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.

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. 

Where do they go next?

 

My friends are not on my side. 

They scold like old nuns—as if I 

could make this little Catholic girl 

do what I want her to do —

she a child too and someone else‘s—

but to our boy-child I do suggest 

that he suggest 

the A-word:

And then her sobs 

make his phone rock in his hand. 

That sound of a wounded dog yelping 

brings back our sweet Lab’s cry 

when this boy drove his bike over her paw.  

That too was by accident. 

He stares at the floor while his red-headed girl 

begs me to tell him—our love—

               yes, our—he‘s my love too!—

„Dont ask me to kill our baby!“

But I tell him something else: 

This is not their baby 

but a clump of unformed matter 

as incomplete 

as a box of Betty Crocker cake mix. 

His face tells me he is weak and torn, 

digging down into the bottom of himself. 

The rhetorics of baking and killing 

jostle in his eyes.  

Betty and Baby.   

And so It will be her crying without shame 

            and, perhaps, the prodding 

            of her pretty three-inch nails 

that will decide where 

they go next.  

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.

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.  

 

When my son's car pulls up next to mine, waves of stink blast from his open window into mine

The driver's goofy smile tells

he does not remember 

     he spent 

last Christmas eve in jail 

     for another DUI

so I pull away without a word—

      run from thoughts that

chase me on the freeway 

     and all the rest of my life--

thoughts 

of what I might have said 

to change his mind, 

    to adjust his life--

to change this goddamned 

    ball game.  

Let him hit bottom, people say.  

     Let this abandoned building buckle, 

let all the junk catch fire

     and when the smoke clears, 

watch him rebuild 

      from ground up; 

watch him rise from ash like

     a brand new stadium,

watch him make those MVP

     home runs again.  

Life goes on

I come to pour him 

into this empty beach.

I move toward a quiet realm

where currents scare my species

     away, there 

     I pour my precious dust.

The crabs have noticed. 

Already working 

toward this meal but that's ok.

Let them feast on him before wind 

     and water take his rest away

     and so his life goes on. 

I choose for him the shadow 

of a giant rock black as iron

     thrashing waves about it

     like a castle in a moat. 

This rock so easy to find again 

     and again.  I tell our kids,

walk past the long lagoon, 

pass the cove, the overlooks, 

keep walking,

stay close to shore, watch for a rock, 

     alone and dark and for a crowd

     of shorebirds poking everywhere.

Look for Herons flying high,

     join that merry wake.  

Savagely I now recall

My girls swing for hours, moving, 

moving heads up, feet up, 

moving heads up, 

feet up.

Sometimes they want me 

to push them, they want 

to move faster, faster 

but I refuse, my body worn 

from life.

I do not see the clock's hands 

buffer round and round 

past our crowning 

moments.

I do not see the clock's hands 

creep below the ground to

loosen one by one 

all the bolts that hold us 

there.

Mindless, I decline to push them. 

Mindless, I read the book 

I could be reading now instead

of then.

Her birthday

Today was her birthday.
Thirty-seven.
Her eyes dart around the table,
down to her menu, over to my menu,
resting briefly on my left hand,
noting perhaps my empty ring finger,
or the absence of nail polish,
or perhaps how much my hand
now looks like my mother's
as she often points out, then back
to her menu, and then over
to her man's face, on which only
an attractive nose and pleasant lips
are visible under the shiny cobalt blue
sun glasses and battered baseball cap.

When the menu absorbs her,
I stare at her disheveled hair
tied into a crown atop her head
and flash on the little girl she was,
the stunning beauty born into her
and for a jolt of sorrow pricks me,
seeing how it is fading so fast
in the street life she shares
with this nice man.

It seems nothing more will become of her.
This is her life, a life no one could envision
until she began living it.
I can see she doesn't mind it.
She has what she wants:
A man who cares, a mother who
buys her lunch and cigarettes,
and crystal meth.

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.”  

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.

It's too late now....

.....for the dream daughter son husband 

to sit around with me on the beach blanket  

and talk in happy voices about their good jobs 

and good homes and good politics 

and breathe in the spicy gusts of sea breeze 

together, with a kind of ecstasy, 

and with all that combined happiness, 

lift me, cartwheel me across the salt dab sands, 

rolling head over head, lightly, 

end over end, lightly, 

on and on, like tumble weed, 

uprooted, inspired deeply, moved deeply, 

satisfied deeply, 

as if there is nothing I should be doing 

and they doing everything they should be doing.

It is too late in the day 

to change the day.  

All is all. 

But if I could revoke, would I?

Now that I've bonded so deeply 

with the anti-dream?

What I save

It occurs to me I frame photos

of their childhood for the same reason 

my mother framed 

so many photos of her children’s parties,  

dances, roller rinks, the poses around
the Christmas tree: 

Not so she’d remember us that way but 

so we’d remember us that way.  

Look, she shrieks when I blame 
her prickly temper for too much 
that’s wrong with me, 

See how happy you were. 

Your 8th birthday. So many gifts! 

The photos give me little clearings 

of pleasure in the woods of
my wearisome family ties. 

And now my children rebuke me for 
shortcomings as their mother which

worries me--do my failures cast 
too great a shadow on their childhood?

So from my album of ruddy flashbacks, 

I select the photos that remind them of their

three separate trips to Disneyland. 

To prove how very happy they have always been.

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.

Forgiveness

I won’t visit the ward where she’s sitting 

beside others who stab themselves in their necks.

Who does that? Who? And why? 

(Is that icy tone mine on the phone?)

She didn’t want to die, 

Only make her lover stay.

Because I’m needy, mother!

One of her serial assertions.

I love you is another

Once upon a time she was a sunny child

(Wasn’t she?) Am I dreaming when I 

see a little girl with a soft red heart

flung open to everyone?

She loved hearts, on her headbands, 

on her socks, on her toothbrush, 

pillow hearts--everything she owned

wooed Be Mine.

Her beauty wasn't subtle. (Why didn’t it save her?)

People stopped us on the street, knelt down 

for a better look into those bluegreygreen eyes

(their color has no name, has never been seen before.)

Didn’t I bring her warm milk at night?

Didn’t I embolden her with dance, surround her with my

Kind, savvy friends? Give her new shoes
(covered in hearts) for summer camp?

Didn’t I make it clear she was not doomed

because language in all forms failed her?

She had dreams of driving a red convertible

with its top down, volume up, her blond hair blowing 

like yellow scarves but now almost 30, not even a permit, 

she feels stranded in a dream noir, 
on a long drive from somewhere to nowhere,

forever crashing into strangers’ lives.

It wearies me, repels me. I’m standing

too close to her desperate edges.

How deep is her doubt? Who knows?

What part of her is her, what part monkey?

How much deeper will her slow dive take her?

I don’t know when she’s lying and when she's not 

since all her words are stained with colors

unfamiliar as her eyes and from her mouth, 

strange sounds that scare me to death.

I should have watched her more closely. 

I should have watched her the way a sailor

watches the wind before setting out to sea.

Everything in the air must be important if

you want your boat to move to the right place

at the right time along the best route.

She cries, mom, mom, it’s not your fault.

If I could forgive, if I had a hero in my heart,

I wouldn’t sail backwards in my sleep, 

never reaching the shore, never coming to rest. 

I would not judge. Because who knows 

where the wind comes from?

Who knows where it goes?

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.

Clutter (Poem A Day Project)

My daughter looks happier

than her baby daddy.

At least in this picture 

in my hand, the same hand

that used to hold up

5 fingers to her five fingers 

and 

waited a decade 

till she could count them.

No surprise she hooked up with him.

But astonishing how these puerile 

minds pilot such beautiful faces

(like a plow pulling Arabian horses).

Her beauty still stuns me: The face

of an ageless innocent 

(despite the later mayhem).

Funny how my whole world can

be captured by a single photo,

a thought that sets me back in motion, 

clearing the shelves, ready 

to pack up all these pictures.

I rarely even notice the faces anymore,

Only see the clutter, the absence 

of symmetry in the frames, 

all of which evokes 

the constant need for tolerance 

and proves how many ways things go wrong, 

how truth can be obscured but not changed--

It bashes me in my own home--persistent

and powerful--but I’m impressed

that such an imperfect life as mine

remains so eminently liveable.