I feel broken, I have not felt broken like this before,
and the wise woman that reads your whispers,
the one who breaks into Italian when she is delighted or drops her guard,
she says maybe, maybe you are simply aware of these long-broken parts
and you speak these beautiful, awful truths to a forever friend
whose fingers are always moving and she says
think of pottery though
when the ceramic is being glazed, it looks like it is breaking,
but no, it isn’t breaking,
and you’re not breaking, she says,
your surface is splintering but your interior is still intact
as she drives you to the ocean to comb moss
that grows like human hair on sea rocks
and there’s your friend with the renaissance soul
the latest one to make a new life and weary and sleep stolen
she introduces you as a writer first,
not a teacher/therapist/ academic,
not a failed woman nor a would-be wife
and she says we must create because
nothing is secure and
life is uncertain
and life is short-
and this same week you are running to the river, and you are never too
quick that you cannot stop for the burst of cherry blossoms ushering spring
and this is a delight,
a kindness,
that you can stay still enough to capture the bees
dancing across blossom and bud
and across the road
you hear the man you cannot stop loving for his improbable love of unlikely song
and he’s playing the uillean pipes across the field
and you are breaking
still and the river
will take you, broken or cracking you are mostly organic, and your banyan tree will hold you amongst her buttress roots and will remind you that
all that lives
is prone to break.
Word upon Word 