We arrived when the tide was turning, pulling up
her hem like a mother who’d never once forgotten
she was a woman first and always. I went down

to her edge, surely just to my ankles, I thought,
but she lapped my legs and clapped her bawdy castanets
on sand bars ever just up ahead… “Come!”

she laughed. Not one to resist the tease of salt I waded in,
she, nipping at my calves then knees then place of joy
I never could quite help in spite of myself. Further and further

I went, shallow then deep then shallow again,
turning and squinting into the sun now and then to find the shore
of your long arms waving. Surprised, every time,

I’d wave back, only to be pulled away once again
by riptides of once upon and ever after, and all the things
I could only ever feel, without breaking, in the ocean.

(c) Heidi Fischbach, 2010

April is National Poetry Month. This one’s been brewing for months. It’s getting there.

What Wants Saying

Merchants of luxury trade in securities
back and forth and up and down the walled
streets of restless minds, selling lies
of commission, omission, and so-called re-
mission to save us from what
we never asked for saving from,
never listening for what
really wants saying, lost
as it is in the nah-nah-nah-noise,
static electricity, lint of too much spin
cycle, re-leftovered ten too many
times ticker taping two-bit drones
along the barbwire guarded margins
of our strip malled minds.

Are you exhausted yet?

Spare a change for the homeless,
that’s your mother on the street.

Spare a moment for the homesick,
put some ground beneath their feet.

Spare a nickel for your freedom,
bareback horses on the beach.

Spare a lifetime for some sadness,
welcome motion, sweet relief.

(c) Heidi Fischbach 2010

Yesterday’s wind, it took things with it,
The leaves, for one.
Another month, for two.
For three, some threadbare fantasies.
But it left a near-full moon
and rolled out a red carpet
to where I do not know.

(1 Nov. 2009)

Too much info not enough ear.
Too much bony not enough rear.

Too much quiet not enough shout.
Not enough action too much doubt.

Too much air and not enough ground.
Too much square not enough round.

Too much look and not enough find.
Not enough body too much mind.

Too much chair and not enough run.
Too much ‘puter not enough fun.

Too much keyboard not enough page.
Too much screen not enough stage.

Too much restless not enough fill.
Too much careful not enough kill.

Too much edge and not enough dive.
Too much dead and not enough ‘live.

Too much water not enough wine.
Too much popcorn not enough dine.

Too much in and not enough out.
Too much teapot not enough spout.

Too much worry not enough play.
Too much bed and not enough hay.

Too much navy not enough red.
Too much ancient not enough dead.

Too much gravy not enough blood.
Too much cleanly not enough crud.

Too much cover not enough bare.
Too much careful not enough dare.

Too much waiting not enough move.
Not enough silly too much brood.

Too much mild not enough spice.
Not enough badass far too much nice.

To have and to hold are, to be sure, quite different from
to hope and to dream, which are also, to be sure, away —
maybe somewhere with you but away nonetheless,
which is where I sense you, on your own.

I would not bind you to me (if even I could),
nor force anything ahead nor outside its time,
and yet this little pigeon longs for you and home
in one and the same breath.

(Some blessing. Some curse. Who can say?)

Who am I to take where you are away from you?
It’s not wrong, it’s just not here.

In the beginning was away,
and away was with God
and away was God —

I long for a place to come home to,
a mat to stamp my dream-worn feet upon:
“This is where I belong.”

A hook for my coat.
A body to roll over into.
“Pinch me, I am here,” I might say,

or astounded: “It’s you, really you!”
to which you might reply all bleary-eyed, all flesh and blood:
“Yes, now sleep, my little homing pigeon.”

A poem came pounding on my door today and I had to let it in. I asked it for a point and it yelled at me, something about no time for talk.

It told me that my chest will explode if I don’t give it a pen already. And that my heart will shrivel up and die if I don’t let it cry and break, no questions asked, as much as it needs to again and again about how the world is too much and not at all at once, since here I am, still alive and exploding even while the world keeps coming and coming and coming at me, saucy earth woman that it is, in me, through me, to me, all the freaking time.

It’s about how you are me (that’s right, you) and he is me and so is she and she and she. And Dick—that’s right—Cheney is also me, mistress of evasion and hiding that I am. And cheeky Jon Stewart too. And Barack Hussein Obama. Momma that’s right, it said, you heard it here.

And George W. Bush too before you go thinking I’m taking sides for how could I when I am all of them and all of you and it’s all right here inside Iran, which I am, and have been every day I’ve ever held myself back and stifled and silenced and shut things up when I didn’t agree with me, trying all the while to make it look for the world like my shit’s together when really there are burning tires and exploding cars right inside my chest and I na-na-na put my fingers in my ears and numb myself to almost- but never quite fully -death—

For here I am, still, my smile as forever plastic as the bags I self-righteously don’t give myself anymore except for when I do for the trash I justify in my kitchen, because, after all, some stuff just won’t break down no matter how you slice it and dice it and cook it up.

And while I’m at it let me claim pollution of super-sized blah blah blahs of in-consequence except for their numbing effect on a heart fairly bursting if I wait to say how it really is for even one second more.

And before I forget, the poem said, I must tell you that you are also the stupid people in the stupid line this morning, biding their time to pay some stupid fine they can’t afford to pay. And the little boy on his big boy bike trying desperately to make it go with training wheels too low to the ground on account of the hovering mother also called you, not wanting him, by which of course she means herself, to fall.

So that’s me with the attention span of a fruit fly and the world inside.

Where was I anyway? Oh yes, channeling Eliot, something about in the end is my beginning and all that as it seems that through no merit of my own and by what I can only call mercy I find that the trees are also me—

As is the endless spring rain that just yesterday became summer.

So this is how it happens when you can’t get out of your own way: change comes knocking on your door, politely ringing your bell and waiting ever so patiently for you to answer, tick tock tick tock, and then one day, when and exactly why we’ll never know, in some merciful kick of kindness, it breaks down the door of you, the very door you kept meaning to answer, because that’s right: change hasn’t got all day.