terri has turned her attention elsewhere. i'm fixating on to two unavailable women, both distant. but as hard as i imagine, i cannot put passion into this fantasy, i need the body, the heat, the slip n' slide of love to make it real. i cannot conjure something from nothing. 

~~~

it's been a month since my north country girl and i walked the beach. she's fading. something about footsteps being washed away by the incoming tide comes to mind. i love her, i know i do, but that is worse than useless.

my other love, also distant and unattainable, is a different kind of passion. it is reverence. i am in awe of this woman. i simply want to abide in her presence, bask in the light of her. 

she makes me feel special in a way no one has. ever. she watches over me, she makes me feel safe and loved. that’s as close as i can get to it.

~~~

professor eliot suggests, gently, that my poetic themes have become too narrow. i know what he means. if it isn't terri, it’s my north country girl. if it isn't my north country girl, it's my special friend. i'm girl crazy, i’m back in fifth grade, falling in love, having crushes. i don't know what’s going on. i can’t find me anymore. i have nothing left to say.

i think it's the poetry site. i used to write for class, and for myself. i never wrote stories, without an audience there wasn't much point. it’s fun writing about the night terri and i met and dove into the wine-dark sea of passion, and other salty tales. it’s fun writing about my north country girl, the dreamy two days on the beach. it’s fun being a little naughty, writing about leaping and diving and gliding. 

but it's spilled over into my assignments. i'm having a hard time putting my thoughts into meter and proper stanzas. not that professor eliot insists on that, but he does want us to learn the forms before we reject them. 

i think, though, in this second semester of class, we're getting a little tired of coming up with poem after poem after poem, four or five a week. it's a lot. i think we feel tapped out. i know i do. my poems are becoming more and more trivial as i try to dredge up one more theme. my graphic design classes have been more fun lately. my last poem was about mickey and minnie mouse. 

i scrawled this for seminar tonight:

i'll come to where it's warm

lay my yellow and white striped towel

out on the warm, white sand and bask in the warmth!

were that the case

i would have nothing left to wish for

~~~

it's like a peter paul ruben painting without the paint. it lacks everything. it lacks passion. not a dolphin in sight. 

except, it is true.

were we on the beach together

we would swim

you would swim farther out 

than i would ever dare

you are fearless, except sometimes, you aren't

sometimes 

you're vulnerable, and i love you for that

~~~

i can't write about this for class. i'm left making up stories that sound exactly like that, made up. 

 ~~~

i am tapped out, i will have to find new themes. maybe that is what professor eliot had in mind all along, have us write and write and write until we've exhausted what's readily available, until we've got the easy emotions out of the way, and now we can see if there is anything left, if we have anything to say, really and truly. i miss writing about terri, but i hope there's more to me than that. 

i guess we'll see. but if it’s passionless, it isn’t me. 

~~~

i like it when terri goes off on her adventures. she’s my little yo-yo. she goes and comes.

~~~

i’m domestic. terri isn’t. she shouldn’t confine herself. when she wants to come back, if she comes back, she’ll come back because she wants to, because she wants what i have to offer, because as much as she likes her adventures, she loves me, and she delights in making me insane, in all ways. 

there are things she wants beyond what i can provide. there’s a level of excitement and society she needs, and finds. better she do it with my blessing, while i, in turn take my own flights of fancy.

i haven’t been angelic, it need be said.

she never comes back contrite. she brings the world to me. 

~~~

sometimes love isn’t enough 

she may not be back

~~~

focus! what to write, what to write, what to write? i'll write about:

none

noon

tune

soon

more 

moon

bore

boon

+ 1

desserts

oh my sweet crème brûlée, no fantasies remain, none

and it is only noon! 

what were you gliding to, what was that tune?

share, my little apple pie, what made you come so soon?

whatever it was, i want some, and then some more!

oh, my tasty chocolate éclair, what it was sent you over the moon

and left poor me behind? what a bore!

don't be coy, my yummy cherry tart, do tell, to our lovemaking it will be a boon!

come! let us sample the desserts, and take a bite from each and every one!

~~~

elizabeth barrett browning it isn't.

~~~

we're planning a trip for spring break, terri and i. if she's back. a drive down the coast, then camping and hiking at big sur. i'm excited to be away from campus and our apartment and our little world. i'm anxious to get terri into the wilderness to see if the wild in wilderness does to her what it does to me. 

~~~

it’s on my mind.

~~~

at the library i pull a book off the shelf, one that i've probably walked by fifty times, "robert browning's poetry." i don’t know why the brownings have invaded my thoughts.

i read a random poem, fra lippo lippi. 

i'm undone by it. the least expected is often the most appreciated. the crusty old dude turns out to be a hipster. he discourses on the relationship between art and life, and he does it passionately. he does it with humor, which i didn't expect. 

as much as i like the poem, it doesn't spark a poem in me, and seminar is coming up in a couple hours and i have nada. 

i try another, randomly chosen, this one by william carlos william:

The Children

Once in a while

we'd find a patch 

of yellow violets

not many

but blue big blue 

ones in

the cemetery woods

we'd pick

bunches of them

there was a family 

named Foltette

a big family

with lots

of children's graves

so we'd take

bunches of violets

and place one 

on each headstone.

~~~

this sad poem makes me happy. happy that language can be so simple and say so much. but, neither poem ignites a spark. i'm dead flat.

i text antoinette: 

dinner?

come in an hour, i made lentil soup

i plop down at a library table. i have to come up with something. i haven't been procrastinating. i'm empty. maybe it's terri's absence. i write words, but they’re not me. it’s true, without the reality, the slip ‘n slide, i’ve got nothing.

~~~

i remember what professor eliot said on the first night of seminar. live life. write about what you know.

it isn’t about poetry, this seminar. it’s about life.

~~~

i remember:

Terri’s hair tumbles in auburn waves, her smile is infectious, I am falling hard. 

But the white bird just sits in her cage

unknown

Terri meets my gaze, and like that she’s gone. 

White bird must fly 

or she will die

When I get back to my room Terri is there.

Skin against skin, breast against breast, we lie together. Outside it is as dark as the city can be, and the city sounds come through. When she kisses, she kisses softly. Her hands are telling me to relax. We breath in each other’s warm breath. Her hands continue to tell me to relax and I do. We breath as one. Her hands touch all the right places, we drift in and out of each other, and I never knew, and I am not afraid, and I am not alone. 

It is effortless. This is bliss.

~~~

antoinette and nathaniel and i have our supper, then a & i walk to professor eliot's house, while nathaniel stays home with the sitter. 

at seminar marcy and colin and antoinette enjoy the evening, the wine, the tea, the company, the laughter. we've been doing this for six months. we're a family. but i'm not there. 

this is what i have, this i what i read, this excerpt from han shan:

The torrent’s wide, reeds almost hide the far side.

The moss is slippery even without the rain.

The pines sing: the wind is real enough.

Who’s ready to leap free of the world’s traces

To come to sit with me among white cloud?

then i read what i wrote:

i am alone among the white clouds

waiting to live life

on the far side of the torrent i see you

~~~

that’s all i have.