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LOVER
There is a moment just after the prior moment, when the ticking of the clock on the nightstand is amplified, reverberating off the skylights, when the heat of your body is a blanket from which I never wish to emerge.
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ZEN
He has just turned two. He sits on my lap one hand clapping mine, for each of us a moment of Zen in ways no one can understand, since neither he nor I do. His laugh promises something, a future of moments like this, and yet never the same. “It is our river,” his smile…
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BAREFOOT
He says his favorite clouds all wear size seven shoes. He knows she believes she once saw a paisley rainbow and will never forget it. She wears size seven shoes and her tears can be torrential, yet they can still nurture the first flowers of spring. He imagines her a butterfly sitting on the back…
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DARLING’S MANTRAS
You are two and you laugh for everything is funny or can be, if you just tilt your head a certain way or wag a finger at it. The cat watches from behind the sofa with a knowing gaze. For you food is as much a toy as words are food and you cannot imagine…
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AKEDA
My father never walked me up a hill, never asked two servants to wait below, never bid me be strong, never asked me to have faith in the Lord, never raised the blade only to see a ram in a thicket. My father never did any of these things and so I have no special…
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FROM BEYOND
“Call your mother,” she says. She speaks in the voice of my mother. It grates on my nerves in just the same way it always did. I listen carefully. She repeats herself. I reminded her that she died two years ago. I tell her I tried to call for months after her passing, but there…
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SENSING NIGHT
“Turn on the light so I can hear you,” she says, and I reach for the switch across the room. “Please whisper,” I respond “and I may be able to see my way to the window.” I draw up the shade and in the dim glow of the night’s light I feel the braying of…
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EMPTY SACKS WILL NEVER STAND UPRIGHT
There are nights when the song of a single cricket can pull you away from sleep. She says that she has heard that not all Angels have wings and neither of them is sure how you would know if you met a bodhisattva. He searches the mail every day, for a letter from an unknown…
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AUBADE
The sun peers through the skylight, sneaks catlike up the comforter. He strokes her cheek, they are drawn together, lips touch, toes twine, hips press, fingers trace, the mattress is a world of infinite gravity. Downstairs the cat paces angrily, the coffeemaker thirsts for beans.
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UNKNOWING
I don’t know what I am, the Buddha said. I don’t know why my mother gave me up at birth or how many cousins walk the streets of Glasgow or where I lost my first tooth I don’t know what became of the nickel or why the tooth fairy…
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an old writer and his words 