Fixing a Hole

It’s nighttime now, and after looking at the stars I’m wondering what the sky looks like in Portland where my dad is now. He’s not a stern man, but he doesn’t joke either, he’s always looking for a laugh, telling a story. I wonder what he’s telling her right now, as they look out on the gray, drizzling sky through deep panes of glass. I wonder how the streetlight’s reflecting off his glasses and into the room, in a few different directions, glinting and exciting the cat whenever a wrinkle of the nose pushes at the frames. And when he gets back sometime in the coming weeks, I’ll ask him about the weather in Portland, how long was the flight, and I’ll let him tell the rest, his successes in words, failures in the pauses between them.

The cup’s sitting on the windowsill to dry, all covered in droplets in the sun, squeaky clean, and while that’s true, it’s disingenuous, there’s so much more going on that it’s almost unfair to narrow in like that because I know somewhere out there you may be thinking as I am, looking at the trees that won’t be barren for much longer, seeing their stark branches like bones, thousands of skeleton arms reaching wildly to the sky, gesticulating, demanding the warmth of the sun that will bring you and I back together. Until then, I sit as you do, peering through the leafless world, trying to find you looking back.

I wish I was an engineer so I could build a bridge to a place where bridges don’t cross the landscape, where the shores are forested with shade & coolness that only we’ve found, that we & only we can share, like we felt in the breeze we tasted as we carved our names in the tree, or on so many of those warm summer nights on the grassy hill, watching the waxing moon melt away into the tiny twinkling lights on the horizon, the king & queen of it all. But now that air is sticky & hot & doesn’t blow like it used to, so I’m building a bridge in my mind to that cool, shady place where the rain’s already fallen & you’re always in my dreams.

The sky is   an endless moving tapestry & everything that is   holy & sacred lives in it, on it, above it, beneath it, nothing that is   is not holy, is not made of everything, same as we are,   living in the sky on earth,   yearning to be, to be, to be

It looks like rain today, tomorrow & forever those brooding clouds press down like endless indecisions, haunting & spewing what they hold dear, arresting us in their vagrant uniformity; each drop no better or worse than the last, just an endless synchronization, a choreographed dance of leaves paddled gently by the falling rain & blowing wind coming through my open window to remind me of something I forgot long ago, something I maybe didn’t want to remember but couldn’t afford to forget, for my own sake, & maybe someday I’ll thank that heavy, turgid breeze for reminding me, for keeping me who I am, as I am now, forever—