what is this dying process?
is it stories told
of those lingering just long enough
for a meaningful anecdote?
his isn't
and he's sinking in words

a few minutes
of darkness
to myself

the red lights on ice
and
4 lorazepam

dream

This winter
I am sloshing
through this dirty slush
it's hard
he said
to keep going

dwell

nothing is fair
millions die every year
some are never reborn

I dwell
in this
place
with him
my companion
in this life
a little while longer

the clutter of illness
and slow bone blood
cyclophosphamide
100
patient milligrams
and
oxygen

bitter

taste
this cold

enough

demands
orders
advice
suggestions
opinions

clear the mind
windblown
without
instructions

his winter

snowing
wind
eight degrees
waning gibbous

wanting this night
nothing more
than to hear
your breathing
beside me

no more poison

he my plinth
witness
this


his
dissolution

choices

aren't what they were

now
is a choice

(one we take)

and the DNR bracelet
his breathing
his beautiful head in my arms
his simply accepted inevitable

(we take)

my
panic
my deep-holed sorrow

not mine to choose

time together
keeps collapsing

first night after news

I will drink any green you make

bad news
carefully contained
but not couched
with numbers, percentages
data we understand

but cannot take in
not now
after this hope
this careless hope
and the dread we told each other was
a healthy pessimism

what is
all too clear
too real
is
this


so soon

more bowing soon


too much


not enough

missed

each word
weighed
to stay
or go

show me, he said
how to write this


his mind a fine sieve
I give suggestions
he
sieved, alight
knows

nothing strained
something
missed

vault

after four
morning
borealis

facing north

solar gold
amber interference
furrowed light

lept up
cold
clear
gone

lesson

12 If only one would apply to oneself what one teaches to others...." 159   -Dhammapada

walk to the horizon
where
an ouzel stutters in the snow
go there
listen
no sound you have within you
lives
so completely submerged
between
the white meadow and sky

11 "Old Age: when these grey bones are cast aside like gourds in autumn...."149
Dhammapada

...you will see for yourselves that honey may be gathered from stones and oil from the hardest rock.

Bernard of Clairvaux

the river, no tracks, late afternoon

january 2 2014

sun

changes
appetite
aptitude
aperture

the snow's shadow
blue as the sky's lid at edges
near the tree horizon

fox tracks

fox sparrow

excavating a sidewalk

the cold bites

it's not a metaphor

hunters in the snow

in the painting tired hunters return home
children are skating in the valley below them

down my hill
students dressed in black
trudge homeward this holiday
in calf-high falling snow

the cars skate past so slowly

10:30 2014

picked up a hot gas burner grate
unaware
wet fingers sizzle, saved me from a burn

boiling winter vegetables for soup

a new computer sans a photo history

my sick husband spent a sleepless night

what marks this new year is the ordinary
and a renewed awareness of the ordinary
and a surprising awareness
of the dulled edges of this awareness
that need honing
a return to bowing brings this shift
this immediate shift into the body of things again

small ordinary things

small ordinary things

small ordinary things

matter

white stone

housebound

he's got a pain that travels from knee to stomach
a gnaw a knot
a needling ache
it's less when he's
prone
to criticism

8 degrees

new moon
powder snow
skin stinging cold

dexter gordon playing Sonny Stitt  in Holland 1964
it was like that