Author: miguel

Praise and grief sleep together in the same bed.

(Martín Prechtel)

It has taken many months for her dreams to wither,

and many months more for her to endure the ache

of the implacable unraveling of hope, until even

its papery husk, despite her care, has been snipped

away, swept away, like dust into the corners of the

house that had once been theirs.

The door of their home has slammed behind

him for the last time as the door of his heart has

also closed. He drives out of the yard away

from her and from their children and from

all their dreams to another woman’s bed, in

another woman’s house, and to another woman’s

future that never will be hers.

The vineyard they were going to build together

surrounds her like a shipwreck. The life she

had imagined bleeds out of barrels into pools

of vinegar on a dusty floor. In her dreams, yellow

butterflies float above the puddles, but when she

enters the wreckage with eyes wide open the butterflies

are buried under dust, rat droppings and cobwebs.

At least her children are safe, the boy and girl

curled up in darkness in their blankets, while

in her room she writes beneath a cone

of yellow light, beneath the weight of

all her years of broken promises until she finally

breaks apart in the tide of tears she always

carried in her heart and always will.

Let her time of grief be our time of praise: She will

clean and oil every rusty tool in the winery and

sell the vinegar for less than half its worth when

it was wine, content to know that it will

nourish people she will never meet. Watch her

plant raspberries in the ruins. Hear her sing in the

kitchen as she cooks her children’s breakfast.

Under moonlight in her empty room let her type

as an offering to strangers the words she has been

wounded into writing. Let her wrestle with the

loneliness she thought would cripple her. When the

morning light arrives, watch her dance in the

autumn-colored dress she has stitched together

out of butterflies and dust and the sea inside her.

© 2010 J.M. Keating

A dormitory of iguanas lies sleeping in the sun

on a rocky hillside next to our room.

Flying low over the water, a dozen pelicans

float like a slowly undulating ribbon. Below them,

waves arrive in irregular procession from other

edges of the world, carrying with them gravitational

energies of the moon and all the stars.

In the pink light of dawn when the birds

awaken, they coax us out of sleep with exotic

hoots and twitters never heard in Massachusetts.

Every afternoon, a storm from the south comes to visit,

and brings us curtains of warm rain to clarify our

thoughts. Early in the day, before the storm, we lie

around reading books, imagining ourselves

to be like pelicans, waves, or rain,

but mostly we resemble the iguanas.

© 2005 J.M. Keating

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Her story doesn’t say a word

about a serpent or an apple

or an angel with a flaming sword.

Instead she talks about a blouse,

her one-and-only favorite,

and its field of white polka dots

that danced a polka on the dark blue silk.

The blouse was the only thing she wore

after she had taken off her clothes,

and all of his as well.

“The dots were tiny little flecks,

like snow, and the blouse did not fall

‘like petals from a flower,’

as Adam would like you to believe.

I unbuttoned it deliberately and

slipped it from my shoulders.

“In spite of his bewilderment,

I coaxed his arms into the sleeves

and buttoned it up, up, up,

to the apple in his throat and

watched (in utter satisfaction)

as his human form changed and he grew fur

turned into an irredescent mouse

into a soggy butterfly

emerging from the sheath

of its cocoon and then became

an iridescent mouse with fur

the colors of the rainbow.

“I loved his wings and honey- colored

teeth and the goaty, curly horns

that sprouted from his eyebrows

and the third horn, stiff and straight,

and black as the abyss, that stuck out

of his forehead like an icicle.

“But most of all I loved the moment

he turned into a shadow of his shadow

and both the blouse and he dissolved

and the polka dots bloomed

into a swarm of stars.

“This whirlwind of identities

left him shaken and depressed

and he didn’t speak to me for days.

But as far as I was concerned,

they were my own, own Original

Sin, the diamonds of my greatest joy.

“As for him, he would eventually awaken

from the spell and become a responsible adult, but he has never since put on the blouse that once led him from the temples,

the priests and the punishments into

a life of our Imagination.”

 

© 2014 J.M. Keating

Wings emerged from his spine and I loved his honey-colored teeth