Stunned

I’ve come to this sense of being


lopsided


and it’s only the end of autumn,


but already


nothing stuns, nothing astonishes


anymore


now that brilliant sunny October and all its


pattypan squash and copper and tangerine


are gone.


Now I am sunk and sinking deeper


into the gloom of winter; the rain which


I longed for is here but it is also damp


and cold and gray, and while I'm happy


for my olive trees-- for all trees--


I'm sad for me--this atmospheric pressure, this


holiday light


and song to get out and buy and do


and meet,


and in the midst of all, their dialysis


and chemo,


the daily cleansing and curing.


It makes me dizzy, at times I feel


I may


lose consciousness.


And then I stroll on the bay trail late


afternoon and there--


a deep red blush of sunset,


a crescent of silver moon,


and the San Mateo bridge crossing


the bay like a thin, golden hair.


And a rejoicing stirs again in me.

Sleep

When the leaf falls in the collapsing din 

of summer light, it doesn’t crawl along 

the ground, lame in heavy breathing for months. 

The leaf lets go of mother’s hand and floats

gently to her grave. Not my old sweet Lab 

who teeters into hers, bowels and backside--

all her senses--in disarray.  I wonder. 

Is it kind to let her find her own end? 

To let her sleep all her days, 

to crawl crippled to her water bowl? 

This loyal friend who trusts 

herself to me as to her own mother. 

She'd follow me unflinching to the vet, 

her eyes allegiant as she slips into that other sleep.

And what would she be missing? 

Sleep is sleep. 

Only her dreams would end.

Loud

It’s like waking up to the short wild scream of the horn

of a distant train blowing and you know that great big

black iron horse is charging this way though still unseen

behind the hill. No need to rush, but it’s coming now, 

the horn is blowing for you to hear--a shrill wheeze in 

the wind, the sound not yet piercing your skull but you know

it’s time to stand up, gather your things, prepare for boarding. 

And the sound keeps getting louder,

like the high groan of yard dogs pulling on their chains

and yet there is a pleasantness there, a kind of promise

when your heart dares to listen. But still, how can you

ever be at ease, how can you ever rest with that horn 

groaning louder in your ear?

Making ends meet

On the playground, the Sisters of the Holy Cross sell little bags

of chips and boxes of chocolate milk. 

Not expensive but more than I ever have in my pocket, 

which is almost always nothing. 

But sometimes I am the owner of dimes, 

stolen from my father’s dresser or given by a fairy, 

so I can purchase a box of ice cold milk, 

maybe even a bag of chips. 

As I write about it now, a half century later, 

I am overcome by the same lightness of spirit 

that follows those first sips,

that satisfying sweetness assaulting my mouth. 

My pleasure seems extreme 

because it isn’t just the flavors of the loot that brings 

exhilaration, it is that the power to buy 

is the ticket into the universe. It makes me part of it, 

no longer she who stands outside it, on the edge 

of the Black Hole horizon, observing the brilliant stars 

around her. Now I have what it takes to belong 

to the beautiful world swirling around that playground. 

Between

Awake another night I am, your news 

sitting on my bedside--obese, ulcered, stinking 

until the wee hours, the first light of another

day of fright, pressing down on this 

mattress like a four-wheeler--tossing me 

from my own bed. Your news cloaks the

room, my limbs, my dreams, all day

my eyeballs burn as if they'd been soaked 

all night in vinegar and it’s not over yet, 

your news will trap for sure more nights 

between my sight and thought, 

between the dusk and dusk again.

What a character

When I wake up, my grandson begins to draw a picture of my head. 

He says, “Your hair is stumbling all around” and, feeling pity, adds, 

“That’s ok, everybody makes mistakes.” 
My husband the musician attends our grandson’s choral concert 
and says, “I want you to learn to play an instrument,” and my grandson answers, 
“I have an instrument already. It’s my mouth. I sing.” 
Last week we saw the slimy track of a snail across the rug 

and my grandson says, “We have a pet snail now, don’t we?”  
He climbs out of the car at school and says, “My teacher told me 
she has eyes in the back of her head, but I think she’s just kidding, don’t you?” 
My grandson pretends to be Iron Man but drops his shield and hammer
to kiss a bolweevel.  At dinner my grandson asks, “What is romantic love?” 
I tell him, “It’s love that grownups can feel for each other,” 

and he says, “But I have romantic love for you.”  
My grandson sees a moth in his room and wants to know, 
“Will it eat my underpants?” 
Moths prefer cotton, I explain, and he shrieks, 
“My underpants are safe because they’re polytheist!” 

He tells me, “You are the cutest member of our family” and I reply, 

“No, you are the cutest” and then he frowns and tells me, “You should 

respect yourself more.” I leave the Birth of a Planet playing on TV 

while I use the bathroom. Thinking it’s the news, my grandson pounds 

with loud force on the bathroom door. “Quick! Quick! Come out! The earth

is being bombed by giant rocks!” He reads my poems and asks, “How come 

your poems never rhyme?” We walk by the lake with his friend. I listen to them 

talk about destroying ships and catching crocodiles and ask, 

“What do little girls your age talk about?” and my grandson answers, 

“I don’t know, we don’t listen to what girls say.”  

The hairdresser tells him, “You’re such a goodlooking guy. I bet you hear 

that a lot.” My grandson nods, “Yup, but I can handle it.”  

From the top

I read the email twice and twice again.

I read again and two more times then once again.

They found the cancer on her tongue and in her lung.

She makes a joke that she won’t croak. I have to stop.

I read her email two more times right from the top.

I read her email two more times right form the top.
She makes a joke that she won’t croak. I have to stop.
They found the cancer on her tongue and in her lung.
I read again and two more times then once again.

I read the email twice and twice again.

Cancer

Every day she reckons sugar, gluten--she’s so careful.

Every night she mixes seeds and petals, blends
the blood of pomegranates--the taste is sour.

Every noon she comes down on her knees 
and palms and 33 bones of spine--
from skull to coccyx--curl then straighten 
like a ladder up into lastingness--
life loves her body, 

ferments in her seeds, her tailbone, 
her sour juice. 
And would have grown day by day, 
sip by sip, 
downward-face by downward face 
had not the virus, 
that dead and living stalker, 
enraged every spore of her diligently examined 
breast.

What I hear

In the quickening twilight that gilds the lake 

water, the trail curves along the shore, 

my old lab toddling in my shade, 

I sleepwalking for a time and then

consciousness snaps its fingers 

and the plainsong of crickets thrums 

against my ear bone,  

against each blade of mustard grass, 

each dark bending Manzanita.

An ancient music made with teeth 

on wings opening and closing 

like sails, the same preening concert 

that pierced the ears of

old tyrannosaurs

as they bedded down 

for the night.  

As if...

A morning walk on the shoulders 

of Lake Chabot toward the creek,

the young redwoods and the old oaks 

and the tall tender pines 

as if for the first time 

and as if for the first time

I circle the large trunks, 

roots tangled like boas,

stare at them and they stare back 

as if mutual understanding could 

be possible by looking and waiting. 

On this warm morning, I wear sandals. 

On cooler days my lace-ups get their turn. 

My old dog greets both with wild shaking 

of her bushy tail and in the woods she sniffs 

as if never before, as if never again.

There is the scent of freshly washed bark 

and the fragrance of something brand new 

as if these trees had been pulled up by their

crowns through the muck and moss

in the deep of night.  Oh, but what is 

that strange sound beyond the creek?

A creature, yes, honking in pain.

I look to my breath, to the scent of oak,  

to the flavor of pine, to the sweet perfume

of life which I may never understand, must love

without armor, without holding back

as if never before and never again.

A hole

Death is what I hate 
to think about 
but always do--
my beloved self 
sprinkled to
the bottom 
of a shaft--
a moonless pit
of everlasting 
night, 
my flesh no longer 
flesh but chimney 
grime.
A hole with no decor 
or time, devoid 
of all accord, 
of wonder,
where nothing will 
or can be done, 
where everyone 
sleeps
with everyone

Prickly

I have decided he can’t help it. The sickness brings it. 

The prickliness corrals inside the mouth, along the rows 

of teeth--a bitter saliva he must spit out.  

It is his voice, his mouth, yes but misery makes 

a good impersonator.  It stalks, it thins, it frays,

it twists the soul from muscle and bone. 

It moves without heart through its long dogged 

digging in the bowels, both claws soaked with

what flows there, until the nerves, until

the soul itself pulls away from that entire 

sagging beast. 

All this to add a bit more time to life. 

And all the while the evil sickness waits. 

You can hear it swallow with anticipation.

Mornings

Mornings I like to wander among 

a lovely jam of sturdy trees--

oak and redwood, Eucalyptus, others, 
so many forms--anything goes
here at Lake Chabot--the ground’s paved 
with dead leaves, browned from hunger and thirst.
I and my old dog step on their skins 
curled and crisp as fried bacon cooled, 
their juice leached, 
piles of them in mass graves, 
some in single plots, 
all of them bitten and freckled, 
all freely giving back the life they won, 
returning it to the forrest as if loaned to them, 
the life never asked for, with no memory of it.
For them there’s simply a season to shine 
in bright sun and for the rest of time
to wither in deep shade, 
without sap and membrane, 
gone forever without a trace or complaint.
This comes to mind as I step across 
this gorgeous graveyard. 

Asking for help

When he's gone I will stare at the left side of our bed

for days, weeks, maybe longer, and his absence 

will astonish me each time I open his closet door 

and see the orphaned shoes shined and lined

with a two-way stretcher and I will admire once 

again his tidy ways

when he's gone I will forget his grumblings 

and inward leanings, 

the pelican legs slathered and festooned to the bed, 

the anxiety and tears as mettle and firmness 

flow out of him.

I will forget these scraps of the man, 

the lips that curl in fury, 

all will be forgotten 

and in their place there will be silence and air, 

swollen and still. There will be strangeness.

When he’s gone I will only remember the laughter 

and pillow fights, his 40th birthday, his cummerbund flashing. 

All things I have trouble remembering now during 

this long endurance, this slow annihilation, 

these long days of our misfortune.

But when he’s gone, I will be asking for help--the coming

desolation can’t be lived alone.  

When he is gone, I will think of his confiding eyes,

they were my heart's oasis.

It's illogical

A machine keeps him alive now that his kidneys

will not and he endures it all without a mother 
(she would have nursed him like no
other) but he has me and he has the machine, 
both second best but we keep him going,
all by the force which has a way of pushing 
life through the odds, the cracks, just look 
at the flowers shooting up from the patio fissures 
(I tell him that on his bad days), 
just look at those blind bats that catch a meal 
in the pitch of night deep in the distance,
how they follow the echo, or the mushroom 
that explodes overnight in the junkyard. 
How life abides, goes on by the grace of that
generous force, how it stages its comebacks, 
how it abandons reason and just drags on 
stubbornly, flying in the teeth of it all.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, 
day and night, shall not cease.

The movie

There is a pointlessness to it: walking 

past your old bedroom each morning
--I don’t want to make too much of it,
the young are designed to fly the nest--
but every morning the sun lifts over 
the hill outside your window and casts 
the shade into a silver screen of sorts 
and so I lean against your door 
to catch the flick--a trailer really, 
content to play in this room only-- 
of everyday moments, nothing too dramatic, 
jumbled days all, but what a movie.
It always knocks my socks off.

An act of kindness

Let's say you are the widow's middle child

still in Heide braids when you first hear 

goose steps in your town.

Let’s say fresh out of school the Luftwaffe 

offers you a good job, they mention travel. 

Let's say you ride in the back of the Mercedes-Benz

Transformable Torpedo, behind your boss

and his driver when the gates open

and transparent beings pour through the camp 

like rushing water, drenched as if they had risen

from the ocean floor.

Let's say sleep comes and goes that night and 

the next morning you place your breakfast

on the window sill and turn your back 

and when you look again the plate is gone 

and you feel relief that a ghost has eaten 

and you are not arrested, your 

giving hand not cut off. 

Let’s say the next day you repeat this act

of kindness and later when all is over, 

in the dark of night you grieve because

you did not do more. 

And let’s say what was not done 

becomes the story in your life

and your life is a protracted mourning 

for it, for what was not done. 

Sailing

Yes that's what life is like, isn't it?

Like sailing alone in a little boat, 

in fits and starts on a landless planet 

relying on luck and karma for aid,

sometimes our mind and mouth 
yanked open by (or in cheerful ignorance 

of) the killer tendencies all around,

sometimes sitting stilly under squalls 

with feet kicking the waves, 
lavishing our attention on beauty 
or on perils but soon time again to stand up--

the sails must be adjusted

to these ever-changing winds--and

sometimes we are delirious with 

all that physical effort 

(having to make our own wind so often,

so many lightening quick adjustments)

and sometimes lovely birds land on the hull, 

nervous and a bit shriveled, like us, 

singing under the same shower of stars 

because for them too this voyage 

sometimes seems unbearable, this hunger

for consolation their only constant. 

Letter to my body

Body, body, my beloved

from the moment, from that very instant one

invisible fish out-swam a hundred million 

others into that beautiful moon in the mother 

sea and in a dazzling burst made you, 

these coveted days of sleep and wakefulness

are being counted precisely in a secret clock 

and from the moment I knew it was I 

in the cradle I tried to crawl away from the clock, 

I have cried and begged for a world without time,

but you dear body are a ticking time bomb, 

because of you I will not sleep for a hundred years, 

I will not be restored by the kiss of a handsome prince.

You are moving me on a conveyor belt back

into that miracle of nothing-something. 

There is nothing because you are made from it,

you are the puppet of time-space-magic

but so are the stars, so is all matter--

time will ooze from all of it and then 

who knows? Another world remade

from your teeth and hair?

Every single atom rekindled?

Into other miracles I commend you, 

my body, myself.

Chill

I couldn’t take my eyes off her face

in the bed, that silent pre-death repose.

She looks more floral than human, 

her face white as the chill before the bloom,

the skin folding scion-like around her skull, 

protecting the still living root below.

Beside her in a hard chair I watch for hours, 

day after day, my own self now shrinking 

from my dread, from my shock that this force 

(my mother was a lion) can be so undone--

the same dazed astonishment when I saw the scaffold

of a great doomed whale belly up on the sand

of Santa Cruz--a skyscraper of white bones, 

picked clean by who knows what and yet 

still mighty in grace and history.

Flakes

Look, here shines the leaf

dropped from its mother’s arms

into the soft living muck to dry 

in gorgeous shades of death

--corn and saffron, ochre and brass--

and at my touch the crisp veins flake

into a mist of umber snow 

and I watch her demise with longing, 

seeking a bit of solace in it, 

seeking to make peace with it

before the night erases all trace of it.

Bright red

The light deep inside flashes red and you

begin to stop.

You want to keep going but the light is bright 

and your body obeys and begins

to wind down and life begins to let go 

of its foothold in you, 

(it was tenuous anyway)

and there you are, ailing and fatigued

but aware of what’s happening to you-- 

(if only you didn’t have to watch) 

the spiral outward into your final ordeal--

out into that stark bloodless desert, 

into that unwanted escape from self, 

from your pleasing intimacy with matter, 

out into that shower of sparkling eyes, 

into that bleakly beautiful blackness.

Solitary

A painter would pause this late afternoon 

on Alameda beach, glimpsing paradise, 

would be seized by insight and pull out 

the brushes and palette

and begin to work quickly 

because look how the clouds 

are fattening up, gulping the light 

right out of the sky, 

existing only in tones and lines 

but still there is a kind of diamond dazzle, 

at times unblended in how it falls 

on the buckwheat, the sticky monkey flowers. 

A painter would have to dab short 

quick strokes to show how this quickening 

breeze wraps around 

my shoulders, makes my hair fly up 

with the kites and the water skiers’ parachutes. 

I too sense a big moment, though my mind is blank,

fit only for hushed gazing 

yet I feel a sumptuous intimacy 

with gulls and wind and bay and buckwheat 

that is quite solitary, 

indeed can only be noticed

unattended.

Crowded

This room feels crowded 

even though there are just two of us.

His head on the pillow, mine in my hands.

I stand by his bed 

as if he were learning to lie in it, 

as if I were his teacher, the one

who walks alongside the bike 

the child is learning to ride.

All our feelings mull around us 

like munching cows, 

sometimes touching as they wait 

to be milked 

but the hours pass and nothing is spoken, 

everything abided.

Deep down

Deep down in the stem itself, 

in my body’s engine 

where energy becomes breath, pulse, 

where pores are forced to sweat 

and salt to move through me--

there, down there,

lies my terror. 

In the zenith of that day to come 

my eyes will close half way

and Ill be alone again 

as in that jiffy before my creation.

I'll be tossed into a cold
of no stars, 

melting 

as I fly, 

a wavering glow, 

my pieces 

bright points of light

that come and then go

like glitter from a lake 

and deep down 

I know 

no ghost 

will step out 

from that beautiful 

debris.

Stooping down

My face over his face, looking at him carefully, 
inspecting iris to iris, nose to nose, 
sniffing, counting seconds between breaths,
seeing a man’s body return to newborn form, 
legs more like arms, pink, hairless. 
Think how firmly these feet once held him
upright, thick as granite, inflexible.
Despite the tremors, the many naps, 
the many days and nights of murmurings, 
he is still handsome in that smart haircut, 
the ancient Yaqui bones contain the blight
and he really doesn't complain too much. 
He is a man who likes to act like a man. 
I stoop down to blow the heat off his face 
and in the house somewhere I hear Out of Africa 
on the radio, his favorite soundtrack, and my whole 
being feels decades drift away like clouds 
over the sharp edge of ancient white plains, 
the stark flatness of our fate, 
wide and bright to the end.

The journey

In the place where the temperature falls

when I step out of the sun

into the dark cyan

shade of the forrest,

when I listen to my shoes crunch flotsam, 

the panting of my lab, the squeaks of flying beings 

high in the crowns,

where trees old and young 

lay across the stream, 

the young ones dying on the backs of their elders

and stumps mourn in gowns of lime green moss

and all around lay fallen leaves in yellow,

burnt umber and brick, and changing colors still,

where even in that state of doom, beauty 

does not abandon them.

This is where I take my grief, 

which is the price of love,

and where in mercy I rest

and let go of fear 

and love the world.