bed bus bath

[bedbusbath]

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING // Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

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YOU CAN’T HAVE IT ALL // Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands gloved with green.

You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.

You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look of the black dog, the look that says, "If I could I would bite every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August, you can have it August and abundantly so."

You can have love, though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys until you realize foam’s twin is blood.

You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs, so solid, so doll-like.

You can have the life of the mind, glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness, never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you all roads narrow at the border.

You can speak a foreign language, sometimes, and it can mean something.

You can visit the marker on the grave where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead, but you can have the words "forgive" and "forget" hold hands as if they meant to spend a lifetime together.

And you can be grateful for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts, for passion fruit, for saliva.

You can have the dream, the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.

You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed, at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.

You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump, how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards, until you learn about love, about sweet surrender, and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind as real as Africa.

And when adulthood fails you, you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.

There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s, it will always whisper, “you can’t have it all, but there is this.”

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AFTER A WHILE // Veronica A. Shoffstall

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't always mean security. And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead with the grace of a woman not the grief of a child and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure that you really are strong and you really do have worth and you learn and you learn with every goodbye you learn.