Life is Good

It has been awhile since

the weather has surprised

me, a hurricane 

in the middle of summer,

when I have always loved

i In view of the fading animals the proliferation of sewers and fears   the sea clogging, the air nearing extinction we should be kind, we should take warning, we should forgive each other Instead we are opposite, we   touch as though attacking, the gifts we bring even in good faith maybe   warp in our hands to implements, to manoeuvres ii Put down the target of me you guard inside your binoculars,   in turn I will surrender this aerial photograph   (your vulnerable sections marked in red)   I have found so useful See, we are alone in the dormant field, the snow that cannot be eaten or captured iii Here there are no armies   here there is no money It is cold and getting colder, We need each others’ breathing, warmth, surviving   is the only war we can afford, stay walking with me, there is almost   time / if we can only   make it as far as the (possibly) last summer

A little boy came into the clinic yesterday, 5 years old and slight. This little boy, his mother said, had been getting red eye as far back as she could remember but he would always sleep well and quietly and so would she. On his fourth birthday and on the urging of her husband, she finally brought him to a doctor. She spent the money allotted for his cake on a tiny bottle of antibiotic they had nursed for the better part of a year.

Today, she hands us this bottle, still over a third full, and wonders aloud why her little boy has been crying out of his left eye for weeks. He still sleeps well, she said, and off to the side, looking up at his momma, he concurs. He finishes his homework and cleans up after dinner. She insists she instills a drop of antibiotic each time his eye turns red and checks, first thing in the morning, that his eye had turned bright again, white and shining, before slipping the bottle back onto her dresser. She does not understand why the antibiotic does not seem to be working this time.

We motion him towards the slit lamp, this monster of a microscope made of metal and glass, and he follows without a word. Every once in a while, we touch a drop of fluorescein onto his lower lid. He blinks (one, two, thrice), a little frown on his lips at the sting of the dye, but stays still regardless. We watch as a gush of water carves a river through the green. His infection had burrowed a hole through the crystal of his eye. He was crying aqueous instead of tears.

He sits on his mothers lap as we explain his prognosis to her. We talk of antibiotics and proper dosing and patching and giving the cornea time to heal and prepare her for the eventual need for transplant surgery. He listens attentively, head tilted to the side as if he understood as much as she.

Last summer,

I built a boy 

a city only 

to have him tell me 

that places are 

rediscovered, 

I was always afraid of the ocean, all of its pushing and pulling, the way it replaces soft sand with heavy water without warning, how it presses my chest into an exhale at the exact moment my feet lose purchase - at 5 feet and 2 inches, maybe 3. I did not like how it belonged to no one and every one all at the same time.

I think I fell in love with the ocean, its stillness, the way it divulges its secrets in waves, bruises the space beneath my ribs as I lie on a board, buoyed by its tides, the give and take, the wait for the perfect swell and the longest ride, the quiet way it burns my shoulders from too much sun and pushes my hair against my face, like seaweed only coarser, how, after awhile, it learns to carve a space for me in its waters, Archimedes in action, even when it knows it must send me back ashore.

I’ve thought it before (in passing, because when have we ever gotten a thing simply because we wanted it bad enough) and because I’ve thought it, it’s true; if I could live in a little whitewashed house on the paradise on earth that is El Yu, a house that smelled like salt spray, sea grass, and violets and surf, I would be happy.

a song with no end

when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric" I know what he meant I know what he wanted: to be completely alive every moment in spite of the inevitable. we can't cheat death but we can make it work so hard that when it does take us it will have known a victory just as perfect as ours.