A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: birthday

April 4, 2021

2/30: IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT, IT’S FRIDAY, AGAIN (A BIRTHDAY POEM)

I feel it now: there’s a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it
All my becoming has needed me
My looking ripens things
And they come toward me, to meet and be met.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of a Monastic Life

I write a poem every year for my birthday
I never know what I’m going to say until I say it
I never know who I’m going to be until I see him
I read between the lines like meaning has a mirror
but it changes every year. 
The art of explaining myself to myself 
is never what it seems to be.
I’m not losing or changing my definitions 
There’s just more meaning to give
the longer I live. 

I know nothing has ever been real without my beholding it


Someone
behold this poem 
until it is real and becoming
like the first days of Spring.

I feel it now, 

the power that slept like a seed
between the wild roots of my being.
It takes time to become who you said you’d be.
There’s a birthday candle on the table
A small fire, my breath, and wishing for what’s next,
My big brother Brent writes in my annual birthday text
	
	You’re as vital as a plant providing oxygen 
	during photosynthesis

One day they will study the biology of a brother’s love.
Oh brother. Oh words—
the gifts that give shape to my world.

I’m reading all the words
coming towards me, to meet and be met
like the words of a song. 

Every year, I’m awestruck
at my unprecedented luck 
in knowing I am loved.
The language of this love puts the poems in my blood.
Oh, the words in my blood are brave and here to stay.

On the day I came into this earth,
I ask the universe with all my earthly yearning
Give me more love than my body can stand.
When the lovebirds sing, tell them I’m listening and singing too.
I’m singing a prayer like a birthday wish, 
the only one I know 
the only I say every year:
Gratitude is the only face of god I know.
If there’s still time, I’ll show you.
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April 30, 2020

27/30: THE ROUND ROCK ROLLER RINK

In the hallway of the Men’s bathroom
at the Round Rock Roller Rink, I left
my hand print on the right side of the wall. I dipped my
right hand in green paint. It was a birthday tradition for
anyone who had a party at the Roller Rink.
Underneath your hand print, they write
your name and your birthday.
It was
too much power for the 9-year-old in me.
You can put
your hand on any wall inside the building, a
it’s your call where. Isn’t that amazing?
A place that celebrates you
by giving you a choice
in what to leave behind
for others to find.
The Round Rock Roller Rink no longer stands.
It belongs to the history books.
Like that one time in the sixth grade,
on a Friday night, I danced during
couple skate to Don Henley’s
Boys of Summer blasting
from the speakers next to the scoreboard
used for hockey games, and
my elastic smile
going in circles, balanced
on roller skates, holding the hand
of a girl who held mine back
for the very first time. Those days
are gone forever, just like Don sang.

 

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April 3, 2014

2/30

Gratitude is the only face
of God
I know.
I know God.
God I know.
I am twenty-two
I am twenty-two and everything is new again.
To be a side-effect of spring
to be brought by spring
is this why the bloom greets me
pretty on my knees?

It is Sunday and it is Spring in Austin
and I am on my knees,
pretty. 
I sit under a tree and share the shade with three men
with three dogs,one each. 
Rocket, Charlie, Sonic.
Their names were
appropriate.
When, they all ran too fast and too far
these men would not scream, or shout, or shatter
but instead, would whistle with wonder and ask, Sweetheart, where are you?
And I think that’s significant.

The most beautiful woman I have ever known
or seen…Okay. Maybe it’s the most beautiful woman
I have seen today. But oh,
isn’t that the same? And oh
now she is smiling and feeding me cupcakes and now I am caving
like my grandfather’s veins that diatribe 
insulin, cause the sugar don’t wanna stay inside.

So, these days I swallow honey. I remember a poster
in my elementary school saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Or was it bee holder? I am twenty-two now and decide it is bee-holder.

It is still Sunday, and me and Rocket
share a spot in the shade because we
get it. Oh we get it. 

When I get up to leave, he looks at me
as if he were to ask, sweetheart, where are you going?
I look back at him and smile, as if I were to say,
I am going weightless.
And suddenly I can’t feel my body
Suddenly I am weightless.
Wait. I spoke too soon (sometimes,
the tongue is a trick I have to trace back
to get.) I feel my body encouraging
itself. I feel my body beginning again
so now I am worryless. The funny thing is,
I wrote that that into my phone and even it
tries to correct the word to worthless.

I feel my body now so now I am worthless?
What an absurd sentence.

I am the 22nd
edition of myself and still feel vintage.
That isn’t an absurd sentence, it’s
just a privilege to say. When
Gratitude is the only face of God 
you know, and it is Sunday and you 
are your mother’s son and your mother
is her mother, you know it’s
just a privilege to pray like you do. Like everything you do
has allowed you to make the spring of yourself 
true, and why don’t you swallow that for a bit.
Trace the tongue back, so you can get it. 

Most people do not know how to eat
and therefore cannot pray like this.
They assume it’s in the chew
and not
the cherish.

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