Blame

 I am not too surprised when our oldest 

      let a wound

on her 43-year-old foot fester 

      for two months until it sagged 

to a blue mush, 
      

      until that leg was chiseled

down to half today.

Now I can’t decide whom to blame

for this latest catastrophe.  

She wasn’t dealt a good hand at birth

     my husband always said 

about her disability—this mind 

     that can’t count change,

and trusts too easily.

But I was the one who let her leave

     the board and care home to live 

with the boyfriend. 

Still, how much blame is mine when

      she kept running away

      to him anyway?

I can’t blame the boyfriend either.

     He does all the laundry, all the shopping,

all the cooking 

despite being legally blind

      and on dialysis. 

Blame isn’t black or white.

      It bleeds across a spectrum,

in pale grays and starchy whites,

      and bruised blues 

      like a rainbow.

Blame leads to talking to yourself

     and feeling stuck 

and wondering if things had gone

     better for her 

if my husband hadn’t died.

But blame is also myth-making.

     And offers second chances, ways to build

one more version

      of the past.

I don't know what to call it

 We raised him to be all he could be.

He was a boy who seemed spun from light.

A firefly caught in our hands--winning

ribbons, trophies, hearts--

as if it were all just games he was born 

knowing how to play.

He made it look so easy.

We thought he’d go far.

Maybe to the moon. Maybe past it.

We didn’t see what would catch him.

I still don’t know what it is.

The vulnerability, the break, the hidden thing.

I don’t know what to call it — 

the thing that caught him.

If I could name it, maybe I could fix it.

On my worst days, I want a reason.

Someone to blame.  A fix.

On my best days, I let the mystery be.

He’s a natural at everything that doesn’t pay.

Telling stories.

Lighting up a room.

Giving things away.

Not a natural student.

Not a natural earner.

Not a natural builder of a safe, steady life.

When he asks for money now, I say no.

I tell myself it’s for his own good.

I tell myself it’s for mine.

Tonight he texts: he’s sick.

Can’t work.

Needs food.

And my wall starts to sag.

I want to throw open the door.

I want to buy him a week’s worth of groceries, 

a year’s worth of groceries, 

the whole grocery store.

I remember the fake Christmas tree.

The way he stood there, 9 years old, begging

for a live one.

I’ll buy it myself, he said. 

For our family.

I think about his birthday money spent

on teddy bears.

One for every girl in his class.

So no one would feel left out.

I think about the boy who told me his classmate 

Robert Garcia was the best runner, best swimmer, 

best student.

And when I said,  I'm sure you’re the best 

at something, too, he grinned, I am.

I’m Robert Garcia’s best friend.

And now I don’t know if giving to him again 

saves him — or sinks him deeper.

I tell myself it’s a boundary.

I repeat it all like a prayer.

I don’t know if no is love.

I don’t know if yes is love.

I just know he’s asking.

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.   

Attraction

At 15, I am introduced

     to my cousin Rudy, 24.

We sit across the table smiling,

    our mothers beside us chatting 

in their mother tongue.

    My teen eyes unprepared for  

his Santa Fe blues and

    my browns retreat.

But a force rises from the ground 

     to push our atoms together, 

commanding my eyes to seal 

     onto his 

and injects a poison that 

     makes it impossible to blink

and I worry our mothers 

     will see this conjunction--

this inability to act--

      and understand.

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. 

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.  

Cicadas

 When facebook flashes pictures 

I posted 10 years ago, or 7, or even only 4,

an ache crawls through me with claws.  

My thumb and finger 

go in for a closer look 

at this precious being, lost. 

Not dead, grown. A kind of death.

The soft child feathers shed. 

It makes me weak to see 

that funny expression.

So in love we were! 

A child grows noiselessly, 

as if by a spell—

all in one night pulled 

into the mystery. 

The force is in them, 

making them tall & hairy 

& hooded--making them say mean things 

and then apologize.

 I wish babies would hatch 

—not one beauty at a time —but

like cicadas—by the millions.

Not just one grinning, toothless boy-- but 

millions exactly like him 

all springing from the earth

every few years, 

high singing, buzzing.

The school reports

The school reports my teen man 

missing again.  I wonder 

what am I supposed to do 

with this new bullet of hurt? 

Peace with him now as brief 

as a traffic stop before 

the next bad news.  

Is there any use to sit 

on the edge of his bed to talk?   

Or to grab his stack of curls and pull 

him to the floor like my mother 

did to mine?

In the beginning, he never disobeyed 

or snarled or cursed.  

I thought it such a blessing 

but now I ask the thin air all around, 

was that a clue I missed--

some kind of secret suffering? 

Who knows why his future 

shows up like this—the days 

of sweet behavior giving way to vaping 

and mating in the back seat.  

Surely that good-kid blood still 

flows through his veins. 

All that light of heaven he 

once shared freely 

he may share again—

tho less evenly, less often—coerced 

by the dictatorship of

life.

What's ahead

The old warned us there’s deprivation

up ahead 

that worsens with time.

Parents, pets, friends--all we love--

carried away

and our own sweet bodies 

a shock in the mirror.

They did not mention a sunset on the Bay 

could bring more peace than a

striving young heart 

could know 

just by placing one foot after the other

along the pebbled beach,

my friend laughing beside me;

a picnic of lamb chops and mango waiting 

in my backpack for a shady spot. 

Everything needed provided.

But on this sunset my friend turns her face 

from the glow and says,

 I‘ve got 15 summers left, 

if i'm lucky. 

So she plans her summers with care now.  

Each a precious stone kept safe from thieves.

I was angry at my mother for not coming

that month I lay pinned to a hospital bed.

But how could I know it was her last summer?

A summer of curated movements. 

I wish I had not argued with my man that June 

he tripped on the sidewalk 

when it took precious summer days to heal. 

We did not know it was his last June. 

How could we have known that in October 

the sun would set at six and not rise again?

One by one they walked out of this house—

or were carried out. 

The oldest daughter, then her sister, brother

my mother,  

……..my husband, my dear, my man, my angel.

And now the final leaving--our boy's packing   

and this house enlarges as with every departure.  

It's a castle now: ceilings sky high, hallway 

a cavern--the whole place a relic, 

unsound and useless. 

A pair

A pair of fancy sneakers

can make a boy of 12 float up 

into the clouds & feel the outstretched arms

of screaming fans.  

None of the other kids I raised 

complained about Payless shoes 

but this last child would rather walk barefoot

across a live power line.  

So, because he’s very shy, 

because he pleads for a taste

of the world’s love, 

I agree to buy a pair of Jordans 

that cost more than 

the monthly payment 

for my Honda CRV.  

Then he wears them every day 

until the sole splits from the foxing.

You could say he fell in love 

with his shoes 

without which he would return 

to his old life 

as a ghost. 

The shoes make him real. 

They bless his life. 

Or something like that.  

But any moment now 

he’ll see the love the world gives 

won’t come this easily again.  

All who have sought it know 

the world’s passions wear thin. 

Thinner than the soles on his 

sneakered feet.  

.

We will always love each other

 I am the master and all he needs 

is a gentle Please clean up your room 

and he cleans up his room and 

when I say, Let’s give these Canada geese a chase, 

he becomes the wind.

From his Halloween bucket he offers me treats.

I only take candies I know he doesn't like 

and he says: 

 

We will always love each other because 

we don’t like the same things. 

Of that boy there is nothing now. 

Not a hair of him, not a finger print, no forensics. 

Just photos and diary notes 

remain as my proof 

to the cops he was really here.

 

All of him carried away with his small teeth 

by the Fairy in her talons. 

And then a bold freed slave appears at the door.

Bushy and tall, demanding his rights, some appalling.

So sudden. This manhood. As sudden

as the strike of a match.

It takes a while to recover from a death, 

from grief. 

 

But I do. 

Already he redecorates the bedroom

and uses his unmade bed for a hamper. 

Yesterday I say, Welcome to my home. 

It was starting to get lonely.

Concierge duties

 It’s 6 am in the kitchen, I pour coffee 

when from the dark the thin boy appears

and thrusts his iPhone under my nose.

Look! I just threw up!

I see the photo, a green blob floating in the toilet.

For a better look, my head leans in 

& the little redhead’s voice 

chirps from the bowels of his phone 

where she now seems to live:

You ok, babe?

The boy’s brown orbs grab mine.

You understand, right?

I can’t go to school?

Believe him or not believe him? 

I don’t know anymore.

Two years ago he wouldn’t tell a lie even 

when I demanded one:

Tell your uncle you enjoyed his visit! 

Say it!

The shrink tells me, 

You can’t change him.

So make childhood a safe time.

Resigned, I nod.

I’ll get you a covid test.

My coffee turns cold as I record VM's for the school, 

his counselor, his shrink.

Next I google, Buy a rapid test near me,

write a list: apple juice, clear soup, tylenol.

My friend texts, See you at the trail. 

Wait! I text back. 

Running late: Concierge duties.

The little redhead is pregnant.

Her test kit results 

all over instagram with

shoplifted baby clothes.

She dances 

like a cheerleader for 

a home run 

& my head the ball crushed 

against a wall.  

Our boy smiles when I ask, 

It‘s true?

What rays from his eyes is 

his quick beating heart,

this careless joy. 

But I smother my voice 

so not to 

frighten him into silence.

I approach 

as I would a fawn in a trap 

so he will not dart 

but keep on talking.

You are only 15.

He says he’ll leave school, 

find work for his hands which still look small, 

but nails bitten down, 

clutching his phone where she waits, 

as if that phone were all that keeps his blood flowing.  

And a feeling comes over me, as if 

he had just set fire to every one of his childhood photos; 

the past seeming 

now a myth—our boy 

a soul possessed. 

A new incarnation 

has introduced himself. 

He's not coming back without her

On May 1, 2022 

the boy of 15 meets online 

a dark-haired girl of 14 

with eye lashes black and spindly as spider legs 

& the two video-chat nonstop. 

Their murmurs fill the night.

It is 1 then 3 then 5 AM. 

What is most shocking--

He is talking again!  

The boy imprisoned two years 

in his bedroom by a virus

had come to resemble that silent lonely ghost 

who bursts into TV as a mass killer.

And in his new voice there are the high notes 

of merriment 

& the low notes of secrets being shared.

And then on the morning of May 3, the dark-haired girl

is sitting on his bed.  Panic crossing all our faces 

when I step into his room, 

accelerating when his chest pushes against the door

 and mine thumping and pushing back.  

In silence they grab their backpacks, 

synchronized motions as if they had planned this moment 

and like thieves 

run from the house. 

 

I do not hear from him again for three weeks. 

Waiting, I sweep up his room—condom wrappers, chip bags,

cookie bits—change the bedding and wash what is in his hamper.  

I stare at a pink thong and a padded red bra. 

It hits me hard.  

On May 24, he texts, 

I will never come home without her. 

We argue again.

 I smell pot again 

hazing from his bedroom. He denies

it because he’s 16 and thinks I am so old 

he can persuade me to distrust my own olfactions.

He displays other corny emotions 

like saying, Fine, I‘ll move in with my mother (the addict) 

or with my dad (who paints his body with magic markers),

       all the while this boy knows I will say 

              what I said, which is that I love you

                                     too much 

but I don’t say the rest, which is 

                              I wish I didn’t

               because life would be easier. 

Wouldn't it?

Wouldn't life be easier 

          without this boy 

                    who struts away grinning while I am still speaking?

This reckless boy with pimples 

and a weird hairdo

                 who seems not to care 

about his mind-body connection 

&  inhales tobacco and pot 

as if they were fresh mountain air?

Or would life be easier without him

to greet at dinner

though white buds breathe sounds 

in both ears?

I try to imagine no voice at all 

in these rooms 

                        where a previous generation 

                        turned up the boom boxes and made 

                        havoc of their brains with my wine.

Imagine. 

Just me here 

with memories of all that 

                but not just that. Of love notes too, 

                and of huddling together 

                on the sofa—all much worth living

over again.   

Only now more helplessly 

because I am unable to persuade a young mind 

without that husband.

I think I would not be happier 

without this boy’s voice deepening daily 

down the hall 

and the giggling little redhead 

who face-times him 24/7. 

I am sure I would not have learned 

to love Juicewrld. 

And I admit it. I love this small garden 

he planted 

for which I paid him $75 

though he used it to buy whatever is wafting 

like burned basil down the hall. 

I wonder often under this part moon, 

here in my Garden of Gethsemane.

Turning 13

I couldn’t wait. 

Stranded daily by the need

to be a teen—

to be eligible for real life

in a bra, lipstick,

I marked each month 

on the kitchen calendar.

12 is hard. 

Lost affection for dolls, jump ropes.  

Nothing left to beg 

for in the holiday catalogue

except, maybe, 

another board game

but they too are challenged 

by the sudden flame of womanhood—

by the discomfort with too much youth.

Where’s the catalogue for mutants

leaving middle school, 

for busting

into the next life

of hairstyles, boy bands, boys

heartbreak?

For feeling less strange 

in my own home with mom,

herself bored at the dining table,

flipping through catalogues, 

wrestling with age—

Mine and hers, 

for the first time.  

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.

 

The Locket

I feel guilty. 

I was going to call back J 

and K and then I was going to read 

How Minds Change 

for the new book group 

but the Lex Fridman podcast took longer than I thought 

and afterward

I put on Paul Desmond and dropped 

into my sun-licked couch and picked up 

Len Roberts’ poems. Read and read and read

because Len knows 

how to keep me alert and out of air.

Each word of his poem What the Hell 

Kicks my butt and I am as angry as he 

so I put down the book.  

No need to step further out on the ledge of suffering 

than is absolutely necessary.  

It’s sunny.  I should take a walk.  

I command myself, get up, 

my self talks back. 

Why am I so lazy? 

 

The phone dings. A text from a boyhood pal 

of my teen-man.  

In town and wants to see us.

I’m excited and slip right into old road trips 

with the boys— how I miss them and

that locket they gave me—

With a string of plastic hot dogs —it’s in a drawer 

somewhere.  

I should take it out and wear it

like a badge of honor

because teen-man is not sentimental 

so only I keep all that we have been. 

The memories spill down the hills 

right into me. 

This is my sorrow—custom-made. 

Teen-man will not even make a call.  

So as usual I tear up and text a lie 

back to his old friend.  

 

Now our old dog pees on the floor—

housebroken 12 years— and there’s blood in it.  

I stay teary. Feel like the last apple holding tight 

To the tree. 

Then the smell of skunk.  

Teen-man’s high now.  

And the rice I steamed came out dry. 

I soak it with 1/4 pound of butter 

and share it with the dog. Together 

we dine on our misfortunes.  

 

Like a kidnapping

  One average day

       on a walk to school, 

 the love the child carries for you

     flushes out like milk                

from a leak in his thermos.  

The way that child looks at you 

     one evening over dinner 

is a look you have not seen before. 

     You can't be sure 

      you saw what you saw.  

The way that child speaks to you 

     is not the same tone, 

not like any previous tone.          

And for a long time, his sweet face                

    appears in your dreams on a

   poster pasted on power lines.  

 The new voice, new gaze sweeps 

     into every moment going forth.

Quiet as midnight,

     cool as that dark.      

All day I stroll with the dog in the redwoods.    

No thoughts of him 

I raised from birth

     who now shaves his face,         

him I pampered and praised--perhaps too much 

     because, well, he was so                

beautiful,  

so tender in all God's ways, 

     and exiled into life with me.     

When I return to the house,      

     it hails me again—

      the strange voice, that novel gaze

—that face-slapping loss.

It's too much for a girl

 The Sisters of the Holy Cross teach things 

       that break my heart.

Like Only Catholics go to Heaven. 

    

The infidels 

     must have known this

     when they hired me to babysit.

     

When I lean into his crib, 

he does not wake--he sleeps 

as if 

     his soul were cherished and

secure. 

Then I see his small fists knocking 

      on heaven's gate,

     the teddy bear backpack stuffed 

     with PJ’s, the toy giraffe 

hanging low 

on his back. 

I hear the Angel Gabriel, hard-nosed, 

     Sorry, you're not welcome here.

It’s too much for a girl of 10. 

     And so 

     the small chapel of her soul 

     crumbles--the heavy stones 

    fall off her shoulders 

         to the earth

        below her boots.