She thinks about how beautiful it is
in photographs or movies, so still. 
How everything separates for a moment- 
the bullet from the gun,
the wheel from the cog,
the threads untangled,
connections all finally revealed.
If it is a diagram it can be labeled.

Meanwhile in life what is still
even in an instant collapses.
In the absence of tension 
the gravity of things becomes apparent.
The bullet untargeted,
the wheel spun,
the thread recoiled.

She says what did you think would happen
when you started to take it apart?
She says what did you expect
from shattered, disassembled; the broken
exploded view?

thus we came to the end of the 
road that we walked so long – 
awestruck, gazing back at the wondrous
view and thinking of everything
even where we have arrived and what we have
left

Photos from Costa Rica are here.

Watches you while you work; says
all the things you need to hear:
you're good, the best.
Saw what you did there
and laughed with you.
How it feels to be seen
being entirely yourself.

Sees you walk in with
shit on your shoes,
wiping them on someone's
white carpet; says:
Nobody has walked a mile
in these shoes but you. And
forgives you.

Not that you aren't sometimes
a shit-coated asshole, not that
your selfish life is unseen:
that isn't on the table.
The table is heaped
with mystery, something else
feeding and being fed.

Perhaps you are a little lost,
and tucks the blankets 
around you; says
I have understood you,
loved you so much.
Takes the blame if it helps.
And
kisses your forehead and is gone.

Because I remember what it was
to wake with
your arm over me
your breath in my hair
and know that we had
fallen asleep
whispering secrets into each others' eyes

Because I remember what it meant
to climb the narrow stairs
fingers linked for balance
and not need to look at you to know
how your face looked or why

Because I remember how it felt
when you touched me,
a lick of electricity
and for once I didn't
ask if you felt that
and we never talked about it with words

Because I remember these things
I don't need to see you again
or even know if they really happened.
But because I remember I wish.

Crack of dawn is when we get up and the clouds are still pink, which
means sailors take warning; my grandparents had a thermometer in the
hall that was supposed to predict all kinds of sailor's moods ("Its
colors turn to pink you'll see for rain and high humidity"), and sailors
aside I am  standing at the tram stop shivering for the coat I was
right to leave behind because it will get hot later. Crack must have
been smoked to make me leave the house this early; I am a morning person
but a girl ought to know her limits. Which is four. In the a.m. A crack
team was assembled to go on a mission, or not really so much a mission
as just a regular trip to the cottage. Cracks are what we saw on the
train, though there are so many
ankle-length dresses everywhere, even at 5 in the morning with backpacks
the Czech ladies go in style so there are these modesty dresses and
also
these low slung jeans, with more summer in the city cleavage than even I
like to see so early in the day, and I feel old. When we get where
we're going I sleep for five hours straight, or more like jagged, with
moments of pulling up from the marshy water of dreams to crack my eyes
open and wave faintly and then I was dragged back under. It's been a
difficult week. Crack is the sound of the whip I put to my own back and
said get up, do something, nobody likes you when you're lazy. Crack all
ten knuckles and then chop some wood, carry some water, try to be less
useless. Crack is what must be done to the code of language, of what did
you mean when you said that, of when we discussed this for an hour last
night what did you think we were talking about, of responsibility and
neglect. Or not neglect but more like not caring. Or not not caring but
like, momentarily being distracted by something else more important than
anything I have to say. I'm not saying the birds aren't adorable, I'm
saying… well, never mind. Cracked is what happened to the eggs and then yesterday the babies flew away.
Cracked is the safe that was my heart. On the plus side, sometimes you
crack me up. There's always a plus side, and you can get there by
traveling carefully lightly watching your step. Between the cracks.

MWomen at Forty

by Donald Justice

M
Women
at forty
Learn to close slam softly
loudly
The doors to rooms they will not be 
Coming back to.

At rest on Tearing past a stair landing,
They
feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,   
Though
the swell is gentle A perfect storm is brewing.

And
deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy girl
as she practices tying  learns to hold anger
His
father’s tie there  As her mother held, in secret,

And
the face of that father mother,
Still warm soft
with the mystery of lather lipstick.
They are more fathers women than sons daughters themselves now. 
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight
sound
Of the crickets a dog's bark, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of
the slope   
Behind their mortgaged houses.

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.

Great minds have sought you- lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind- with one thought less, each year.

Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:

Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,

Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,

Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own.
Yet this is you.

"As you can see, the fin de siècle…"
Eventually I slip away from
the tour group
and wander out into the castle courtyard.
The grounds have not been tended
for years –
Ninety minus forty-five years, exactly.

I take
out a cigarette, because I am learning
to be European. A plume of
smoke says,
"I have never been so lonely,"
but in fact I was much
lonelier, once,
on the tenth floor and I did not jump then.

My
heart is harder now; burned to brittle.
I have a great deal less to
lose.
From the balcony above me a girl is crying
and her mother's
clenched voice scolds,
"Stop this instant or I'll give you something
to cry about."

pillows of arms, breasts, legs
to comfort

feathers of wings, warmth
to escape

white of sound
to silence

screams hidden in a white feather pillow
to be muffled.