I am trying, still, to touch something,
something I cannot name,
something that those of faith

and bereft of doubt might call God —
the inviolate kernel of epiphany —
not so much to remove the grey

between the black and white
as to know myself, my own heart,
to hold onto the days as they depart,

relentless, into the porous vat of memory,
something that will clean the dirt
from ambiguity, incomprehension,

the flotsam and jetsam
of unanswered questions,
some balm for all the conflicted,

itchy scabs of a life,
when senselessness is engulfing,
when all that is visible

is what roils beneath the cracked veneer;
reaching with fingers and body,
with heart and thought, to pierce the fog,

to follow the tactile lure
slipping always beyond reach,
as if it held within it all things lost —

innocence, a white, unsullied honesty,
a purer, less troubled version of myself,
an aesthetic of love —

as if I could peel back its membrane
and reach in,
trying to touch the untouchable,

to touch the invisible architecture
of silence perhaps, or the void
behind the silence,

or the implication of the silence
endlessly interrupted by noise;
or maybe it is the horizon’s edge

I stretch towards,
receding always as I approach,
or what unfathomably lies beyond it,

the cinematography of possibility;
or else my arms
are wind-milling at chance,

the sometimes randomness of intersections
that spins lives like die
and sends them elsewhere,

those implausible plausibilities
within the stream
of arrivals and departures;

or I am grasping at the sharp point
between contradictions
and incompatibilities,

between opposing hatreds,
historical enmities, truths and lies,
cutting myself,

feeling the red, red blood
well up in my hands, dripping,
where a drop of clarity might reside

waiting for light to strike it,
waiting for a pilgrim, lost,
to stumble accidentally upon it

in the age old tradition of discovery;
or I am myself touched,
tricked with these decoys,

delusions, mental wanderings,
and it is something else altogether,
something nameless, incomprehensible.

Living inside our bodies
we never know the extent of our reach,

where the tiny seedpods of our smiles

are blown, where they lodge,
where they reside deep in memory,

how long they endure

emitting their silent love,
how much they become beacon,

they become anchor, balm.

In word, in action, in image,
we are cradled and carried,

we are held within others,

in whom we may be given the grace
we do not give ourselves, the embrace,

acceptance, nurture, forgiveness.

If we had any sense of our reach,
if we knew it all, we would inflate,

buoyant, we would rise up,

arms encompassing everything
within their worldly touch.

You turned the wheel —
I spun around:

but I was not clay
to your hands,

I did not shape
to your image,

my imperfections
would not vanish.

Now you have
left me here,

fired and glazed,
hard and set.

1.

One woman is holding on
white-knuckled hard.

She wears her grief
buttoned up tight
holding herself within it
fearing her own disappearance
fearing air on skin
fearing the world beyond him.

She takes it to her bed
as talisman
as substitute
as protector
to ward off his absent warmth at night.

She is widow to memories of him.
They are a temple,
a shrine she visits every day
bearing longing
bearing words
bearing despair.

Her eyes
still fix upon the spaces he once occupied
as if to prise an image
a shadow
some vestige of his presence lingering still.

She stands on the spot
unable or unwilling to move
and those that surrounded her at first
with empathy
with compassion
with solicitude
are as thoughts drifting away.

2

A second woman is heavy sliding
letting go.

She is alone
after sixty years of marriage
after caring for him a dozen stroked-out years
unable now to care for herself.

She has lost interest
in counting her losses
in the search for meaning
in the daily news.

She has given up thoughts
of returning home
of seeing her second grandchild married
of holding her great grandchild
for the first time.

She is shrinking into herself
finding the path to disappearance
abandoning desire
abandoning food
abandoning mobility.

She is moving on
finding the way back to him
step by step
while those who love her
argue and cajole
urge her
to get up and walk
to eat a little more
to bend her will
and stay.