A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: love

April 29, 2021

25/30: INVITATIONS TO LOVE

Invitations to love come in small packages.
Think of the earned cat nuzzle against the leg
first thing in the morning. Think of the gentle steam
rising off the coffee leaving the palm of the
woman who chose to rise early enough to
make you coffee in the first place. Think of
the sky overflowing with light. Think of the
morning wind bending the trees into
music notes. Think of the day like a jukebox.
Think of the small truths. Think of the
hundreds of roots that live in the soil
of the soul. Think of the thousands
of invitations arriving every day, in small
and simple ways, each with your name,
waiting to be opened.

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April 27, 2021

23/30: A LOVE POEM ON SATURDAY NIGHT

Across the stars and lights of the flamingo pink walls
of Taco Cabana off of 45 South and Wayside
and
under the waves of headlights surrounding us inside
this fast-food parking lot on a Saturday Night,
Adela turns to me from the passenger seat
And proclaims her life-long belief in soul mates
In the idea that two people are meant to be.
Without missing a beat,
she looks right at me and smiles a mile long
and confirms that I am indeed her soul mate.
As her husband, I feel relieved,
So relieved I could sing!
And I do,
all the way home.

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April 13, 2021

12/30: – WATCHING THE WEST WING WITH MY WIFE

For Adela, 4 months into our marriage

After a long day,
we watch reruns of The West Wing
And make up songs about each other during
the theme song. This episode, it’s your turn.
Next episode, it’s mine. We spent the day
as lawyers, and finished it as two people
in love. I smile at you in the soft light inside
our very first house together. By the time
I finish this poem, the episode is over
and the next one begins. Season 3,
Episode 6. Jed and Abby
bicker over a disappointing homily,
something about the misunderstood
meaning of Ephesians 5:21-33. Adela,
the faithful catholic she is, laughs
from across the room. I Google
the bible verse and smirk to myself.
The words read like a neon sign:

Husbands, love your wives…

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April 12, 2021

10/30:  ON SAYING I LOVE YOU TO YOUR FRIENDS BEFORE THE CALL ENDS

I end every phone call to my brothers and my best friends with
I love you.
No qualification, no hesitations, no reservations.
It’s a natural cadence, no need to pretend.
Seconds—it takes seconds to say I love you before a call ends.
I do it quick, and its got all the rhythm of a natural law.
I do admit, my heart jumps a bit when I say it.
There was a time when I didn’t tell my friends
I loved them. My masculinity taught me to be silent.
The shame of my youth is that I listened.
My brothers raised me then. They were boys too.
Boys raising each other. We said I love you
mainly as penance, the price my mom made us pay
for fighting each other. You’re brothers, for crying out loud!
It made sense—instead of salting the wound,
we used love as the salve. How the words
leave my mouth now! Declaration
is documentation. Tell you friends that you love them.
It deserves to be heard. Preserve the record.
What do you have to lose by speaking the truth?
Toxic masculinity leaves little room for evolution.
A text message, on the other hand, is very different.
I will write the words, but I prefer to give my voice to
the verb. I know the power of a spoken word. A phone call is a stage.
On the other end of the line is an audience that knows
the stories behind your name. Before the call ends
like a sentence you wish you could re-write, speak up.
This is what I’ve learned to do.
I end every phone call to my brothers and my best friends with
I love you.
Life has its rules. This one is mine.

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May 1, 2018

29/30: A POEM FOR JESSI

Jessi,
bird of my heart,
monkey in my bed,
giraffe of my dreams,
you sing to me in your
baby-talk, in your
gimme-dat clap, in your
nap-time nuh-uh cry,
oh my Jessi, you are everything
you are supposed to be. Right now,
you are shouting for the sky as the
swing-set in the park down the street
from my house brings you closer to the
moon, the stars, the sun, each one: all shining
for you. This is what the light does: it tells us
to reach, to look up, to swing into our shadows
so that darkness will not ask for this dance.
Even now, the Oak trees see you becoming one
with yourself, and I am helplessly in awe at the
call of your voice, the raw power of your smile,
and how I wish you could stay a little while longer.
In this swing, your joy sings me a song. I watch you
rejoice in the shade, alive and singing, here with me.

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April 30, 2018

27/30: THE LOST CAUSE OF LONELINESS

In love, I watch you put your make-up on as the loud hum
of my longing stumbles back to the mountain I carved it from.

Outside of myself, I exit a door marked disaster, and the faster I walk,
the closer I am to your hand writing to-do lists against my unorganized skin.

I’m crossing loneliness off like it’s a lost cause. Somewhere, there is a mountain
made up of all the things I told myself I never deserved.

Each stone is a small thing, is a piece of earth bone, burrowed into the body.
Darling, I am digging my hands into the riverbed, where the soil is damp and

The current carries my secrets by the handful. The time has come for me
to forfeit myself to the fate of this moment, to throw my hands up and wait for daybreak,

Where your shoulder turns into the morning light beside my window and
I do not wait for love to say my name. I’m giving up on trying to see past the now.

I know the future of my feelings are something I cannot rewrite. I present myself to you in the darkness without a plan and without pain. What I’m saying is,

My longing used to be a locked door inside a mountain of shame. And now,
every smile you leave on my pillow is a key you carved for me, and I am in love,
And I am free.

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April 16, 2018

14/30: IN RAINY APRIL

After Robert Bly

For Adela 

In rainy April, the Aloe Vera outside my window is unstoppable.
You lay your head across my chest like a path of magnolia leaves.
We turn into each other’s body and rearrange the soft grey light.
I have no choice but to adore the green eyes sleeping next to me.
I want you to know I chose loving you over losing you.

The light in my chest casts a shadow across your name and I know.
My path leads me back to you like groundwater returning to the sky.
The two of us tell time by counting the freckles between us.
You are the breathgiving woman who makes my heart sing all my favorite songs.
And for as long as you want, I will sing a song of joy.

In rainy April, I kiss you like a season I never want to forget.
The light coming down between the trees leads me back to you.
A laugh travels down your lip and I plant it like a seed.
I run my finger down your spine like a sentence I want to read.
Our bodies choose to bloom against each other.
I hold you like the clouds hold rainwater, and I do not let go.

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April 13, 2018

11/30: THE PATH OF SOMEONE SEEKING LOVE (AND TACOS)

“Tell me about your life since I last saw you.” I asked.
“There are no great mysteries to tell. My path is always the same and I do everything I can to follow it in a dignified way.”
“What is your path?”
“The path of someone seeking love”
He hesitated for a moment, fiddling with the near-empty bottle.
“And love’s path is really complicated,” he concluded.

– Paulo Coelho, “By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept”

Standing outside El Taqueria Palomo, I hold a taco in my hand on a Wednesday night
beneath a sky that is not falling, beneath a sky whose moon knows to call my name when
the darkness stays a little too long. Am I wrong to think the universe is speaking to me?

You may not assign meaning to every moment, and I understand your resistance. I guess
I’m just tired of believing there is no significance to the seconds that pass and the seconds that last.
I’m not talking about destiny. Though, I do believe we have one. As I speak, white rose petals leap before my eyes, falling to the ground until they become someone else’s footprint.

What I’m saying is, the path you lead is half the battle.
What I’m saying is, the path you leave behind is a line in a poem the universe wrote
when you thought you were alone.

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April 9, 2018

6/30: YOUR HAND ON A COUNTRY ROAD IN A LIGHTNING SHOW

On the darkest country road, I touch your hand in the dark
to remind my wandering mind
of what it feels like to be held while lightning
surrounds the sky the same way my arms do
around you when we sleep together and my breathing
slows down the same way storm clouds move in the sky
Something inside of me is forming
The sky’s bright siren is a warning signal
And where we are going, I have nothing left to fear
It is April and all the flowers laugh in the distance
as my car speeds past rolling hills of bluebonnets
I’m reaching through every reason I have to stay
And your hand anchors me to the Earth like a law
I will always follow. I only know
it took years to see
the possibility of not being alone

Whenever the clouds swallow the lightning,
I know you are my waiting horizon
I know you are the light that stays
I know you are the hand that reaches back

On the darkest country road, I interrogate the fate of my heart
Is this the place we start anew?

I look over to you in awe as lightning circles your face
Songs fill the space between us, music rolls in the clouds

And we listen
as the car carries us forward
together

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April 5, 2018

4/30: JESSI OPENS HER MOUTH

Jessi opens her mouth and language becomes a kite she is learning to fly
Language is in the wind and she holds a string in the sky
but all her words are untethered, sound orbits meaning
while meaning meanders along without a voice to
call out its name. She is still learning to speak, and I am still learning
to listen.

It is impossible to translate a sound with no name
But every day, her mouth is a chorus,
full of refrains
stains
growing tooth-pains.

Jessi opens her mouth all the time and when she does,
She speaks the language of refried beans
She speaks the same language a tortilla does
A voice hand-made by the recipe in our blood
She Speaks the same language as caldo
A calming flood of flavor that holds our hearts in its hands
Jessi belongs to a legacy of language only she can claim

The women in my family all have voices that command,
voices that understand, voices that float in the sky, water
the soil, light the fire, and carry the prayer, voices that exist
to say I am here, I am here, I am here.

Jessi opens her mouth and all the birds draw near
Every flower in my grandmother’s green house sneaks out
and the garden shouts out a song only Jessi can sing
My brother, Jessi’s father, watches his baby girl sleep
in silence. Her body rises like a slow tide, waiting
to crash against the shore of any world brave enough
to silence her.

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