When I once again realize I am the luckiest man in the world

Out in the garage
Working on my motorcycle
Using the 6-piece ratcheting box end wrench set
To tighten down the upper triple clamp bolts
I set the lift stand to raise the back wheel
To adjust the chain tension
I am listening to this American life on the radio
The space heater whirring quietly by my feet
Our dog comes out to check up on me every half hour

I pull the sparkplug to check the jetting
Remove the skidplate and change the oil and filters
The seat comes off with a single dzus fastener
And I remove the air filter
Turning the wingnut until it releases from its seal
Then I clear an area on the workbench to clean it
Spray new filter oil on it and let it sit and soak in
And in all of this cleaning and adjusting
And tightening and oiling and puttering around
All I can think about is my wife
Visible every few moments
through the open garage door as she works in the kitchen
peeling and cutting and mixing food for dinner
I catch a glimpse of her smile
And I see how her happiness mingles with the kitchen lights
How it leaks out through the dividers in the window glass
like fingers stretching quietly out along the driveway
Beckoning me to come back inside.

the purest evidence - cover

litany after Billy and Jacques

You are the pillows on the floor
The pie crust and the apples
You are the sticker on the window of your car
and the christmas lights on the trellis
You are the soft blankets and the bobby pins
and the tennis balls hiding in the forest

However, you are not the crumbs on the counter
The washrags on the stairs
Or the goldfish hiding in our backyard pond.
And you are certainly not the noises
Of settling dishes in the cupboard at night
There is just no way that you are that noise.

It is possible that you are the squirrels playing in the grass
maybe even the small herb garden
but you are not even close
to being the wind among the evergreens

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the colander in the cabinet
nor the whippet asleep under the covers

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the rumbling of the motorcycle engine

I also happen to be library book on the mantle
the chocolate syrup at the bottom of the coffee cup
the post it note in the kitchen
and the toolbox in the basement

I am also the first ray of the sun
and the swirling eddy in the river
But don't worry, I'm not the pillows on the floor
You are still the pillows on the floor
You will always be the pillows on the floor
not to mention the pie crust and--somehow--the apples.

she asks

Do you know what my favorite part
of that poem was?

It was the part where the metaphor turned
And its hands began trying to find
The edge of the curtain
To pull them back
And show what it was
You had been getting at
in all those lines before

It was the part where your mouth
Stopped working properly
It was the part where your chin
Didn’t move in exactly the right way
And your lips curved a bit late
To form the sound of the words on the page

It was the part where your eyelids
Became a little heavier
And a little less focused

It was the part where your heart
was getting in the way of your words
And it was trying to say
Two things at once

You were to reading the words to the poem
You had written
And at the same time
You were describing the wings
You saw unfurling from my shoulders

sitting next to you in church today

for melissa

I felt the vibration of truth from something that was said
And it wasn’t the truth that caught me off guard
It wasn’t the truth that was important
At that moment
What was important
Was that I felt what direction the vibration came from

When I was younger I explained away this tingling
As a ghost passing through my body at that moment
But that wasn’t it, really
It was about why a ghost was passing through me at that moment
It was about what that ghost was saying to me
And what I had done to set it all in motion

Later I understood it as the truth
The realization of something that was
Something simply was so perfectly true
That it set off these windchimes in my body
And in creative writing class when someone wrote something
That was a breeze enough to set them off
I told her it was the same feeling you get
When you bite a spoon
That metallic touch sets something off in your skin
And it flows through your body so quickly
But you can’t stop it
And you can’t help but feel it and give it your attention

That’s how it was in church this morning
How it made me focus
Because I don’t remember what the minister was saying
I don’t remember which verse he had displayed on the screen
I know it was after the juggling
And I know it was before he sat on the bed
And talked about ultimate fighting

But all I remember about that moment was that I understood
Physically for the first time
That the vibrations I felt came from a specific place
Because each wave that passed through me as I sat there
Each wave that I held onto and savored before I let it pass through
Each one came from my right side
It came clearly from where your body touched mine
It wasn’t simply you being in my life
It wasn’t everything being so perfect that let me feel these things
It was you
Purely and simply you

And I thought about the day at work
When I was playing with my ring
Taking it off and putting it back on
And feeling that vibration every time it touched my skin
How I lost it when I took it off
And got it back when I slid it back over my knuckle

And I thought about how I remember you
And how I remember us when my ring knocks up against something hard
How it sounded on the metal railing at the baseball game
How it sounded against the wrench when I was working on my motorcycle
How it always sounds different
How it always reminds me of the same thing

And sitting there in church
Thinking about those sounds
The different tones and vibrations that move through my body
Since you are in my life
And that I am in church
And maybe that is why my thoughts turned back to god
And how he is so different to everyone
And shows himself in ways only we can understand
But only when we seek him out
How he wants us to look for him

And I know then that these vibrations
Have been trying to signal me to something
So much larger than myself
For such a long time
Something so much larger than ghosts
So much larger than metal spoons
In so many ways
Like when I open the door for our dog to go into the backyard
And get busy making a cup of coffee or doing the dishes
And forget that he is outside
And he stands at the back door for minutes on end
With his nose pressed against the seam
Where the door meets the doorframe
And he could open it if he pushed
But he doesn’t
He waits until something tells him I have forgotten
Then he whines
And how long and how loudly he whines I am not sure
I only hear the last one
The one that reminds me he is there
The one that reminds me I have forgotten him
And it is that something that changes in the volume
Or the pitch
Or the timing
That wakes me back into his life

It was that same change today
Sitting next to you in church
That woke me back up
That finally clicked and made me turn around
And see what had been waiting for me
Like realizing you had to let your dog inside
And at the same time realizing
You didn’t have a dog
But there he was
At the back door
Whining a bit
Softly
Maybe gently scratching at the door
Eyes intent at the thin line of light
Where the kitchen leaks out into the yard.

honeymoon happiness management

Put the big rocks into the jar first
Then the smaller ones
Watch how they filter around the larger ones
Settling down in the bottom
As far as they can go
Then the gravel
Each smaller size filling in the spaces
Finding their way into the places
Only they can occupy
The sand comes last
The same sand you felt all week
In between your toes on the beach
The sand you shook from your towel
At the end of the day
The sand from the floorboards of the jeep
And sift it into the jar
Through your fingertips
See how the first few grains
Slide all the way to the bottom
See how much room is left
How much sand can still fit into the jar
And even as it moves up to fill all the spaces
As it gets close to the top of even the largest rocks
The ones you dropped in first
And after almost two years
You wonder is the top of the jar reaching higher
As if by someone’s hands
Spinning it on a wheel
Holding its sides and encouraging them upwards
Because you keep finding more stones
Of all sizes
And always
Every day
More bits of sand
And you never run out of room

And as you watch one small stone in particular
arc and bounce its way through the water
and larger stones in the jar
as you watch it find the perfect place to rest
you are able to finally stop wondering
If there is enough room for all of this
For all of your happiness
For the rest of your lives together.

breakfast 23 days before

thinking about our wedding vows
thinking about how your eyes
and your smile
have become fixtures of my universe
thinking about how hard it is
to see my waffle through all these tears.