Eulogy for the Present Body

What do we say in solitude?
When we're snowed in
and feeling loss?
The celebration was beautiful of David's life
something that could only be molded
from the exquisite eccentricity that was
our childhood;
from the homemade wine,
from marriages that have broken but
given threads of firelight
just for the night
were sewn together.
There was closure in the old wood beams,
in the house and office
that were always like a second or third home
to my own.

And later in the calm of fleece sheets,
laying dry from excess drinking
and jubilant mourning,
we ladies of the house discovered
yet another man gone.
Yet another love,
a close one.

It is strange to not know pain beyond
your own sphere--
not war nor genocide or things so horrible
they become normal.

But I sit here being challenged.
Feeling life stronger and more intensely
because two have now advanced
from what we know.
I see photos of Hunter
and see him smile, feel him passing.
I feel my family on a different coast,
and cannot do much more
than love.

Sunsets are electric when the air is polluted
and the white banks gleam wildly
in the whites of our eyes.
There is strength here within us,
immense and penetrating strength.
There is also loss and sadness and pain.
But there is light coming through
the shadows of the barren trees
and we who are here,
we are the ones who rouse,
who wake from sleep
to rub our lashes
and feel the soft airs of change.


e. chayes

Leaving Jam and Toast to Wake my Soul Cold

I live with bamboo lining the deciduous hill
a sign that strange things
can be
and should be
where they're meant to be.

In this robust weather
when the desolate is flattered with frenzy,
their pliant stocks sway against stone walls
moving like molasses
on an ancient glacier.

I had to shake the foreign leaves
to see how still they could be.
yet in the magic of morning,
they shivered dusted fairies.

Clumps lifted from gravity's gaze,
the clouds purging.
what fell to me was wild calm
my body leaping into little movements
to taste just some.
but the fat sky squeezes in so many ways
that my control was handed over
and I had to laugh when the spotted gray
kissed me wetly.


e. chayes

adulation in tangerine autumm

oh, how you know things,

things i never know

and how you share yourself with me layers,
while i

and whispering leaves

fall around you.

there are things in the rings
of coffee on the sill;
ripples smoking from the fire.
our house is warm,
you smell of cigarettes and mints,
and i love you, even undulating for a game
i will probably never understand.

i sit, curled and scribbling,
lost in a different screen,
not far from you.
the leather binding of the journal you gave me,
my writer's name engraved,
is heavy with thoughts
you urge me to unleash.

emboldened eternals,
my innards,
stringier and thicker and more blissful
than they've ever been entangled.

i have no words for the depth of you to me.
only descriptives engage my mind's crest
and i like the secrecy of my heart to my head.

pain is released for my masterpiece,
while my adulation for you
is for you
and you alone.

the room grows darker
as you greet me from the doorway;
i smile.
the blue opaque waits
as our hill combusts into tangerine autumn.

there is so much here.
it's cold out there.
i am hot and hungry,
the beating sweat of my fingers moves.
take me for yours, take me for keeping.


e. chayes

My Twenty-Fifth Disequilibrium

She was made of stardust as a child.

There were birds who spoke and she,

like her father before her and his mother before him,

could listen.

She felt deeply spiritual and cried often in heaps of blankets

at the bottom of her bed.

On a pedestal, she once was compared to Jesus.

She was laughed at because of it

and humiliation wore her cheeks to a bruised rose.

Wars of religion, felt only from stories,

still glided upon memories as though felt, rather,

by experience.

But she was blessed and given extraordinary love

her head supported by cherishing hands.

Now no longer in the palms of her family,
she pushes away the clutches and squirms
to trust a new self

malleable, but not as soft.

Confusion always taunted her with indecision.

I am soul, flesh and full of feeling.

These tears that fall are real
and so too are my passions, Sweet One.

Fall gently upon this autumnal stone that is,

at the moment-- and, I think,
at this moment only-- my heart.

Crack my skull and guide me in

removing pieces of my brain that blind me.

I do see truth in the fire's flickering light

and the light that reflects off both our faces

as we look eternally at one another.

I cry again.

This is love.

The salt is grateful.

Life may be simpler.

I am sometimes too hard on myself,

pulling at my own head.

I am still so inexperienced.

My father,

who I know is wise,

used to hear with me the birds on the sill.

He was the one who told us

Life is a mountain and it gets harder, but elevation makes it easier.

I am discovering now, and forever until death,

what it is and what it will become.

My father became dismissive as he climbed higher.

Twilight hill, our empty house.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.

Matthew 5:14. 

I often look beyond present to a time I cannot yet understand.

In moments, losing sight of
what is beautiful, effortless

what is morphing around me.

I think this is human.

My love,

he was created to be strong.

His oak desk where I often write

is gashed with markings of old aggression

and old love and old thoughts drifting.

"Some are just from sitting," he would say

and I would say, "I don't know what sitting is."

Our wirings are distinct.

Our fuse, exquisite.

I will to be sweet and able.

I will to respect the life ahead of me.

I will to wake in each hour.

The organ plays.

e. chayes