That she won 1st Place in the Pembroke County Fair 
for her recipe of chicken marinaded in sweet pickle juice. 
That she was a journalist in Jerusalem, covering the big top, 
while cells of terrorists plotted her death. No one exterminated
her spirit, her breath that she left on everything. Fog in a bottle,
tension like the spring in a loaded mouse trap, moving 
gracefully from one catastrophe to the next, balancing spinning 
dinner plates atop pool cues while assisting her sister to cater 
an affair for 500. These are her surface features.
 
That she fed 2000 hurricane victims from food she prepared
in her kitchen. That she had a near-addiction to Snickers and
street tacos and loved to French-kiss her husband in the shower.
That she always found time to wash dishes at midnight and sit
on the back porch with a cold beer. That crickets knew her,
that mosquitoes avoided her, that the grass cut itself whenever
she wished. 
 
And then the kids were grown and moved out of the house, 
one of them to Beijing, and her lover of 35 years succumbed 
to the Plague, lying on his stomach hooked to a ventilator 
for 23 days. It was a miracle that he ever went home, and so they
prayed thanks and went to church. The vendors would not stay
out of her face, begging her to teach a class of kindergartners,
sharing with them the same Bible stories that were shared with her.
She needed someone to hold her hand, not the other way around.
 
 
That she couldn’t sit still longer than 10 minutes, bolting up 
From the recliner. That she joined a cross-fitness class and 
began jogging. That she walked into a job that used all of her gifts
and she made people happy for the most part, and sent entire 
families to the top of the city for the best view of all,
except for maybe the Arch.
 
That her life was like a ferris wheel and that she didn’t know how
to stop it, how to jump off safely. That she smiled a lot and 
told people, “Thanks for coming. Tell everyone all about
your visit today. We’d appreciate that more than you know.”
                        

The first day I met him
it was time for a miracle.
I didn’t know what to expect, 
what to think. Surgery without
scalpels. “Stick out your tongue,”
he said.
 
The angels waited for me. They
bathed in the waterfalls behind
the bamboo forest. My blood 
vessels became straws, sucking
in sweet, clean linen. All motion
ceased to exist. Absolute zero.
 
I fell asleep on the sofa
with my pants half-way down.
The dogs licked my hands. 
They knew where I’d been.
 
The second time was snow 
and lotus tea. I am curious 
about Qi, life breath. Mine
was damp like sad silk.
 
It takes time to mend
what might be broken. Channels
must be relaxed for energy flow,
for liquids to nourish bruised
organs. It is a peaceful 
reconciliation.