Post-Covid Wedding Planning / Inauguration 2021 / In the Beginning

Post-Covid Wedding Planning

I’m imagining a celebration of love of course,
but also of the return to being able to love
with our arms, our lips, our bodies close
and unmasked. I am seeing a clear sky,
the mountains unfolding at the edge
and watching my son and the woman
he loves walk in our field,
the white peaked tent taut,
the sun’s last light before it yields
to night and stars and dancing.
These are the histories I want,
the artifacts of empty glasses,
flowers on every surface,
family holding each other
together again.

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Inauguration 2021

Do you know that tears need gravity
to fall? In space they congeal into drops
and sink back to the eyes, stinging on re-entry.
I wonder about the astronaut who shared this fact—
her shade of grief.

How do stars look
in outer space—do they get lost in the darkness
and the light of one large star, that fist of fire
I need like water. The afternoon’s last light
feels like a divine hand, smooth and glowing
exactly as I imagine some god’s hand—
gentle and kind, the way I hope my voice
feels over the phone, saying to my kids,
I would love you even if you weren’t my child.

And why haven’t I cried until today
when I began to sing, my husband, too,
a man who won’t dance with me in our kitchen
in case someone sees him through the window.
We both sing and cry, I once was lost, but now I’m found,
because grief and relief finally rhyme with grace.

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In the Beginning

Her rosy body, breathable,
readable once she was placed
in my arms, next to my breast.
That morning nothing of me
was hidden, every pore,
every edge. I was a vessel,
a rumble of a body, the way
it moved itself into a mother,
the seconds between inside to out
of me numberless. There is no translation
of feeling what has grown within to now
against my skin, both of us breathing
the same air, her little lungs
a separate world. It was a dream,
my daughter the first ever born,
I the first mother.
Call me Eve.