To dance
is to imagine a partner,
Itself an art,Â
an act of fate, perhaps,
to find each otherÂ
for all sorts of reasonsÂ
and fall into patterns of motion.
The rain
is here most days now,
soundtrack to our grief,
the rhythm of our distress.
fills up 8-foot floods,
stops planes and world conventions,
but cannot distract a war.
galvanizes into a typhoonÂ
all too often in our part of the world.
Derails lives.
even tricked a mayor who knew waterÂ
like no other, its flows, its strength—
to slip off a roof and sever an artery.
is not to fight against,
or to romanticize
but like our fields,
we should be grateful for.
What the dead teach us
This is not the night I know.
All my dead descend:
Mother who couldn’t figure out
why I didn’t learn to look like her.
Father, never home enough
for my brothers’ longing.
Husband, too good for the world.
Ancestors who gave us
genes and history.
They all crowd me out.
Fear jumps up, now a huge dark shadow
about to pounce on how I recall life
and rethink
the many graceful ways to live it again.
