Now the nights grow chilly

When the kids move out and your man dies 

and the best friends get cancer or move to Arizona,  

the rooms in your house look dried out, roped off

like those rooms in a history museum 

because you just can't remember what you said 

or did in places where things will never be like that again.  

So you make pumpkin bread now and that makes you

smile back

at your Jack O Lantern‘s wicked grin.  

Outside the window a maple tree drops 

bits of gold across the yard, there’s a scent of wood 

burning in the fog & you feel the earth turning its back

On the sun, all the long, bright days

no more. 

Autumn still beautiful as before but

the nights now too chilly

so you go to bed with the candle burning 

just to keep Jack smiling at you

all through the night.

 

A Christmas legend

On the top shelf of my closet, 

our old ceramic Christmas tree 

sits tight for winter.

Come December,  always one of us 

coaxes it down from cramped repose,

clears a place on our buffet 

and directs the tree to burst 

into color--to shine its many tiny bulbs 

on our patch of earth one more year, 

to let every single bulb release 

all it can and light up continents 

on our burdened  souls. 

I don't know why or how 

I lost my hold but our heirloom 

tumbles like a bird shot from

the sky and in a flash of color 

I see Christmas past, 

I see the future as a memory, 

I see a Christmas legend 

being born. 

One thing I think about on Thanksgiving

Sue pressed on a bottle cap protruding from a hole in her throat. 
It was her turn to tell why she joined my “writing for beginners” group at the San Leandro library. 
It took several presses of the cap to explain that since her tracheotomy, speaking was very difficult. 
Being a person who loved to communicate,
I decided I better learn to write. 

But Sue panicked when she heard the library 
would publish our Thanksgiving Day stories. 
I don't know where to begin, she wheezed.
I don’t want to embarrass my children.

Sue settled on the topic of her mother’s old oak table. 
She wrote about how in the weeks before Thanksgiving, 
her mother pulled off the plastic table cloth and polished the table 
from the top to its claw feet. 
A week before the meal, she set the table for eight, sometimes squeezing 
ten around it. 

For decades, her family assembled at this table for a traditional turkey dinner, 
every year losing and gaining family members as they passed or moved away and spouses and grandchildren took their places. 

When Sue’s mother died, Sue brought the table to her own home
and continued the ritual of polishing and setting in exactly the same way.  
The work summoned memories that made her sink into the nearest chair. 
Every plate Sue set, every candle she unwrapped, brought to mind 
scenes from her childhood, from her children's childhood, 
and now from her grandchildren’s childhood. 
She felt the gentle presence of spirits hovering around the table, 
especially her mother's, always there at my elbow, checking my work. 

When Sue died four years later, her daughter invited me 
to a memorial service at the Oakland Hilton. 
In the hallway, I spotted clawed feet 
beneath a white tablecloth with framed family photos. 
In the center stood a double-paned silver frame 
holding Sue’s story, The Table. 

If I opened my mouth....

My mother believes a good husband--
a man with a good job--is the foundation
of a happy life and that's why she sends me to
modeling school.
Modeling is a sport of good bones and self sacrifice,
a sport where you stride across slippery platforms
like Cinderella turned stripper, hips first, arms swaying,
shoulders square and steady.
I have to push myself to walk in those very high heels
without looking down, make my big fake smile
look natural.
 Miss McCarthy! Posture! the instructor shouts
 and I try to wobble less. Pose! she shouts, this means
with a toe turned out, not in, with chin tilted slightly,
eyes straight ahead.
Some exhilarating spirit is entering me day by day,
turning me into a girl who likes to be witty,
who didn’t want a husband but a lover,
and maybe more than one,
maybe even more than two.
But if I let all that come out,
my mother would have hit me.

Poem A Day Project Dirge on the Pier

A hundred harbor seals swim

along the pier, all  barking and coughing.

But the bellow does not at first 

disturb the filmy light, 

the fairy shimmer around the sea.

Susan Radlov is dead. 

It's the coughing from below 

these planks that calls 

this shocking fact 

to mind again and now 

the chummy yowl of  harbor seals 

will join the growing list 

of most mournful sounds 

I'll ever hear.

I'll Miss Him (Poem A Day Project)

He's leaving.

The young man lugging his TV 

Out to that beatup old car

Is happy to be going.

I’ll miss him.

But not how you miss someone

who’s never coming back, not like

you miss the child who hugged your waist

As tightly as he could and cried,

This was a fun day, mom!

I wish I could rewind it.

Just Another Thursday

I remember, if only barely, 
what feelings soaked the eyes

of the child I used to be when 
on that first Thanksgiving in America

I skittered to the kitchen and saw mother
stuffing cabbages with sticky clumps
 of ham and bread like Germans do.

In my mind's dimlit pantry, 
where memories cure

there stands a puzzled 5 year old 
blinking dully
at those leafy skulls.

So odd it seemed 
after weeks and weeks

of painting plump and fleecy 
fowl in school

that there in my Ohio home
Thanksgiving was just another Thursday.
Father fighting in Korea and mother
just shut the oven door 

on those lime-green cabbage heads

she fixed once a week.

Now be glad, she scolded--

nonplussed, noncomprehending--

today's the day one stuffs a thing

and that I did.

Idealist

It’s a joyful convocation, the one I dream of—

a glimmering jubilee where jolly friends and family 

clasp hands around an altar all aglow with light and silver.

All are clapping, praising, toasting

laughing and embracing, spinning 

delicious tales that kindle cheering up and down the rows.

Steaming dishes spiced and tinted as prescribed by generations

hurry down the table rousing awe and clamor as the children 

suck on fruity brews and their elders swig the beer and wine—

spiking fancies all the more.

Not a soul declines to linger after every belly has been stuffed

to remember one more wise or zesty story, swallow one more spoon

of Harvest Torte—so delighted and so thankful seems each and every one

for this communion.

And when ochre shadows finally flush the hearth,

when burning timber snaps and glistening candles drip,

my old yearnings all have faded. I am happy here just being 

knowing time is melting, melting with the whipped cream on the torte.