All the wrong role models

Tolstoy,  Michener, Dreiser,  Hollywood

—my mother

they all led me on with exuberant tales
of abnormal adventure. 

As if surviving a war were

a necessity

to a life well lived

As if just one or two lovers were

a squandering

of youth

as if each love must make you feel
as if your heart were a cliff

collapsing into the sea

as if you must wake up each day
in an ancient world capitol

and adventure about the ruins all day
as if you lived in an opera

as if the world were a stage
and you must play a part—
a part far from the middle of the road,

your heart flying right

into a typhoon's belly.

That’s how my newborn nerves

got fired up with unquenchable longings

and how they were sunk, too,

because something always weathers

every gain away

making unhappy endings—

          but the ending too must not be average—

there must be an orchestra, enemies,

          a great speech to the masses

—something you can take a final b
ow for.   

If I were God

I will think about life 

not death tonight

though I feel no ordinary light

because two friends 

now die nearby.


And here at home 

my spine knocks

against my bones 

and I regret

to mention it because 

others have it worse.


I am one who feels 

the world's violations

against people I love 

and that is most people.


I love most people.  

I love our species

and if I were God no child would suffer

in all the ways so sadly commonplace.


None would crouch and beg for mercy.

There would be no need 

for mercy, no idea of it.


No need to wash away 

what God says he cannot forgive in us,

what we are born into 

and must be punished for.


We forgive his cruelty because we are

terrified.

We are like the wife beaten 

to the floor

by the man who blames her 

for his rage.

We blame ourselves until living

feels like dying

and hope? 

It changes nothing.


We tell ourselves:  pray harder, 

bend deeper

yet God 

keeps receding.

Mood swings

This heart swings often in that garden where sad moods
keep their bloom no matter the season.

One never knows which way the wind will toss the seeds.

Some by the fence seem to thrive in those dark places
With roots that dig deeper in the soil. 

Relentless in their return.

And some teased toward the sun.
These you pluck for further study.

Wash and trim those darlings for a vase 

on the kitchen table.

The phone call

My retired friend chatters on the phone 

about the times we worked together.

We agree it feels very long ago.  

My friend looks fabulous for her age.  

A good decade more younger. 

Her wardrobe, makeup, manicures,

cosmetic interventions were--and are-- 

tourist attractions.  

So it shocks that she is losing her mind.  

Six times I tell her my man has died.  

And now she inquires cheerfully, 

So how’s your husband? 

I return our talk to the past she remembers still well.  

That beautiful past when my man was living 

and my friend remembered his name. 

A list poem of gratitude

 

It never occurred to me to raise crickets in a bowl just

to be serenaded every night.  

But people do that.  

The bugs sing to seduce yet keep on singing after 

every orgasm for the pure joy 

of it, I guess.  

What a world! 

I love to hear them on my evening walks but try 

not to visualize a thousand black bugs squeezing 

their hind legs together.   

How that kills my reverence!   

Tonight along the water's edge embraced 

by leafy trees of varied ethnicities, 

among them a splattering of lost marigolds.  

crickets croon to me and

a jolt of their joy rips through me.  

A jolt of privilege to walk in this lovely place 

where it is safe except for the frightened snake

& a family of raccoons rustling the brush and thistle.

My house is not in flames. 

My family not bombed. 

My son not being waterboarded.  

No army turns off my water.  

Stops the delivery of food.  

I have medicine.  

I get to go on living!

This feels like a miracle! 

Because elsewhere (you know where) 

whole families are hunted like prey.  

Even the stars above them die with less pain.

But here the oleander 

that seemed dead all winter 

is alive & abundant, well watered. 

How did I get so lucky? 

My wings rub together with the band

of crickets. 

Whom do I thank for all this? 

Ode to my thoughts at midnight

 

Stop this swirling!

Don't cook fears so burning hot

if you want them gone by dawn.

And what a waste of calories!

Thinking should have a noble purpose.

Lock out whatever chills your spine, 

whatever kicks you in the heart--

anything too bold for this late hour.

You know tomorrow they all might go

--and gladly and better so!

Poor agitated mind, stay in the mild zone.

End the day with ease.

Let precious waking time feel not so brief.

Cook thoughts of pleasure and strength.

Please.

For long life's sake.

Why I write poems

A poem plucks me from the day to day

into bygone places--

        in all their glory or distress—

but compressed--liquid flushed--

only glucose in the soft skin

of a raisin 

      pressed onto my blank page.  

I look at the mess up close,

      sometimes for the first time.

A poem can pounce from a scent

and hurl me back 

        to the high school gym.

Or leap from a song and suddenly 

      I am cutting my wedding cake again. 

I can feel it, see it, be it 

     one last time. 

Clenched fist

Another day and the man who slept beside me for so long shrinks 

      and fades.

Day after day that shrinking, that fading of him.  

       Not long dead yet he is losing visibility

though I clasp hard and strain

       to smell him on this Hawaiian shirt, to hear his timber.

Another day of not seeing a man

I knew by heart.

       More and more spaces between his bones and mine.

Soon I will peer into thin air 

and his happy banter will fade

       like a train whistle rushing into night.

But today I like how I handle that truth.

Today I hear only a squeal from my own heart 

       when I step from my car

under the white bulging overhang of cloud 

       
along the great blue bay.

Geese jabber.  The wind crashes through my coat

and my body shivers as I pass

       the bench where he sat and something

moves hawklike over it and suddenly

I recall his toes were the last

       to disappear into the black plastic bag. 

I remember the weight of his ashes grey as fog,

 heard his knuckles cracking.

      

My fists clench in the cold shower 

       of recall.

Chandelier

How gorgeous that moon—
a dazzling chandelier!  


Easy to forget its truth:
 

A land without air—

not at all a
 better world —

it would kill me
 given half a chance.  



I never tire of it.


Every full moon, half moon--any phase of it--feels 

new and gay, lighting my nights, 

counting my days.



I see myself bouncing in its spiky dust.  


Eyes fixed on earth below—


that gorgeous palace! 

The shock of seeing home

alone in that empty awesome black


would change me.


Years after, while brushing my teeth, that memory 

would assail me—blue earth circling

 in the ink of infinite sleep. 

It would stop my pulse. The mystery of it.


The total mystery of it. 

Nothing left to do

 There is a pointlessness to it: walking 

into your old bedroom each morning.

I don’t want to make too much of it—

you’re a man now— designed 

to move on. 

But every morning I open your blinds

and the sun lifts up 

over the hill outside your window 

and casts a melted butter hue 

that transforms your window 

into a theater screen, of sorts, 

and though you’ve been gone 

more than a year, I like to lean against 

your bedroom door 

to catch the flick--a trailer really,

content to play in this room only-- 

about those everyday moments—

nothing too dramatic—

your stuffed Barney, forts made from sheets, 

an overstuffed suitcase for summer camp, 

the box of condoms under the bed—

jumbled days all, but that movie 

can move me to tears.  

And there’s nothing left to do now

but watch the movie play —

life means letting go, letting 

every single thing go. 

Stepping out

 The calls from hospice come every 

day now. 

       Another weakening,

              a further descent. 

My brother's eyes hardly open, 

no quiver under lids. 

His life a dreamless sleep, I am told,

       he swims away from his shipwrecked flesh. 

            Nearly gone, stepping out 

of it as he would from a suit, 

        loosening the tie, unbuttoning the shirt, dropping the jacket to the floor, 

              one by one. 

What can death take that this deep

      sleep has not already stolen ?

Today a nurse puts the phone to his ear 

       so I can speak, Frank, I love you. 

 

She's sure he hears me.   

      She says hearing's the last to go. 

No loved one stands beside his bed.  

     No wife.  No child.  No God.  

            Just my voice from another world, 

my words conjuring for his vanishing mind, 

      a compass star 

             on a dusking sky. 

That is my hope. It is all I can hope. 

       There's nothing left but that. 

If only

 It’s bad that we fight— worse 

that we fight this much—

worse, much worse that we still

have those Get out of my life and don’t come back fights, 

worse because you’re as sick as a pup mauled in a dogfight, 

even worse when the fight's over

it is too soon 

to give you more pain meds, 

too late to drive your 

95 Buick Park Avenue—

ever, & it’s much, much worse,

the absolute worst really, 

when the fight ends and we say 

we are sorry 

but we don’t really mean it any more.

We can't seem to help ourselves, can we husband?

A few days of calm and then more thunder, 

lightening, that cold overnight damp. 

Both of us, lock-jawed, unyielding.

If only you could wake up laughing 

like your old self.

If only I could forgive what I must. 

If only you were not so thin, so tired. 

And I so afraid. 

If only. 

I could  be happier

that you’re home again

after a month of surgery and rehab.

Now I must close the window at bedtime.

I must turn up the heat.

I must ask, what do you want to watch, Darling?

I must help you remove your trousers.

I must kneel before you and untie your shoes.

I must fetch your robe.

I must charge your phone.

I must count out your 12 medications.

I must turn on the lamp

at 2 AM and fetch your cane.

I must wake up before sunrise 

to boil your eggs.

I must smile and lift my cheek to your lips when 

you say, Happy Valentine's Day, Beautiful.

Empty spice jars

 Tonight I drop heavy as a sack 

into a chair I love 

stained by tears 

and wine and careless 

mirth.  

My favorite chair, shaped lovingly 

by my own tentative gravity

And fix my eyes onto the night 

outside the window and

entertain the tiny thoughts 

that flutter about like fruit flies

sipping sugar from 

a memory—

Visions that stop to call 

but hurry off.  

My eyes linger on the city scape beyond and 

wonder what they are doing in those lighted worlds?

Are they content? Are their roofs caving in?

Are their spice jars empty or full?

I hug tight my qualms but know

I am blessed to have a big warm chair 

to womb me on nights like this 

when I need a mother.

His chest

My love’s strong chest, feels to me

a meadow  

      when I lay down beside him, 

      when my cheek rests on that firm terrain, 

a chest square and hard, 

and I feel the square hardness 

      and the tickle of hairs, a soft grass 

      starting from his neck down to his navel, 

trailing even lower, 

a few spirals circle his nipples. 

     The power of this hair: My heart swells and splits.  

     That wonderful hair. 

Each curled strand lines up into a chain 

of strands and passes its excitement one to the other right into my skin, 

     right into me. 

      Against this joy I lay and go slack

as a deer looking up

and seeing no danger, returns to

     Her quiet nibbling.  

Eternity is the problem

The way the Bay stretches before me 

when I step 

      over the yellow hill of Oyster park—all filmy lilac—

and a necklace of sparkling jewels

      light the San Mateo bridge—

my heart trips—a soft bobbing 

      against my ribs, legs turn to silk.

My arms swing wide out to the side

       as if I might alight.  

So drugged am I by the great expanse and 

      strong evening breeze, 

and the sky ablaze as if heralding 

      a great triumph, a great gratitude.

Forgotten is this morning‘s walk 

     as the widow,

teary on a muddy trail 

      between a steep hill and a waterless creek

who stops beside a brown leaf dangling 

      rag-like beside the fresh green newborns,

who follows the deer tracks 

      to the edge of the lake,

who waits for a breeze to nudge her 

     to the next moment and

cries because crying 

      gives her something to do 

about this thing 

      that nothing can be done about. 

It’s eternity— eternity is the problem.  

      It falls out from under you 

like a sink hole.

My man who loved me with a 

       mother's patience is no more. 

His green eyes far from light.

       His comb, wool socks--

      

the closet full of things 

      that outlive him. 

 Death is a crime. 

       If you are alive and glad to be alive, 

 death is theft, a mean assault. 

And if you have no faith, there's no appeal. 

       No one rises from the grave. 

But he is dead, my dearest, we've been 

      disconnected by every measure.

A box of bone bits centered on the table, 

      the one he passed every day for years— 

now his altar. 

So while he is nowhere, detached from me,
      in measureless space,

I prepare for the rain that's forecast, 

       plant the bulbs he meant to plant, 

make his dog stop sniffing his shoes. 

Between the branches

My grandson wants to bury our black lab’s ashes 

       in the west corner of our yard 

under the Manzanita tree that leans on

       his bedroom window 

until he remembers we plan to move to Alameda 

      and worries we'd have to dig her up 

           and bury her in our new yard.  

I propose that Ruby would want to stay

      at the home she spent her life in,

          her bones nurturing the tree that shades

               the room she shared with you. 

And you know, I add, that tree stands high 

      above the house

          and so all of the San Francisco Bay

               can be enjoyed from every branch 

and when we take our walks along the shore, 

      we will be in the tree’s view 

          and it will always find us 

               if we want to be found.  

I would love that. I want to be found,

     my grandson says and because he is only 8, 

          we hug with extravagant affection.