Jennifer Dixey's Shared Poems

moving from room to room
playing math games at
math night. my third-grader
looks for friends, always
seeking people first.
we make our way from
dice games to cards, to the
new-fangled electronic game
room, C1. there, he pokes
around in a desultory way
at various screens. finally
a friend arrives, and they jet off
to find a different room, me
and the boy's father trailing,
little smiles, knowing. our boys
are similarly flighty. it's tiring
to follow them as they change
their minds, try new things.
finally, it's time to wrap up
the evening, head to the cookie line.
over cookies, I find out
another of the mothers there
had brain surgery five years ago.
when she woke up, her right side
was paralyzed. they told her
it was as if she'd had a stroke,
that she had five months
to learn to write, walk, use her arm
all over again. if she didn't get back
full function in five months, she'd be stuck.
she laughs, says her optimism
amazed the surgeons, the staff.
"I said, wow, physical therapy, that's
great - I've always wanted to learn how
to dance." which she did.
she seems utterly healthy, her
operation a distant memory.

nothing like a little perspective
to remind me that not everything
fits into a neat calculus. there
are elements of life that are
irreducible. may we all be
prime numbers, all of us.

"Eden was paradise, though we couldn't have known it."
-- Benjamin Gorman

though we couldn't have known it
every bite of grass or insect
every drop of clear rain to drink
every puddle or dirt pile to get clean in
every melody from our throats
was somehow our own miracle

base creations, simple creatures
we existed as more than
steps on an evolutionary ladder
of which we could not even conceive:
we were, every one of us,
brilliant, perfect reflections
of the chance, or love,
that brought us into
being

and all the memories
of all the centuries
we've lived, bred,
died and rebirthed
have gathered in the notes
that fly from us, the songs
we teach, still unconscious
to our young

to write
is to dream
on paper
transform
life thought
into life lived
if only through
words. the way
the hot water
felt, running through
your hands as you washed
the dishes for the last
time that washing the dishes
would seem like an ordinary activity.
the way the moon looked,
gigantic and implacable,
that morning when you
woke up at five, opened your eyes to
enormous picture windows that
were not your own,
stared at its full white glory
over Puget Sound.
the sound of the dog's nails
on the kitchen floor
of the apartment
you used to live in,
the one in the building
as cobwebbed as Miss Havisham's
living room, the one
with scandalous photos
from another century
hidden inside its walls
and an all-day drunk
downstairs. you know,
the kind of thing you
remember -
even when it didn't
really happen
to you
at all.

wood walls inside,
wild land outside.
large rooms with many uses.
we do not know all of them.
we find new rooms all the time.
today we found the kitchen.
there was a large sink,
made of wood,
like everything else
in the house. we were running water
in it, washing dishes - were they also wooden?
- when I woke up. I wanted to go back,
closed my eyes again after the alarm,
for all that nature had to offer,
and all that space, unclaimed, where
we could spread out and find
a place to be.

Here we are.
It's you, screen, and me.
With what shall I fill you?
I confess, you
intimidate me.
Blank as a page,
deliberately, opaquely white,
designed by software developers
to evoke just the kind of panic
I'm feeling right now.
Yet the compulsion
to type propels
my fingers to the keys,
and I write.