I think about meeting you

I think about meeting you 
in spring when the forsythias are in bloom
and on the twigs of trees are flowers
and the days are lovely,
the nights are cool.
It would be like we are young again
believing there may be worries 
but nothing could stop us from loving.
And then we would extend the hours
into a one long inexhaustible conversation
as though a movie.
As though a movie.

forty-so degrees

The temperature still has its cool hand
pressed flat against the surface of air.
Though the sun is bright
and gusts come not infrequently.
Dog walkers are out, their dogs patient
with the slow stroll; more lovers
are out nights. Their soft warm glow. 

I work continuously for days now,
trudging 
over translations and retranslations,
that the sun also keeps longer hours.
Outside the large windows, there may be
no indication of evening, not even 
when sometimes I feel my palms cold.

There is an end, though not in sight.
There will be summer, though not yet.
At the moment, here, 
forsythias in bloom.

A poem for you

Photo by WV Mozer

Time for rowing 
and fishing.
A bear alone
but not quite 
in the distance.
The sense
of quiet.
Though nothing
truly is.

the wall is thin

At the conference this morning, an independent researcher
reads her paper about nostalgia and peoples in transit.
She says "doors" to answer in an ambiguous way a question
from the audience; she describes as doors the door 
of airplanes that, like magic, one comes through to places;
also the screen of phones like doors.
My friend J- is having a depression and is remembering
all the people who used to read poetry with him; they are 
all either dead or have gone away. He repeatedly says

come over the house for dinner, but that last time his wife
casually says "I have no friends", repeating it as she leans 
on the doorframe. It troubles me to this day.
What can a person say to someone well past his fifties
with two children not yet even of school age? There are
children in the news feeds, children from far away, dying.
The graduate student who, during consultation, repeatedly

say how she did her work she did her work she did 
her best, her work
was truly only navel gazing 
at her own miseries. Sometimes it angers me

but only because I have been to countries of bone dry misery.
Where people do not have rooms for pathologized miseries, 
caught as they were in systemic and vicious precarity.
It troubles me to this day, how I cannot say
stop it

because I have no right to; because I, too, am flawed with
my own miseries, trifling in the larger scheme of things.
What can I say that will be of interest to you?
When I come home and open the door and see you, beautiful 
calves, legs stretched comfortably while your feet rest 
on the table after a long day at work, your attention now 
on a book, your long braided hair, what is there to say?

I hope there will be no need of words. I will 
fall on the space beside you, a door, a sigh,
so at last there will be no need of words.

note to the secretary

"Dear Gloria, I received your email..." 
and it is frustrating
how the contract is still there, you 
find it indistinguishable from the one
form that is significantly different.
The instructions are clear and simple.
Due to circumstances, the contract

will have to be printed in three copies.
Signed by two offices. Mailed.
To the one office for the action.

The other form, you need to print
in one copy; then have the necessary 
person to sign it. Scan the form, email
it to me. I will take care of it.

"Dear Gloria, I received your email..."
which part confused you?
A part of me understands there must be
a hell of other things to mind, as it
always is the condition everywhere.
I do not know where you are coming from.
I try

to understand. Like the student who is
always asking for consideration, 
an extension, always saying she is doing

the work. If she could have a little more
time, appealing for understanding. 
How she is wrapped with the blanket
of color, dark and struggling. I try to

extend the breadth of understanding.
Push back the word that intends to quell.
The word that is impatient at the slow
to understand, at the constant asking
for understanding. "Dear student,

the world does not stop. I must fail you.
It is not alright to fail. But it is
alright when you cannot make this mark.
Some just don't. It is alright. 
There are other marks you can make."

"Dear Gloria, I received your email..."