Entertainment for My Ex-Wife Who Suffered from Pain of Capsular Shift Surgery

Listen,
There have been years between us,
Patterns have emerged,
And I do not want to be the man your father is,
Nor my father.

There are times I am filled with goodness,
Sitting, smiling, eating at the table
With Buddha, Jesus, and Krishna in good company,
Filled with emptiness,
Dining on love.

There are times I go spelunking,
Deep into the belly of the earth,
Where I search for the grave,
Seeking rebirth in dark, quiet waters,
In the belly of Gaia.

There is time for joy and sorrow.
There is time for love and anger.
There is time for tenderness and hardness.
There is time for company and solitude.
There is time for time and time.

Do you know the frosted leaves of cold December?
I remember sitting, back against a tree,
Trying to be silent, not to spook the deer.
My toes, icicles.
My breath, vapor.
The sun rose over the eastern horizon in brilliance of white and hot,
Hot to see, cold to touch,
Diamonds of ice melting into rays of light,
Too brilliant to observe without going blind,
Reflecting in every stiff crystal of water,
Edged on the fallen, brown leaves of October
Strewn across the forest floor,
Where sparrows flit among the naked branches.

Have you tasted moonlight?
Have you held conversation with the barking squirrel?
Have you tempted lightning, a dervish in empty beanfields?

Have you emptied yourself into the cold blue mud
Beneath fifteen feet of water in a summer pond
That begins softly, like yogurt from the icebox,
Hardening gently in its depths,
With prickly incidence of stick and leaf, long residents of cold Hades,
Once citizens of rain and wind and sunlight and thunderstorm,
Atop the thick, canopy of life that stretches eternally toward the sun,
Who touch my toes,
Poking in still stiff hardness, melting into cold sludge,
Two feet down, or three, past the knee?


I must tell these things to you.
I must find them, in solitude.