night visits

I imagine them brushing the surface
of wakefulness as I enter the room,
the hallway angling its light unobtrusively
past me, my shadow climbing floor
to wall before me. I check blankets,
adjusting them up to silent chins,
shifting bodies to center them on
the pillow, move overhanging arms
back under the covers, collect sighs
and murmured sleepwords, and then
withdraw. I worry that were they
to wake, they might mistake
me for a monster, sliding between the beds,
bending over each one, reaching down.
They might cower, feign sleep, dread
the silent approach of the looming dark shape.

No, they wouldn't cower.

They faced down a more fearful monster
hours before -- one that didn't creep
on quiet feet, one that stormed, fumed,
raged, and threatened, one that promised
harm if they made a peep, if they put
off sleep for even one more minute.
If they so readily dismissed that beast,
sleeping serenely though they know
he is still in the house, why fear his
peaceful return? Rather, in their redemptive way,
they turn up their cheeks to his kisses
and accept the quiet gestures of reconciliation.

altar

on her knees before the behemoth machine
rising before her in solid boxy majesty
her head lowered to peer into its shadowy
inner workings, she extends a certain hand
and draws out crumpled white scraps,
discards them on the floor, reaches back
for more. At length, she raises her eyes
imploringly to the the glowing panel
above her head, seeking approbation.
The flashing red light become solid green,
confirming her hopes, as if with words:
Well done. She has removed the offense.
Her mission complete, she rises to her feet
and walks away, bearing in her hands
the fruit of her persistence.

morning moon

Perfect as a picture
A small black bird flapped into the upper branches
of a pine, bold and green against a morning blue sky
just above the point of which hung the pale
translucent disk of moon, a fresh-blown bubble
lifting from this unlikely wand

or was it sinking?

from the parking lot at work
just 6 miles and 10 minutes north
the same ghostly shape floated over empty hills
across the lake, having drifted from
the proximity of tethering limbs
it looked farther away, lonelier,
surrounded by wide blue expanses
slowly swallowing it whole.

Alas, the popcorn

a piece of popcorn tumbles to the ground.
shooting back pain keeps me from bending down
to pick it up. i eye it from my chair,
debating whether I should leave it there.

Stretching my foot to nudge it with my toe,
I crush the tender kernel into snow
and smearing it, make an even bigger mess--
Some things are better left alone, I guess.

a real pain

Helping some neighbors move out of their house on Saturday, I leaned a little too far forward while cradling the top of a chest of drawers we were easing down the stairs, and I felt a sharp, familiar twinge in my lower back. Here we go, I thought.
I was dismayed, but not filled with dread. I'd been through this before. Five years ago, I was bending over to put on a pair of shoes when it happened the first time. Within half an hour I was crawling around on all fours, uncertain if I would ever be able to stand again. That time, a visit to the chiropractor the next day set me aright. The chiropractor gave me his assessment of the problem: too many hours sitting at a desk cause the cartilage discs between my vertebrae to compress. A nerve gets slightly pinched and then the muscles tense up in an effort to protect the compromised spine from further damage. During the immobilizing pain, I want to curse out my muscles for overreacting, but for all I know, they are saving me from something much worse.
One chiropractor gave me stretches and muscle-strengthening exercises to perform to help ease the pain and increase my resistance to future injury. I do the stretches when my back bothers me, when it is feeling a little tight or stiff, but invariably, once I've successfully warded off another trip to the chiropractor, I fall out of the habit.
This is my third or fourth time around this circuit. All day Saturday as my condition seemed only to worsen, I stayed grimly optimistic that the stretches I had learned combined with ice packs and rest would have it licked in no time. Sunday I endured increased stiffness and walked around the house with a hiking stick. Today I visited the chiropractor, and though the pain feels about the same as ever even after receiving professional help, I continue to believe that this is a temporary ailment. I continue to think that some combination of things I do will make this better and that in the coming days I will not stew over how I am going to get downstairs, or think twice about bending down to pick up something I've dropped. I won't give considerable thought to how I'm sitting or the position of my legs. Even in the absence of any permanent or even long term relief, my faith in a restored sense of ease and physical mobility remains secure.
At what point will it begin to wane? At what point do I discover that this will not go away? Where on that sliding scale of age and pain do I begin to define the new normal? My grandfather has learned to walk again after replacing knees. A man who was like a second father to me spends most of his life lying down because any other position is unbearably painful. A friend seven years my senior complains of persistent knee pain that flares up with the slightest exertion. A friend my same age complains after two weeks of sight-seeing in Turkey of aches and pains and not being as young as she once was.
My back will heal, if only temporarily. I'm confident that within the week I'll be moving more comfortable and thinking less and less about my back. But someday this is going to catch up to me in a way that will not be so easily treated. Whether that is when I am 40 or when I am 60 depends a lot on how quick I am to forget.

Remembering Tyler

I was thinking a lot about Tyler Pulsipher as I ran up Orem Boulevard between 5:30 and 6:00 this morning. I couldn't stop thinking about him.
He was roughly my same age--maybe as much as a year older. I met him in 7th grade when we both began attending the same middle school. We had a class together--Language Arts. One of my most persistent memories of him is in Mrs. Gailey's class, sneezing as violently as he could onto his desk (much to the dismay of Vicki Bajwa, who sat at a desk directly opposite him). At the time he was committed to sneezing as powerfully and unapologetically as he could, whenever he could.
We were both LDS, though I don't know how or when we became aware of that, as we wouldn't start attending seminary until 9th grade. We would have been in the same stake, though, and for all I know there was some stake event that brought us all together at the beginning of our middle school years.
I went with Tyler and his dad to an away football game in Prosser--perhaps the only time I did that not as a member of the marching band. I spent a night at his house with his neighbor and our mutual friend, Brad Bricker, and we watched a video called Super Ted, which both of my West Richland friends had grown up on, but which I'd never heard of. All I remember now is that Super Ted shared his adventures with a friend, "The Spotted Man."
In French class Tyler, Brad, and I, along with Artie Clarkson, put on a puppet show of an African folk tale called Maigrichon. The papier-mache giant puppet I made for the play is in a box somewhere in my house, and I can still hear the comically squeaky voice Tyler used to give life to the play's title character. The cassette we were assigned to record for the show may also be in a box somewhere in my house, too - a piece of Tyler that has outlasted him.
After graduating high school, I soon lost touch with Tyler. We went to different colleges. My family moved to a different state. I served a two-year mission in Italy. I got married. And when I joined facebook after my second child was born, I eventually found Tyler again. I learned of his brain tumor and of his doctor's six-month estimate. I learned he lived in Provo. I suggested we get together sometime. He agreed.
Somehow a formal invitation was never extended and it never happened. Part of the reason was our hectic home life as we tried to get a handle on raising children. But I admit that part of the reason was also fear on my part--fear of not knowing what to say to my terminally ill friend, or how to act around him. There was no malice in me as I consciously and unconsciously put off our reunion, but malicious behavior is only one way to incur guilt.
We moved to Logan. I completed my master's program. We moved back to Orem. I didn't think much about him. Then one day when I thought to check up on him through facebook, I found that he had died after a four-year battle with cancer.
Why, two-and-a-half years after that did he come to mind and linger there so persistently as I ran in the pre-dawn darkness along the quiet streets around my home? I remember now - I was remembering that before a big race or athletic event, many athletes carb-load, and wondered if I would feel more energy if I ran after breakfast rather than on an empty stomach. I remember learning about carb-loading for the first time in the Pulsipher's kitchen. I can clearly see Tyler's older brother Trent grinning as he shovels a heaping pile of pasta onto his plate in preparation for a soccer game that evening. Such a simple trigger touched off a series of memories and the reminder of my own mortality--that I have already outlived more than one of my peers, and I have no guarantee that my own life will not also be similarly cut short.
Because of a random word-association, Tyler is likely to stay with me my whole life, always that short, spunky middle-schooler, passionate about sneezing, making each one count.

we are here

our new kitchen floor does little
to abate the noise of four hungry
children, eager for their breakfast--
mornings like this I miss the carpet
we tore up; the milk stains
and ground in cornflakes
were easier to ignore.

when silence is won, by persistent
parental fiat, I add as afterword:
"This isn't Whoville!"
a reference I hope will illustrate
the ruckus they raised. After all,
it's just breakfast, not life or death.

in the welcome quiet I hear
echoing, as if from far away
We are here! We are here!
We are here! We are here!
I watch the kids sedately spooning
sugars into stilled mouths.

maybe this is Whoville after all.