UnBroken Homes

What was I doing in the dream?

I was painting at my mother’s

house in Princeton and then I was

teaching Shyams in neighbor John’s yard

I was looking for something

a sphere of blue color

a round riverstone

a home

but also

I was taking a flight

While we walked

Andre was telling me about

the children that

had lost their homes

He had an idea for me

As I moved into line

another plane was disembarking

They were all families that had lost

their homes from Syria from Venezuela

from Liberia from El Salvador

They walked toward me quiet

grave and dignified

with the flood and

the rainbow equal in

their tired eyes and

they asked for nothing

Before he could tell me

his idea

Alina sleeping in the bed next

to mine picked up her cup

and took an audible slug of

water and set down the cup

I gathered in the dream

and walked to the window

It was my first morning in Venice

the green water moved quietly

I moved to the balcony

Only awake were the gulls

and a morning sweeper

pushing his rig over

the little stone bridge

I was moved to listen to

‘Alexandra Leaving’

I remember lying on the

living room rug

crying into silence

watching shadows cross

the ceiling as Ma

watched Leonard in Dublin

sing ‘The God of Love

Preparing to depart’

crying into the same Heriz

I had when Ma and Dad

told Alina and me ‘this does

not mean that we are

broken’

During my show in Point Reyes

they selected a painting from my Unbroken Homes series

I was flu sick and the day was incredibly like a dream

I told everyone how I put the 2 triangles of steel

in the ocean for 3 tides then drew a blue sphere

‘with all the blue I had left’

‘Ahh’ they said ‘I got it’

I had told them enough

But as my thoughts reconnected

to actuality I remember these 2

diagonals of the same square were

not in the ocean but in the calm Tomales Bay

which runs directly through

the San Andreas fault

They weren't together

but in different places along the river

I left them for a few hours and

was going to finally go to the

Czechoslovakian bar for a beer

but instead I went back up the hill

and squeezed some more blackberry

colored dye out of the blue dahlias

(the blue blood that would never

return to my heart)

and when I returned

the tide had come in and

it was dark

I waded through the warm shallow water

waving my phone light at slippery

reflections trying to find

2 somethings

2 of us

2 broken wholes lost

in dark shallow history

It wasn't happening

I went back out in the morning

before my favorite professor Jeremy was coming

to the studio and

searched once more like a man

who’s lost something he could never explain

I found them both

One was where I had placed it

and one had drifted into the bay

Their bright orange new rust

was almost resplendent

They were easy to find

Before she went shopping for

the softest blanket

2 Ravens asked about these

Unbroken Homes

‘What does that mean to you?

I’d really like to know what

that is for you

Home’

She said she loved the

blue

It was all the blue

I had left

That was true

‘Ohhh’

I said in a moment lost of thought

‘I’m trying to remember

I’ll find it and tell you’

Why was it so hard for me

to answer her fundamental question

‘Can I know you?’

I suppose we all have come

from a broken home

We all have had a sense of home broken

a moment where our comprehension

of being secure

Loved

and cared for has crumbled

been cut through blown apart

and turned upside down

The 4 walls and a roof within which

Love had found its natural operation

seasons and reasons

have

fallen down

In this moment or string

of moments of wounding

seismic cleaving of

Pluto howling

We reach beyond and within

ourselves like

a flooded tree

Perhaps we find something

that cannot be broken

Something

that has remained

Unbroken

Perhaps we rummage

through the wreckage to

find a few significant shards

enough that we can carry and

move with

a story full of holes

a broken saucer holding

an unbroken cup

the bells of a new city

.e.g.

My Home was broken when..

(my dad left)

My Home is unbroken because..

(he never left)

As the dream seemed to indicate

this was more than about

finding 2 transformed halves

of myself or of us in the water

and putting them together

What if I could help

discover the patterns

threads and

guts that endure with

enduring people

an arduous and worthwhile way

to piece them together to make

strong assemblages of ancient

and hopeful futures

to cocreate from broken

Earth and sinking cities

The Unbroken

Home

On the balcony

I put the song in

my ears and heard

his recitation

A beautiful wooden water taxi

drove by and I laughed like

a man of the Tao as Leonard’s voice

disappeared into the sound of the boat

and of water and there

my battery died with

one unknowable word

All was silent

except for the gulls

I wondered then

how a string of marigold

would look as a procession

a quiet healing bright

through the sea green

morning water