I've been turning this poem by Adrienne Rich over in my head the past few days. It does well to describe what been in my head:

Transcendental Etude
Adrienne Rich

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
--And in fact we can't live like that: we take on
everything at once before we've even begun
to read or mark time, we're forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.

from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984

first breath:
joy, laughter, jubilance, tears
photo ops
congratulatory cards
bassinets and sleep deprivation

first love:
nervousness, sweating, jubilance, tears
and everything in between
photo ops
secret letters
stolen kisses and forever promises

first loss:
disbelief, numbness, anger, tears
no photos
just flowers
and wondering how it all went so fast
from that to this

Jody's father passed away this morning. The expectation of a thing does not always ease the sorrow of its arrival, though. Details soon.

write
not because you can
but because you can't not:
because the words
grind holes in your soul
finding ways to get out
especially if
you don't want them to

your grocery lists will rhyme
and your thank-you notes
sound like poetry
and you will hear—
cadences—
coming from your brain,
incessant,
in the silences between
the beats of your heart

write
because a controlled release
forestalls the explosion
that your creativity foretells

write
because the composition of phrase
makes it plausible
that order can be drawn
from your chaos

write

Speak, my brother, of angels half-remembered,
almost forgotten; of voices whose timbres
bounce analog memories from ears
to cells and back again to memory.

Speak, so that I may remember, even though
the sharpest of my recollections will be
limited by the silences between your words.

It is easy enough to memorialize through
words and possessions, but the tangibility
of a vanished existence relies on the
remembrance of pauses between word and word;
hesitations between word and glance.

It is the spaces between that transform
recollection into memory,

A creation of something,
out of nothing,
into a self-imposed belief
of importance—
or existence.I. Reverse Sift

Between hand and fist, breath and wish,
everything shifts. Edge aligns with edge.
Points notch points. Trickles of deepest
blue slide from my palms and evaporate
in the eddying currents of the air.

Your fabrications come from lips and eyes,
dichotomies of faith and belief uttered
in glance and conversation. You define me,
wrongly, as a 'conjurer.' My fabrications
begin where yours meet their end.

It's better in the winter:
mukluks, woolens, socks and scarves
unwind like so much baby bunting
to reveal the season's surprise.

The lamb's-fleece peels off in showers
of melting ice and snow. In summer,
the silk of a negligée is too much
clothing to be borne. In winter,

the excitement is in the discovery
of the warmth of a human body
buried in the prepositional
accoutrements of the winter season:

Under. Between. Beneath.
Inside so much snowbound gift-wrapping,
underneath the hints of lanolin,
denim, and windchill: you.

Come, silly familiar boy, and we'll be off
to the land of Indian food and exotic movies
(at least for tonight). We'll tell revisions
of stories told before; your workplace,
my writing, the cats, weekend plans.

Then you'll drive me across town, in a truck
which is gathering years in the same way
that we're collecting grey hairs. We'll park
in the back, to avoid the gauche teenagers,

and duck inside for our secret rendezvous
with a Kevin Spacey movie. Do you remember
our first movie? I don't; I liked moviegoing
with you better once we settled out which

Several days afterward, I found your snifter
lying in the cranny between sofa and table,
having come to rest next to the wall
after being brushed aside during the party.

The cats hadn't bothered it—yet—
but the dust was starting to stick, feather-
soft, to the rounded rim and fluted bowl.

I reached out to it, one breast pressed flat
against the side of the couch as my fingers
danced tantalizingly close, closer, and finally
brought the elusive glassware within reach.

Victorious, I cupped it with my fingers
and brought it gently to my nose, in an airy

Leaving is never so easy as saying hello.
The whippoorwill outside my window tunes its song
as the sun readies itself for its morning stretch
vaguely past the eastern horizon.

The odometer respools as you stare ahead,
counting bags or trinkets—or layovers—in your mind,
while I search for the correct iteration
of farewell for you.

Your flight leaves in forty minutes,
in which time you must complete the march
from counter to metal detector to counter, again,
while I take the car and drive back home,

with the knowledge that the space of a weekend

It was the cherry-time of the summer season,
and you were gone—and back—in the breath of a year.
The posters on the walls warned of spies, and treason,
and the sins of idleness. You spoke not of fear,

of loss, but instead: dancing, drinks, shore leave -
of when we could be like other couples again,
sedately married, with no need for Navy reprieve.
I bobbed my hair in eager anticipation

of reunion, and opened your letters with knives
kept sharp to protect the flimsy paper inside.
In May, the letters stopped coming. Were you alive