Fishbowl

My friend who was out dancing the Saturday night
before everything changed,
stepping and spinning and dipping the ladies,
said the lockdown caught him by surprise.
I felt like a fish that was swimming happily in the ocean
that someone scooped up in a net
and plopped into a little fishbowl,
and I've been swimming in circles ever since,
banging up against that cold hard glass.
We’re walking by the marina six feet apart, his hair
grayer than I remember, mine too I'm sure.
Boats on their moorings; sea-beaten pilings.
“I want a house by a lake,” I say. "Where I can just
roll out of bed in the morning and go down to the water."
Now you're talking, he says,
which means we both know this will never happen.
But to be human is to be a monkey
with her paw caught in a jar of gilded peanuts,
stubbornly refusing to let go of anything—
not the old life which is surely
gone forever, nor of hope,
that half-wrecked container ship, laden with history
and dreams and plague-ridden rats no one knows about,
still chug-chugging toward the open harbor.

Wedding Poem

All our lives
we were longing for each other.
Even in the womb.
Even before the womb.
When we were protoplasm
When we were cells of dreaming dust
When we were part of God and didn't know we were God
We were dreaming of the day
We’d come to earth again and meet each other
And share a kitchen
And fight over who knew the best way to make soup
And say, I know you
Heart of my heart
Dream of my dream
Let every day be our wedding day
Let us marry each other in the grocery store and in the garden, pulling weeds together
And in the car, at every stoplight, let’s renew our vows
And when night falls, let’s step under the chupah of stars
And when the alarm clock rings too early in the morning, let’s remember
to get married again and again to the day.
For a moment between lifetimes we were separated and it seemed
You had forsaken me
Then I woke up and heard you humming in the bathroom
Your shoes were under my bed
Pointed in the direction
We had agreed, long ago, to walk together.

“Stay safe!”

I sign my letter to a student
who had to miss our Zoom class
because she's a nurse and there's been so much Covid—
“Stay safe!” I sign off to my other student
who's part of the Wall of Vets
protecting Black Lives Matter marchers
as they face down tear gas and rubber bullets,
armed only with a bandana
and a pair of shit-kicker boots.
“Stay safe! Stay safe” I chirp, like a mother bird
sitting on a clutch of eggs, or a woman
shaking out a picnic blanket as her kids
scatter down to the lake after lunch,
the illusion of control and protection so ingrained
as when my own mother
had to obey the nightly ritual
of tucking the four of us into bed,
the requisite kisses and stories and last sips of water,
the required incantations
which were rote and domestic but potent
to a small girl who feared
the half-open closet door with its shadowy shapes.
“Stay safe!” I text my friend as wildfire gallops
like a million screaming hellhounds
towards his cabin in the woods
even though we both know
there's not a damn thing he can do about any of it.
“Stay safe!” I call to my husband
as he walks out the door masked and girded for work,
just another bunch of mortal molecules,
blood and breath and music,
all bound to slip from my hot grasp someday
no matter what I do or say—
the thought unbearable, so I run to the driveway after him,
again like a mother bird, a killdeer,
who will fake a broken wing to distract hunters
from her nest; watch me flap flap
as I cry “Stay safe! Stay safe!”
into the necessary and dangerous air.

Shadow Song of Self-Quarantine

Dear Shadow, I'm in quarantine
from myself. Must not touch
eyes or nose or mouth,
or stately pleasure dome.
Exiled in contamination nation.
What mad impulse to want to go viral.
To want to leave home.
As usual I'm yearning
for some good old cheek to cheek,
that deep belly surge
towards another, flutter in the bloodstream,
while in the mainstream nothing
but the direst of warnings,
and in my mindstream, recognition:
what I came here for was touch.
I once sold my safety for a song
and went to hell cheerfully.
Years and years ago.
But now there is no outside lover
to crave or run away from.
There's no one here dear
Shadow but me and you.

Boy With Stolen Begonia

Breakfast at the cute outdoor cafe in Berkeley, with Julie.
Begonias in big cement planters; pink, coral, scarlet.
I don't know why it comes out just then, over coffee and eggs,
my sorry confession. Grief of never having children
follows me around like a great gray whale
always threatening to swamp my small canoe.
She sips her juice and nods; what could anyone say?
That's when it happens; the dark-eyed toddler
wanders to our table, clutching the stem of a torn-off begonia
in his damp baby fist. He heads straight to my seat
as if appointed. Gazes into my face.
Hands up his precious offering. I take it.
A minute later, he's back like a well-aimed arrow.
Not to lovely, motherly Julie, who has
a son, but to me. This time he raises his arms up up
in the universal gesture.
All my well-worn stories stop
in that moment. Everything stops,
except the rip and thud in my chest,
as I bend to lift him. Okay, I am greedy
and full of despair. God knows that.
God knows everything.
That’s why She sends him to me
a third time, clutching the stem of yet another
torn-off and stolen begonia.
Which he bestows in my palm,
like a blessing, before his mother scoops him up, laughing,
Sorry he disturbed you! And carries him off, leaving me
with a clutch of wilted flowers by my napkin,
and a feeling of light breaking through ice
in my stunned and liquefying heart.

Forty-plus years ago I was initiated into Transcendental Meditation which I’ve practiced off and on my whole life (more off than on, to be honest). I often just sit on my couch and do some kind of very informal vipassana, breathing in and out and attending to whatever arises. I pray to Quan Yin. And I’ve got a CD set of Chloe Goodchild’s voice practices and I sometimes chant the East Indian scale with her, focusing on different chakras for each note, starting with SA (our Western DO) and climbing up through the body to the crown of the head at SA again, the octave. I really love that one. I also used to go to Yoga class pretty regularly, but the pandemic really interrupted that.

Alison Luterman is the author of four books of poetry, The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly, Desire Zoo, and In the Time of Great Fires. She’s had poems published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Rattle, The Sun, Nimrod, and many other journals and anthologies. She’s also written an e-book of personal essays available through Audible.com called Feral City, and some plays and musicals. She’s given poetry workshops at Esalen and Omega Institutes and writing retreats around the country. She’s currently teaching memoir through the Writing Salon and poetry through Catamaran Literary Reader.

More on Alison Luterman’s work can be found on our Links page.