rockin
My friends got married on a boat. It smelled like the sea and like gardenias, and the bride wore blue that blended in with the sky. Ty came from Florida and Talley came from Pennsylvania and John came from California and when the groom gave a toast about how lucky he was, I thought you and every one of us.Sometimes I wish I could gather up all the people I love and plant them here. That way we could meet for coffee on a whim, and I could hold the babies I know in Richmond and Los Angeles and Austin and smell their baby smell and feel them growing bigger. That way we wouldn’t have time-zone-complicated phone tag sessions that span the seasons.
But it sure is nice when a few of us end up around a table together. My technical family is tiny – two parents, no siblings or grandparents, a few aunts and uncles with three kids amongst them. So the number of good people in my life seems impossible.
Kay Ryan was just made Poet Laureate, and when I was about to post my favorite poem of hers in celebration I remembered that I put it up here already, a year and a half ago, when I was new to Portland. At that time I would say it out loud as an admonition and a reprimand, like what the fuck am I waiting for?
And now a while later it’s more like a rally. Sometimes you take the walls down months before you’re ready to put up new ones. Sometimes you yell the Ramones off-key in a smoky seaside karaoke bar of strangers. Sometimes your family from way east and your family from way west get together on a tiny boat, and you hardly even speak the same language. And there’s everyone, with their hair blowing in the wind, holding on with you.
posted by tortaluga @ 3:11 PM
1 Comments:
Your Austin baby would love to grab your hair and spit lovingly into your face regularly -- if only!!
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