The Indigestible

Almost sometimes, almost
I can feel you there beside me, as I walk
along the aisles in the store and select produce,
fruits and vegetables crisp
vibrant and bright — and there
almost, in my vision, another vibrance

unanswered by the full gaze but almost, almost there, and I wonder how I can miss someone
I have yet to meet.

In the car, on the drive, my palm
rests open on the seatedge beside me
where your knee might be as I think
of what we might say as the world rolls past beneath
flashing and flaring in wild desert tans and reds and
dusky greens, and

with the theater seat beside me as empty I wonder if the ice bears would scare you. Or if they have already,
for you are alive now, a name, a face, a breath, held with mine in unspoken hope.

And if, after a day weaving light and dark in the depths of this samsaric exercise, you
would open your hands to direct the flow of cloud and rainbow,
the spat of rain on glass taking you back to the narrative and your eyes, dark or light
alight
as you say you want to learn music
just like August.

— the roll of time passing parsed in the beat of one heart,
and yours, unknowably distant, and the flashes past, beyond, outside the chill glass.

Eyes closed to the twilight emptiness of your vacant room
made more so by the made bunk
unsullied, unused unwrinkled and unexplored,
I feel and know the misfire, the flashes fading into dysthemia’s tarbaby pull,
the drawing off of day into a world of shade and autumn’s withered hope
— another season to weather, the mantle light but lifeless

the ceaseless pointless futility of waiting has had its effect, the course has shifted into
the chill currents, and the mast has heeled over under the cold disc of the distant dark.

This season of such importance to family, the drive that,
one year ago, brought me to this place of waiting
and which remains, still,
unfulfilled:
Another time best shared is passing, the shape of you in my life
still almost

but not yet
filled.

==

I am in the midst of terminating my relationship with Arizona’s Children, the agency that seemed to offer me the plausibility of fost-adoption last year.

Reasons why are not very important now. It is a parting, but the adjective amicable might be out of place.

No one in charge at AzChi seems to know why I have never, in my history with them, received on piece of mail in my box; and I think it’s odd that, in the last two months of silence I’ve had, imposed by my contact with them, I’ve been read as “aggressive” and “uncommunicative”.

Busy I understand. But a long history of not returning calls, and of breaking crucial appointments, and of failure to contact state agencies to follow up on home inspections I read as passive-aggressive rejection.

It is not fair to refuse to return calls, then insist that a correspondent has been out of touch.

As for me, my annular mushfest is closing in. Last weekend I went to Laughlin to see August Rush and Golden Compass. The former was one hundred percent predictable from its opening credits, and it left me drooping in my seat, going, awwwwwwwww.* The latter, a foray into the texts of Pullman, but not that satisfying — though Lyra was as pretty and strong as I thought she might be.

Yoshi is the boy I have yet to meet. But I will meet him. This will happen. I will be his.

====

* Freddie Highmore, lately of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Arthur and the Invisibles and Finding Neverland, was the title character in August Rush. He did okay losing his Brit accent and, mirable dictu, upstaged Robin Williams. What I didn’t know was that he was also the voice of Lyra’s demon, Pantalaimon, in Golden Compass. Why this matters is that Freddie Highmore has pretty much always played a bright, good sweetheart in every movie I’ve seen him in, and I’d like a set of three of him, aged twelve, eight and four, FedExed to my home sometime late next week. (He’ll be sixteen on February 14, 2008. What a hell of an appropriate birthday for him to have. And yes, I’ll take one of those too, please.)