a poem for my rug
there is a rug beside my bed
on which i have stood
four foot three and five foot ten
i have dug my toes into it
since ages five and twenty
and it has never once
remarked at how tall i have grown
i have taken off girls blouses upon it
and pants and underwear and bras
i have been in love with others
upon its threads and off
i once cried upon it when my dog died
and tore at its edge
it did not do anything
but rest softly
tolerant
it will one day be sold
rolled up or thrown away
and i will forget it
and it will forget me
it will have held hairs
shoes
coats
sweaters
and been soaked by my tears
it will have touched hands
toes
paws
shins
and the bodies of those i loved
but it will decompose
in a garbage heap
myself
beneath a tree
we will be apart for centuries
millennia even
we may never meet again
but with all my heart
i hope my atoms find it someday
and we rest upon each other
friends far removed
reunited once again
green carpets
It is my twentieth birthday and I am two decades old. Ten years once and again, doubled and split in half. And I am sitting in a room with two people who love each other but haven’t found out yet. They say it’s too soon, that this is all brand new, but I see it right now when they sleep on the floor next to each other. They are in love because no one is looking when they kiss. I have seen them laugh with their heads thrown back and I have seen them smile quietly. There is a privilege to catching that smile and it makes me sit on this couch on my birthday and think about love rather than being twenty years old. It is beautiful and I hope someday they catch my laughter when I think of them and my smiles when I think they are not looking. Because then they will feel my joy of being twenty and being in love and having friends who run like children and yell and laugh and find the wind outside the windows and are honest when they use the word beautiful. That is our gift. That is what we bring to the world and what we take from it. That is watching love and being older and having people like them on your twentieth birthday.
for a.r terwiske
the splitting the atom happened today
after much pulling and prying
it came undone
and everything spilled at once
the people cried
now is the end of war!
we are God’s plan manifest!
praise be to the salvation of humanity!
and a son was born
“the child of a nuclear age”
and the boy’s parents thought of a brighter future
and of God’s great gifts
they slept soundlessly in their beds
until the next day came
and they rose with newborn eyes
the curtains were thrown open
and Providence was seen
and everything seemed to stand still for an instant
and a perfect drop of dew shone
brighter than any diamond before
but then it fell
and everything broke at once
a soldier bled
and a mother cried
and a father drank
and a brother took his place
and God sat on high
watching mushroom clouds
erupt on the sun
