And so....

...picture this, feel this: Push toes against the bottom of the pool, feel light blue chipped painted concrete beneath them, rough and worn and warm and familiar. Feel the edges of the toes, the final translucent layer of skin leave that comfort. Now--engulfed in streams of bubbles softly popping with a whisper along thighs between toes, and off of their tips. And then. And then droplets running over the face foreheadcheekboneschin, Awakening. Cool air pushes head neck shoulders and falls sheeted against the water's surface the sun--jagged planes--blinds. An assault along with the slap-cool of the air and sting of a multitude of needles of sound: marco. polo. marco hey. don't push. no dunking. screams. shouts. briefly opaqued by the softness of splashing. An assault. & the wish to close eyes against the sun shards, lean back against the surface tension break it and let go the air in a thin stream of bubbles and float down open eyes now sun breaking and unbreaking into mercurial forms the world smaller and smaller, muffled, back against the concrete now, the last of the lifeline of air lazily dancing upward as if it doesn't matter if it is broken. it is safe here for now, but the surface of the water and the air beyond defy gravity and pull at arms and legs and lungs and once again the return to the havoc.

And so it is sometimes with life, the distance between safety and comfort infinitely thin; a plane, 2-dimensional, and yet so distinct.One is clearly not the other, although they share this--one can survive in neither, and so the trick is to quiet the air, smooth the sun-shards, round out the edges of the sound, and then there is little need for escape, and no need to consider, even fleetingly, letting go the lifeline.

Christmas

Is there anything more prone to salvage than rememberances of events gone by? More symbolically salvageable than Christmas ornaments?

Once something is realized as "the last" so often the last is already gone. Had, done, passing without notice. And so, I think of this Christmas as the last, but really, it was the first, the last being the Christmas before--2009. And to silently commemorate the first-ness of this year the children cut down the tree in our woods. Usually we go to a tree farm and get one there. Strangely, last year, as Tom was tying the tree to the top of the car, the thought: "I will never see him do this again," flashed through my mind. At the time I simultaneously took a couple of pictures and shook my head as if to throw that thought off; toss it back into the snow and trees where it could be forgotten.

But forgotten that moment was not. It came, a haunt in the day and the night, sneaking into my thoughts like a wisp of mist between firs.

Kite (draft--may be edited later)

in a tree a kite. wind pulled and wind ripped, shreds and shards breaking, diminishing the overall. the (once) entirety of it.

For here is a kite, long ago made by hand, tissue paper colours chosen for their liveliness and compatibility, for their exclamation of joy! which the kite enlivened as it bounced and twirled and soared high, until  laughing, it returned to earth,  to loving hands and loving hearts. Hand made. Yes. Each frame-piece measured and cut with care, tied together in a perfect diamond. archetypal. And then the tissue, once picked out, cut and smoothed over the frame with fingertip gentle care, so it would not tear,then pasted. flour and water.

kite
string attached, reeled out, sent forth:  at first bouncing low, reaching toward currents and eddies, falling, reaching, falling reaching and then with a shout, pulling up into the blue against the blue and the clouds and the gentle chimes of the trees and the laughter of people below. And it was loved, that kite, and it loved in return, soaring--a smudge of bright in the air. the invisible air.

then.
a downdraft
the tree.
snared.
shredding.
rain and wind and time pull at the kite, crumpled, discarded, left to dissolve, disappearing fiber by fiber scrap by scrap, shard by shard until it will cease--surely and entirely--to exist;
until its very existence is forgotten altogether
& the sky closes up around the space it occupied.
seamless blue.