve and I flew up to heaven
and you were there with
all sorts of animals and I asked you
that question and you gave me that answer?"
and God nodded and said "mm hm" she likes
to come across as obtuse sometimes,
you know, just to keep you guessing.
"Well God," I said, "I just wonder what all
of that meant," and she stood there
for fifteen whole seconds just saying
"hmmmm" and then she asked "But I thought
at the time it all made so much sense"
(you know God likes to answer with questions
sometimes she's tricky like that)
and I said "Yeah, God, but that was then
and this, as it happens, is now." and she
laughed and laughed and laughed and then
asked me "Well how did you lose all that
wild understanding? When did you last use it?
Try and retrace your steps.
Can you remember the place you were when you last
held it, warm and buzzing in your palms?"