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.