The view one recent morning

It rained lightly this morning. 

A rare thing around here. 

A good time to visit the wood  nearby. 

Inhale its air, clotted with wild scents. 

A redwood stump 7 feet tall, 
wide and dark as a bear, stands alone, 
wounded, beside the path. 
What whacked its crown off in its prime?  

A bird quacks hysterically in the branches. 

Why this racket? 

Some quarrel over a nest or meal no doubt. 

A plane roars past overhead. Who is looking down from those tiny windows?
Are they worried?

Some little leaves holler

Yellow! Yellow! We are yellow! 

Under my feet, a wet carpet of wood chips. 

So soft, my boots sink lower and lower. 

Trees large and small, some bare, some thick with needles, 

bend over the San Leandro Creek and across my path. 

What chooses which way they'll bow, when they'll grow 

tall, when they'll give up and fall? 

The creek lays still and dark as a graveyard. 

Tiny winged creatures leap in and out of the creek, 

some swim in circles, bumping leaves that just float, 
accepting whatever comes. 

Suddenly the sun slices through the cloud. 

I feel as if I've been standing alone 

in a dark temple 

and all the lights have just gone on 

and people are streaming in. 

Awake now, I turn back to my car. 

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. 

When he is diagnosed, he calls to tell me

Bill

Died November 20, 2006

 

Ok let’s cut right to the chase, my friend says.

I have lung cancer.  

Right then, ants skitter across my skin in all directions. 

We wait a a long time for me 

to speak but the ants eat my words. 

Finally some words escape, something

about God and disbelief.

But I’m not going for chemo and all that shit. 

I’m going for alternatives.

 

Faith performs miracles, I say and mean it

because I have seen it bend reality.  

After all, thoughts can raise and lower

body temperature and once 

I saw a man walk on burning coals. 

If anyone can do this, it is you Bill.