Happy to say this little poem has just been published in the 2020 print edition of “Crosswinds Poetry Journal” along with other finalists and winners of its annual contest. The poem was inspired by an eagle seen flying at sunset the last day of September and the boating memory of another eagle which was carrying a 3 foot long snake home for dinner.
It’s been ten years since the accident, and now
he’s a grocery boy in an older man’s body,
still dreaming—like any twenty-year-old
before a major head injury would—
of the beautiful women yet to come.
And come they do—to the stocked shelves,
pushing their carts like baby carriages,
strolling the aisles of their good lives.
No stroll for him though—his body
moves, but stiffly, accommodating
his intentions as best it can, as if he
were remotely controlling it for the
first time. But it’s his limbs seizing
the courage to keep moving
that mercifully fires his separate parts
into agreement. Nothing remote about that.
He carries the heavy bags out to the large
shining cars. It’s hard for him to speak
a sentence and be understood, but he tries
anyway: each word fought for, dragged
from the bottom of the laryngeal sea,
while his listeners fish for patience,
a few turning away with quick thanks and
driving off, their own tongues floundering.
He opens his shirt collar: Jesus hangs
from the chain around his neck—
the reason he’s still here, he says, and why
every day is “awesome”—because blue
sky, black sky, brazen eye of summer,
that’s the view the living have, and snow,
rain, wind are all two thumbs up
on the scale of tingling his skin.
With the light of the world glinting
in his eyes and the bleached sands of
his hair, shoring him up against the
cruel twist of the years, he writes down
his number, wants to talk longer, later.
Let the beat go on for the heart
that insists dreams are meant to be
reached for, not shelved.
This poem first appeared in the anthology “Best of Kindness 2017” by the Origami Poems Project. My thanks to judge Mary Ann Mayer and editors Jan and Kevin Keough for its inclusion, and to Kent at my local Safeway for its inspiration and for being such an inspiration generally!
When Camel-heavy lungs finally shrank
my father’s world to a bed by the window,
on sunny winter days his bed
became a beach where he lay,
pajama top unbuttoned, hairless chest
exposed, the whooshing surf
of the oxygen tank now pleasing.
And the sun, unmitigated by a pane of glass
or the pain of a rationed breath,
was kindness itself, bestowing the
warmth of many hands it seemed,
keeping the dying fire inside aglow
long after it reached the end
of his square footage of sky.
Today’s sunshine reminded me of this poem, first published in “Best of Kindness 2017” by the Origami Poems Project. My father never lived to see this poem but he told me that the best last days of his life were as I’ve attempted to describe.
My poem LIFE – A Snapshot is now live at Recenter Press Poetry Journal! This poem was written a very long time ago – many thanks to editor Terra Oliveira for including it in Issue 3, alongside other insightful poems. And thanks to fellow poet Robert Okaji for introducing me to this journal, whose purpose is as its name suggests – to recenter!
Late spring,
walking home
through the cherry trees:
a thousand blossoms
hurrying
to the ground below.
Though soon to die
they danced in the breeze
together
like beautiful lovers
forever entwined.
It seemed the trees
reached for them,
that the birds sang louder
with the squirrels chit-chattering.
It seemed the ants looked up
from their mad black scramble,
that we saw the grass billowing,
and the sun, wanting to touch
every petal, and the enormous lake
of sky, spilling down.
It seemed we all swam as one
for a moment, and belonged
in the world that way.
Though I promised to post a variation of the previous poem, this seemed a more fitting poem right now, written a lifetime ago. First published as an honorable mention for the Arborealis Prize in 2012. When we can travel again, I’ll return to the Mazatlán poem. May you and yours keep healthy!
Night here, alone, makes me unfaithful
to the woman we both know:
easy to give my heart away
to a stranger
wandering the beach
of my innermost shore,
the crash of the ocean’s ivory keys
drowning the do-re-mi
that has played
me for years,
the air so loose and warm,
all the old clothes
must be pulled off,
my body shown
for what it is—
a sweat
of holy longing, faithful
only to what seems to be
last call for living
this other me.
One of several versions of another Mexico poem. Maybe I’ll post the others sometime and see if you like one over the other….
Under the streetlights our shadows loom large
as we walk back from dinner to our hotel
on the shore of the Bay of Banderas.
The whole street holds its breath
as from the well-bottom of night
I look up, see floating the bronze
pennies of stars.
Our shadows arrive before us, looming large,
as if there’s something that first must be seen or said,
something that has waited so long
it lost its original shape and stride,
even its voice,
something that has followed us here
from home….
I don’t know what ragged corner
of my heart seeks mending
that it should beggar with a cup
near full. If it’s looking for change
here in paradise, that’s easy—so many
bright fish, big blue bucket of sky,
who isn’t young again, hard into wanting?
There’s room to be happy
your hand holds mine, swings it,
room to fancy
any dark angel fallen between us
just needs a push to fly,
room 222 unlocking
whatever’s been locked inside.
Another Mexico poem.
Let me love you, eyes closed,
hands unasked upon your face,
fingers slowly tracing your story lines
back to their beginnings—
all the disappointment rivers heading south,
hungry for your large and generous mouth
and the thrilling pulse of an open sea—
our hands, the stars by which we safely
navigate our untold histories.
Let me love you more
than humanly possible,
colour you way outside your lines,
follow you boldly off the paper
into a holy space
where I could lose my mind,
and the high tide breaks
me open in as many places
as you desire to find.
Let me love you as you are
right now: in the door, but not yet home,
the day—a popped balloon, still tied
to your wrist. Come, sip some wine
and I will sip the silence
into which you pour your words,
until the shadows crowding the window
shrink from view, and it’s just me
and you and the Buddha
moon slipping through the darker hours.
Seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day, here’s a poem I wrote long ago for my beloved.
We arrive at the hotel like royalty—
remembered, waved through
the sea breeze of halls and floors
to our room, a welcome platter
of fruit, chilled bottle of wine,
a card—that’s all it takes to
pull off our clothes, shower,
sit on the balcony white-robed,
watch the waves rolling toward us
until they roll all the way in and
we let go the body that struggles,
let anything and everything swim
out of us, follow a dark fin far
and away from the old shore,
the sea surging, filling my mouth
with its need to be tasted—salt lick,
tongue slick with the eloquence
of stars.
I finally decided to start posting some of my Mexico poems, seeing as how I’m one month into a 3 month holiday here – not at the hotel above but in a condo right next door.
Wood laid on the hearth and lit,
the bright tomorrows stacked,
the least flame fanned
into a wicked spritely dance.
Hand over hand they sat, barely
woman and newly man, thigh
against thigh like the burning logs
coupled with fantastic longing.
No thought that in the heart’s smithy
the heat of those moments would forge
lifelong demands, the combustible
hour smouldering into years
or that a blazing light, unstoked,
could thin to a dying glow.
This poem first appeared in Ristau: A Journal Of Being, edited by the brilliant Robert L. Penick, in January 2019.
