We are married to the Earth,

Yet there have been moments

We have taken each other for granted.

Rarely do we talk 

About the first time we met.

Our heads nuzzled in deep field grass,

No one around for miles,

Warm hay-scented air wafting

Over hills, and the sense

We could live right there,

Protected in a nest of grass,

Observing like a god

The miniature trees

And darkened, secret houses of bended grass,

Forever.

Sometimes she acts like I’m not even there.

She’ll turn over when we’re asleep

And all hell will break loose,

Whole cities will be razed to the ground,

Her outstretched arms rise up

In an avalanche, throwing boulders

Into a valley 

Like our child

Skipping rocks across a dry creek bed.

And then silence,

The memory of rage gone

Like nothing ever happened.

Blithe spring winds blow

As if the cruelty of winter

Was only a bad dream.

Her maddening denial 

Of the past, surpassed 

Only by her celebration of the present,

And I am reminded why 

We fell in love, why

I fell in love with her.

The Mrs. Astor inspected

The mahogany table, 

Stretched to accommodate sixteen, 

Hovered over the polished silver 

Like a Supreme Commander examining her fleet,

Flatware laid out like the Spanish Armada, 

Reflecting the Italian embroidered tablecloth, 

Sailing on still white seas.

The Mrs. Astor sat at the head of the table

And dined on Monday evening

In her 5th Avenue mansion.

Hair coiffed to a high station,

Posture in perfect axis,

Bedecked in pearls and a tiara like a chandelier,

Her lavender dress picking up 

Glints of violet hues in the floral wallpaper.

The Mrs. Astor, surrounded 

By the top sixteen of the four hundred,

Played a little game with herself

To find the poorest among them;

Peered through each guest, 

Peered three generations back, 

Peered into the origins of their wealth,

With her heavy, savvy, inscrutable folded brown eyes,

Scanning for cracks 

In the veneer of respectability;

A self-conscious laugh, an inappropriate question,

A dreadful, belabored manner.

The Mrs. Astor gazed

Upon this vision of high society,

This inner sanctum of the elite,

Listening to the urbane, witty, poetic conversation and thought

This is the sound of civilization.

The sound of clever colloquials and 

Clinking cups of high tea.

The sound of high heels on marble floors,

The cacophony of high finance.

The sound of the gears of a grandfather clock,

The sighs of a bored brood, lounging in the parlor

Waiting to go to the opera,

The sound of prestige, like the seal of a well-made door closing,

One where you can hear the brass lock spring shut.

The sound of deference as people hold that door open

Because the hierarchy is real.

The sound of wealth in the pregnant silence 

Of the view, one hundred twenty-nine floors

Above Central Park South.

The sound above the din of yearning and ceaseless talking,

Above the fifth floor walk-ups and sunless railroad apartments.

The sound above the reading rooms, 

The swirling eddies of cogitation,

The luxuriousness of thinking.

The sound of death above the battefields,

The morning after thousands died

With the idea of civilization

Vibrating in their heads.

Near an exit ramp off Route 15

Outside of Emmitsburg, Pennsylvania,

I walked along the shoulder of the highway,

Between the reflectors and the edge of the road,

About four hundred feet from our broken-down Honda Pilot,

Looking up the hill, looking down at the ground,

Looking for somewhere a cab could come pick us up,

Some store with a parking lot,

As cars raced past me, going seventy miles per hour

Up the exit ramp, close enough

I could feel the wind from them cruising by

Brush against me like a rude pedestrian,

When what was, maybe, a Toyota 4 Runner,

Careening up the exit ramp,

Jerked over through the white reflectors

Onto the shoulder, not more than

Ten feet from where I was walking, then realized

It wasn’t the road, and maybe seeing me,

Jerked back onto the exit ramp, speeding away,

Never slowing down.

I stopped and stared 

At the tire marks just in front of me,

The smell of the seared rubber

Lingering like cigar smoke,

The stream of semi-trucks and cars

That kept flowing along Route 15,

The overgrown grass along the shoulder

Still green and brown and yellow,

Turning around, I saw our car,

Several hundred feet away

With my wife absorbed on the phone 

With the tow truck company,

Our girls in the back seat

Staring out the window,

As the thought occurred to me like a force of nature,

Like the core truth of the universe;

I deserve nothing.

I found out about the wedding 

On Facebook, a month before the birth 

Of our second daughter,

Running around,

Getting her nursery together,

Warm nesting resounding deep

In the heart spaces,

Like golden mahogany hues

Descending down my body.

You think you’re ready 

With the second one, 

But you’re never really ready,

It just happens over you, 

Over your thinking about it,

Over your jangle of nerves.

Preparing for the birth,

I was suddenly fixated on the wedding.

Who was there?  Who was his bride?

The wedding was on a pier, 

With yachts sailing in the background,

I imagined another ship like the Half Moon, 

Sailing up what became the Hudson,

From the decks, 

Looking at old maps of North America,

How mistaken they were

About the contours of the continent,

How whole communities came ashore

With theologies

Sparkling in their heads,

Nearly oblivious to the country in front of them,

Confusing the Iroquois and the Delaware 

For the lost tribes of Israel,

As I realized I have been mistaken as well, 

Mistaken my office for a career, 

Mistaken a ring for eternity, 

Mistaken a moment in time for everlasting friendship.

The whole month before the birth

Felt like a slow-motion car crash,

Like waking up a decade in the future

And your whole world has changed,

That one day you wake up 

Alone, in the middle of nowhere,

With no one to check in with,

To ask what the hell happened.

What the hell happened?

Well, everyone you ever knew

Turned out to be made of papier-mache,

And disintegrated in front of your eyes.

They disappeared like a lost job,

And in their disappearance, you learned what death is,

That death is distance.

Death is only a memory.

Death is the last thing you said before it all ended.

Death is the opposite of intimacy.

And when the world shifted when your daughter was born,

And revealed herself, 

In that revelation, you learned what love is.

That love is recognition.

Love that stares you in the face, love that shows up,

Love that never lets you go.

Love that grasps your fingers with her tiny hands.

Love that calls you an idiot to your face and means it. 

Love that calls just to see how you are doing.

Love that refuses to let you die. 

Love that picks you up off the floor when your body stops working. 

Love that lets you go.

Focusing on a giant green pepper,

Feeling the muscular folds 

Rumple into deep green and black channels,

Like the gyrification of an exhausted 

And diseased brain.

Texture is the skin of the world and

Our birthright is to feel the history of the earth,

Tactilely reading plutonic rock

With our bare hands.

Touching a soft carpet of moss

Growing next to a summer stream,

We remember there is tenderness.

Laying down 

In an open field of grass,

In a primal nest,

We are returned to our mother,

Returned to the mind of the cosmos,

Returned to the feeling of being alive.

Nothing is created.

Not the small beat of first love, not the big bang of your wedding day,

Not the first hour your first daughter was born.

Nothing is destroyed.

Not ideas, not technology,

Not real love that bloomed before your eyes.

Everything is struggle.

Uphill careers, backward relationships,

Rusted-out and broken-down families.

Everything is ineffable.

Divinity, a child’s love, the inscrutable stare

Of your wife’s deep brown eyes.

Nothing is quiet. 

Not a remote wilderness, not the tranquility of a desert sunrise,

Not the vacuum of ancient memories.

Nothing is deserved.

Not your pain, not your ecstasy, 

Not your deepest love.

Everything is unknowable.

The soul of any relationship,

The mind of a country, a true friend.

Everything is blurred.

Truth in the media, the story of how you got here,

The mysterious notion of time in the present moment.

Nothing lasts.

Not your memory, not your money, 

Not your magnificent childhood.

Nothing fits.

Not furniture, not families,

Not your future squeezed into the common light of a day.

Everything decays.

Empires, cities, walls, homes, the last vestige 

Of who you thought you were.

Everything hurts.

Muscles you didn’t know you had, relationships you knew you had 

But that linger on like phantom limbs, limbs that seem to have a mind of their own.

Nothing works under a thousand dollars.

Not the gas-powered weed wacker you got last summer, 

Not your first engagement ring with a pearl instead of a diamond.

Nothing works out the way you thought it would.

Not the love staring from your beloved’s eyes on your wedding day,

Not who you thought you were going to be.

Everything is expensive. 

Dignity, respect, love,

A career you sacrificed everything for.

Everything is disappointing. 

The promise of friendship,

Older siblings, the human being who was your father.

Nothing is certain.

Not today, not tomorrow,

Not the heaven painted in frescos above you.

Nothing is final.

Not death, not failure,

Not a summer day when you were seven.

Everything is suffering.

The crucible of education, the changes of growing up,

The commitments of love.

Everything is clear.

Love is a season, death is a moment, 

And life never gives up its secrets without a fight.