do you hurt? where does it hurt?

...
Right here, in my chest,
breathing shudders, rasps.
Sick again at Christmas.

Pneumonia with a painful shot,
please don't, please don't hold me down.
I'm left to breathe while the visiting continues.
Give the doctor a drink, 2 drinks; one for the road.

Fear of the gasping, hurting lungs
and gentle neglect here in the dark.
Don't cry, it plugs up the throat.
"Why now?", I hiccup.

I need my Christmas,
the presentation of pyramids of wrapped gifts.
Mine being a gift of a ceramic rooster,
expressing my yearning;
and a comb for the boys.
My faith in these perfect gifts
portends perfect longed-for joy.
I need to be there just in case.

Cold morning for such breathless breathing.
Cold morning for unwrapping
with fear of disappointment.
I surely love these distant relatives.
Distant in the same Christmas Cheery room.

Gosh it's cold with the fire roaring,
light glaring it's magnesium,
camera flash popping.

My hurting chest sends me to lie down.
Again I listen to noise outside my room.
Shouts of pleasure, generosity and fear.

They brought a tiny tree with lights.
Why does it shine
so coldly in the window
when I am so warm?

Better to gasp at midnight in quiet,
with soft Christmas lights glowing.
Maybe sleep will come.

What a strain this Christmas celebration has become.
I cough, I pant, whispering,
"I hurt. Do you know I'm in here?".
...

around here

...
how to let it happen is to let it roll.
dates, important dates lie in wondering waiting.

8 or so.
wondering when what where who.

So we wait.
a flowing holiday unwraps
as slowly as the most ordinary day,
sitting here to see what's there.

Oh, yes.
groceries.
dusting.
a tree.
only 1 box of memories look good.
just as good.

together.
watching a first season and laughing HA!
electronics have their place in family.

together all at once at the funk gig
where music lubricates the relationships
into a well run machine.

and there you are.
that's the holiday.
that's it.

with much tenderness against
the usual, itchy, over-planned lists and dates.

this is just the thing.
...

2 steps

...
Only two steps.
You wouldn't know it was only two, not a trek of a thousand.
Two footprints.

The mud reeks, the footprints slide into tracks, slipping down, no telltale sole of a shoe to see.

Those two steps will take themselves through eons.
Leaving drying splots until dirt-like sand, aggregate with smooshed compost, begins to break down atomically.

Perhaps not into atoms, maybe only into molecules that will stick, floating in the ionized space, just above the flooring.
...
...

Can You Get it?

...
I waited, a thin girl with braces, in an awkward communion dress, hands up asking for the wafer.

Confirmation comes at 12, eighth grade, when knees are knobby, teeth too big for the face and unlikely people end up at the party.

The confirmation memorization: prayers mostly, and a book about Jesus as a boy my age. He seemed so real; familiar, comfortable. Maybe he was more intelligent, coordinated and handsome than I, but his 12 year old grace and sensual kindness left me included, understood. He stood dusty, holding wood for his father. Here, hold this. Hold it until it's needed.

I would do it. I'd wait, head covered, in dust colored homemade cloth, smoothed by numerous days in hot sun, while red, fine sand sifted between my toes. Through the windy dust I'd hold the hammer, waiting for the strong arm reaching back. I'd wait helpfully as if needed.

That gray-blue book at confirmation lessons, just right to fit into two adolescent hands, included line ink illustrations, showing the boy I wanted to be. But this book was only a story. Made up to fill in the unknown growing up time of my Lord. After nativity we find him speaking in the temple like an elder, upsetting the balance. Skeptical adults could not fault him because of his wisdom.

I lost that boy. Party sounds drowned out the memorized prayer and friendship. The quiet elegance of church began to lose it's hold on me, the beauty, the carving and silver, dimmed. I sank into recognized hypocrisy on the drive home.
Turn around, girl! This is behind you now, beauty ahead. Your crippled back got stuck looking back. Turn around and see the dusty boy, an adult now like you. Still impossibly waiting and understanding. Giving you this life you almost missed. Turn your crooked back around, uncomfortable as it might be, face into the dusty storm and see hope.

Leave the family and cleave to your beloved.

...

Wet Cliche

...
They say it's cliche to compare rain with tears, but what a great cliche it is. The reasoning persists. Tears fall down the face, wetting cheeks, leaking of their own accord, pouring, even spurting out through squeezed eyes. Hard rain or soft or blowing sideways rendering overhanging awnings useless; straight across like a video camera askew.

Why can't we know rain and pain are conjoined; just know, not live; not living wet faced and hurting.

Seems to me that knowing is enough:
I'm grieving, thank you, that's just a fact, no need for resounding, out loud grief.
An act of feeling, an act of love lost, just acting.

Wear a black armband I think, or at least an imaginary band, squeezing my bicep softly, just to remind; a reminder is redundant for an aching heart, but just in case. I may mistake it for flu, thus a memo via a strip of black cloth could keep sanity alive.

Dark heart, why can you not get it? Game over.
I'm gone; an astronaut tugged free from the ship, air hoses waving behind.
...

Magazines, papers and books...Oh My!

...
Too much stuff to read around here.
It's my mind that's full.
Stuffed like an over filled closet.
I can't even finish what's new today.
T.V. just adds to.

I read historical stories of dark ages wars and life.
I read One Day at a Time.
I read entertainment reviews.
Political cartoons.
Bird suet recipes.

I see videos of sandy soldiers single file tracking hunched down, rifles in hand.
It's 110 degrees.
The enemy is hidden.
The local government is corrupt.
Apathy lies dusty at home.
No one can simply state reason's we're there or there either.

I read that over medicating causes terrible things.
I read that some who won't take meds are in terrible trouble.

My internet home page shouts about home invasions, hoaxes, air quality, budget deficits, poverty next door to riches.

I read that stress causes terrible things to happen to the body.
Cholesterol and worse.

Memos.
They tell of pay cuts and furlough days.
They remind me to show up proving no T.B.

I read that ancient medicine has the answers.
It's new again.
Did the ancients have stress?

They didn't have T.V.s or computers.
They weren't wired every minute of every day.
Of course they didn't have convenience stores either
and those relieve stress when plastic diapers are needed.
Or milk.
Or jerky.

Maybe it balances out.
Some cure for stress will fix it all.

Breath
Posture
Relaxation.

Maybe.
...

Hot will End.

...
The amber/bright light sits hovering above,
pushing Autumn away.
Autumn that wants to be here.
It showed up last week or so,
but Summer doesn't move out so easily.

Summer sits right down in the backyard
and says, "Listen to me, you.
The sun's not done."

Heavy, like a forest fire without smoke,
as with too many blankets at night when
you're cold at first,
but later the breathing is thick,
and no windows open for a breeze,
and finally does the humid stink
drive you up and out
to the evening star layer.

Craning your neck just to the cool, glittering black,
the tilt just right for warm weather turning cooler,
the constellations tipping with the season.

Currently that tilting sun smothers in the sky.
Just for a few more days until
October finalizes the heat stroke.

Inevitable.


Teasing and joking sunlight,
in a Monty Python skit,
hints at goodbye.
We lose the light, the temperature,


the sweat,
the quiet,

ultimately to the snap sound
of cold damp Fall.

...

What is square?

...
If love is round, what is square?
...
Is square sort of an opposite thing
like esteem and disgust?
...
What is disapproval, anyway?
And what shape is shame?
...
Some minds see numbers in color;
letters, too.
Some special souls' emotions
have a special smell or light.
Somewhere in those brains
synapses for ideas pulse with shapes.
...
That square protestant glare,
that look,
that stare from over there to here,
has sharp edges and corners
like an old fashioned triangular ruler
before electronic scientific calculators,
before cell phones on silent/vibrate.

I wince, buckled this tight;
my eyes can't see through the smoke.
Smoke from the heat
or smoke from an over-fueled hot rod?
Ultimately, it's steamed, blurry wet eyes.
...
Get out,
go home,
drink coffee,
don't think, I think.
...
And I do.
Until he says, "How's work?"
It's that bad.
Thinking is the trap, so don't do it.
...
Robotically I push red barns across my table.

Cut out farm animals.
Color and cut.
Color and cut.
And write your name on the back.
...
Robotically repeat:
"Clean up and sit down."
"Clean up and line up."
...
It's lunch recess in the high 90's
so we'll all faint in the heat;
so line up and shut up
while smoke rises from the asphalt.

Will you not escape today?
...
More fool you.
...

Riding Light

...
Did she say to ride light?
My teacher? My mentor?

My trainer said to ride light and I did.
Relaxed my body
so the horse knew to jog slowly, softly, gently.
Press lightly with my heels,
lift his shoulders, pull in his chin and he gives.
We work together.

But what did my mentor say?
Ride light?
Ride to work light, easy, ready?
Present in the car for the 15 minutes.
Keep shoulders down
because up hints at tension
and tension in the car is too soon.
Rather I should wait for the classroom.

Ride the children light?
Teach them and mentor them.
Let them succeed, let them see.
Use my natural wisdom
to push them along.
Gently presenting learning.
Encouraging growth.
She hints:
Ride light.

Listen!
Write light, she tells me!
No more of your subterfuge.
I should write light.
That's the message.

Write and smile,
write with pride,
with humor,
write with generosity.

Write of skills.
Think of strength, built strong
by experience and work.

Write light, wife.
Write light, gardener.

Painter
Crafter
Designer
Reader
Writer
Photographer
Videographer
Birder
Homemaker
Recycler
Philosopher
Thinker
Teacher
Hostess
Present Wrapper
Knitter
Mother
Friend
Sister
Colleague

Write lightly.

Give credit.
Write lightly of my knowledge;
knowledge of Natural History
knowledge of Literature
knowledge of Art History
knowledge of Film
knowledge of
Child Development/Human Development
knowledge of
Domesticated Animals/Farm Animals/Working Animals

Capable in Mathematics
Capable in Science
Capable in History
Capable in Communication
Capable in Equitation
Capable in Self Improvement

Acceptable in Cooking
Acceptable in Collecting
Acceptable in Driving

And still learning.
Learning patience
Learning confidence
Learning acceptance
Learning assertiveness
Learning time management

Write of success:
An AA
An AS
A BA
A Blue Ribbon.
Supervisors' evaluations.

I won't be fired.
So. May I stop now?
I completed my assignment.
Is it good enough,
finally good enough?

May I now chastise my dark, heavy lagging self?
May I now default to self detesting?
My knee jerk reaction; it's cellular.
It's easier, and heaven knows,
I find comfort there.

Don't make me breathe.
Don't make me hear.
Don't see.
Don't feel.
This lightness leaves me craving isolated darkness.
There I'm asleep and safe.
May I resist your pull?

But you, dear friend!
You won't leave me to it;
rather forcing me to see these attributes of mine.
And choices, pushing me to see choices:
100 ways to get out of a room,
100 ways I am admired and loved.
Write lightly you say,
of courage, my longed for goal.

Alright!
I'll begin.
Where is that courage!

Help me begin, will you?
To step into the light in Him.
The lightness outside of me.
Away from reacting to them.
Help me leave them all be.
Cease the waiting.

Change me.
Stay by me.
Don't stop leading as I drag my feet.

Light should result, then,
tripping on the doorstep,
and starting to seep into my dark house.



...

all the talking in my head

...
I should be fired, so lowly do I work,
but evaluations say otherwise.
Raving praise drips down the page,
but too much talking twists the facts.
Too much talking presses down,
while crowning imagined failures with glory.

One step forward, seven steps back
while the pep talk fades.
I chant Our Father over and over softly sweet,
until a remembered faux pas sneaks between
Thy Kingdom Come and Thy Will be Done,
filling the pauses like water creeps,
puddle-like, over the river floor.

Between Give us Today our Daily Bread
and Forgive us our Trespasses as We Forgive,
I struggle against the crunch of my bones
wrapped in damp gauze with alum,
that will, while drying, pull taught my toes
under my arch closer to my heel
for a tiny 3" embroidered shoe.

Step on me I say.
Step on my broken foot, climb to my knee,
grab my head, your foot on my shoulder.
I'll stoop down.

Then bind tightly,
keeping appendages crunched,
keeping the will strangled,
keeping the privileges from my reach.

Awaking, I mouth,
Lead us not into Temptation,
knowing now I will not capitulate.
Whispering Deliver us from Evil,
I stop you and stand up.

"Find your own way, not on my back."
I'll kick off cloth rags and stride home.

And I won't step back
when a horse shakes his head.
I'll move into his face, his shoulder;
point my toes towards the legs.
"Move Over Horse."

Move over, I have a need to walk this way.

...

dentistry

...
Bridges are sure weird. Creepy as a matter of fact, but don't tell T. He's next and we'll let him rest in denial.

This time it's a night guard to protect my cracked teeth from more cracking.

How I CHEW! And clench! Like Atlas must have, placing all the worry into one heavy load. He held his weight upon his flexed muscles. I hold my weight crunching down with flexed jaw.

You'd think it was the end of the world!

We have the nicest, Mr Roger-est dentist ever. I've enjoyed taking care of my mouth with those wonderful people.

But now I'm tired of it.
What a terrible year of teeth!

I promise I'll be polite.
Is that what politeness is?
Pretending you're not ready to scream?

...

The day you were born.

...
Playing Roy Rogers and Dale Evans we gallop around until a soft, "whoaaa" in late afternoon when I have friends. We watch for Trigger and Buttermilk. Thinking who will we ride? That palomino is mine, we agree, or I say so, the longer blond hair must be Dale, it is understood.

Now the memory is gray like that descending summer evening. I could trot and lope like no tomorrow, hoping for no tomorrow, just now, this now. Up that driveway I go to untack, so I throw my leg over my horse and jump down and brush and feed, horse first, child second, if the fantasy lasts that long.

Reading took up lots of that time that loomed, summer, worrying, but reading could make it all go away in an adventure longed for. And coloring, too. Coloring and coloring and making construction paper things. Cut and glue and cut and cut, how I love cutting, still today.

But the most filling of all was playing. Playing house, playing school, playing library by crayoning someone's name on the inside cover, then stacking books in an order as we go. Playing work, even though we didn't know what went on in that grandfather's brick building where he went most days in a checked suit coat and tie, hair slicked, face smooth. So we answered phones and scribbled a message and promised to let him know.

Playing 45's. Her 45's of old crooners. Piling the shiny black grooved plates on that cylinder to drop and play one after the other. I almost could like them, but then the abrupt fear. But reading the center label with a hole punched in, could make it all go away. Reading was really good for that.

The day you were born was summer. I was the mother and you were the baby and the other kids were the older ones. I would wrap you up warm and close and tell you what to do and the older ones would play and play while I kept my eye out and bounced you up and down with an idea. "How about you guys go to the store!" while I would hold you and wait. Then we forgot and ran around outside in the sun.

Growing up wasn't all it had been touted. Angular legs too long, those skinny hands were done playing horse or house, it was gone for good. Confused in middle school, downright scared of algebra and history in high school until that last year. That's when I gave up and did what I could. That's when an artist came to school to teach. A world of wonder opened up, maybe even college, where reading and drawing would give back hope.

But no matter that repeating Spanish pressed me down, no matter English II writing lifted me up, it was done. Those days were done. Grown up, I studied, and I drew and painted and raged and craved and drove recklessly with reckless friends not interested in playing or coloring and I couldn't fix that.

My dream of cowboys and cowgirls seemed distant in that valley, maybe over that canyon, maybe later in the day, when the sun seemed to lower in apricot orange and gray. Maybe that day was ahead. Roy and Dale and coloring and playing house and playing work and library. More books, more darkening afternoons would get me there. Someone would ride up to play. Soon.

They had to.
...

What Distance Should I Keep?

...
I know I should stand farther.
Not too far is acceptable.
Close is not.

I circle around like a cat.
When is my chance?
It's measured in half seconds.

I'm slow, not quick enough.
There is still time.
I watch for it.

Don't talk.
Just look.
Laugh and thank.

Not wanting to I watch for it.
Anticipating.
Measuring.

I circle, not meaning to.
She circles, wary, aware.
The others are not conscious as of yet.

Talking to another, anticipating a reaction, but it goes on behind me.
I react with eyes and ears in the back of my head,
while I have this conversation in front of my eyes.
I know where you are,
even as I turn my back.

Thank you for all this you've picked for me and stuffed into this bag.
You stuff more and more and more when I want to hug you.
I wish I grew with the carrots and the broccoli waiting for your hands to wrap around me while you praised my color and taste. I clutch your gift to endure not touching your arm.

Circling is a hard way to love someone you've loved all your life since before you knew her, but for that dreamy hope; before she even knew how you waited patiently for an introduction. Now you can't stop looking in her face; for days and years as anniversaries pass and I look in her face and I must stop. I twist away to taste the sweetest peach, a stand in, for it must be, while I wait again for a look into your face that is not ready yet, but you're busy hunting for squash not born.

...

Tired Enough

...
She's tired enough in Summer.
And burdened to breaking.

A person creeps along with passing summer, shooting meth or worried sick; either way she is falling down to utter misery. Tell and tell and beg and beg, but if she can, she will. She'll shoot up. She'll sleep and worry and blur her mind with regrets. Attend, she hopes, to this foolishness she finds mesmerizing. Like a horse throwing his 150 lb. head, hoping you'll weakly scold.

We step out of the way, let this woman go. Only God can help, in His biblical ways, He who so loved the world that he stayed the storm on the Sea of Galilee and even stood in for the loss, terrible loss. I want those ancient Semitic words on delicate, gently sheened paper with gold edges. His chanting words for all this to somehow work for good.

...

Craving What?

...

Cries are quieter now.
Muffled.

The world here is quieter now for it.
Just the mouth opens, pillow stuffed in part way,
soaking into the sheet. Cells puff up in red worry.
Breath stops.

Sitting still, shakingly still, starts up the rapid gasps sending air to where it's needed. Breaths catch up. Sag on the bed.

Roll up in the blankets, roll up like a sponge cake with raspberry ribbons swirling. Something tastes sweet now. Sweet oxygen.

...

Faces

Faces on Facebook want you for a friend on strict lists; they're being collected like fossilized sandollars, how many can you find after a storm? For me, there seems to be less air. If I haven't seen you since school I flush and breathe faster when you step over the threshold. Or that part you played in all those years of family, those holidays when hearts would race.

On Facebook you can type it or read it, but you can't catch the drift, the scent, the breath taken in. How can I be a friend to a computer screen staring full force at me too brightly white?

There is no emoting while typing and I can't see your face. I can't see your feelings flicker across that face, eyebrows raised, eyes squinting. Squinting by itself doesn't tell me what you are. A downturned expression? Criticism? Concern? Apathy? Please not apathy, no. It's just too hard. Am I somehow misunderstanding? But here, next to me, a twitch of the corners of your mouth; now I can read the whole book.

Can you care on the web? I can't see you on the web. I can't speak that you can hear my concern which is now dulled. I want you to know how I say it. Witticism or wisdom or howling, I can't mouth these to you on this keyboard. I want to react, not reply, I want to jump at your tone, eyes waterning with worry. Are we all stymied by the new on off on off on off in some binary code? zero one zero? 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0? Will generations x, y and z speak by pictographs? This on and off may one day send mind messages, only my generation will be deaf and blind.

So speak to us carefully, communicate with sign language or touch; we don't quite hear you, we just don't understand.



........

Dustbath

...
A soft dove colored dove pair settle into the breezy spot of sifted dirt on the lawn, bare of green. They preen and stretch out a leg and a wing, nudging the other, wife or husband forever, warm in the sunny summer heat, content as monkeys' midday snoozing in wild, faraway tree limbs.

Sunflowers sink with a thud into gopher holes, stump chewed neatly, sharply. Tasty underground parts are up for grabs if you're down there, watching an edible candelabra dancing above in the ceiling. We know they'll come, sniffing and scuttling dirt aside with little hands curled and digging, heaving neat, pebbly soil behind. Holes so deep they're bottomless. Listen as chunky sharp gravel rattles down the perfect circular sides.

I think of the traps near the poisonous stinking poison for sale at the too bright hardware chain warehouse store. And poison itself, ready to end the ruination of my garden. I think of the traps so it will be gently organic, but how can gentle describe decapitation and then stuffing the bloody thing down a hole to warn the others. I drowned one once, horrible, but practical. Brutal big cats and bears kill for dinner. I kill for vegetables.

Wire nailed on a frame, tipped over and filled with freshly composted, steaming fluffy, dirt; brand named "feather light" for used chicken feathers proliferating in this town. For now I poke in peppers (sweet) and squashes (zucc), started from seeds from who knows where. In Fresno or Bakersfield in flat neat robotic rows under pure flat hot sun, drip lines standing by, computerized for perfection, for clean bright distribution. Wholesale to resale to me to dirt to hope for a flourish of green in my garden.

I could buy my veggies for less. Far less. Iron and minerals, trace though they be, and C and maybe niacin, from my own dirt feeds me while D comes from outdoors while tending little, green, cellulose-bearing vegetables. I strive to fill up my belly with five servings of something fruity, dark leafy, something my animal stomach doesn't always want, except maybe at dinner; steamed to go down easy.

Watering is my favorite, but weeding makes demands as does trimming and watching for bugs (sow and pincher) and snails; organically because we're going to eat the plants. Chase those jays who want peanuts, who will hop, hop, hop on springy legs for sunflower seeds, but may mistake a seedling for food. This expensive vegetable garden joins us to our Eden. That magnificent solar system flies by ignoring Adam's work. Tender sunny hands reach like blind moles forced out of mounds, my turn to reach, to pat that hot, dark, shreddy mulch. Then sprinkling; keeping the blowing dust down and elements in.


...

Again

...
Take the mailbox off. Off from the side of the road where it stands for 20 years or so. Once plowed down. Twice replaced.

No bats this time, mowing off one by one down the avenue, leaving letters scattered. No crumpled box in pieces littering the miles. Just lifted up, straight up off the cemented 4x4, straight up in the air and gone.

This time we're alone, unlike the baseball batter's tour.
Prank?
Need?
Appreciation?

With paint and brush and spraying can, silver and green and blue dripping. Liquid steel squeezing out, frosting like slurpy dollops of rubber-bronze. Like kisses, with a spring on top. That box came into it's own. Art and immaturity.

Now don't think more thought, not about targets, vandalism or convolution; nor kids nor men nor in between. Thinking must be locked tight.

The new gray utilitarian is up. There.
Numbers sticking and sparkling like cracked opals.
Reflectors walk on the sides.
Too clever to be boring.
Too different to escape notice.

That's who I was and am.

Danger comes with notice. But, please still care. Don't steal me straight up into the air and away. Like I dream and wake in false tears; reality just a stuffed head, but my dream in day has me falling, stolen.

See the mailbox, odd but bright?
A slight turn of the head ok,
but leave it.

...

digging in mud

...
It's not just soft, it's smooth and plastic, though plastic would not describe mud well in those days. Smooth if there are no rocks or splinters in the aggregate.
Mud soothes.

Some wrapped it on a bee sting.
That or damp bicarbonate of soda.
To draw out the poison.
Both were muddy enough to pinch onto that stick of a finger, but not too wet or too dry, because the patch would slip and drip off or crumble to no use.

The bee was attending to pollen when I squashed it and how my foot swelled and my hand that other time. Swollen to such a concern that I would have taken my daughter to the ER. The reaction suggested other things. Breathing. But breath came in and out steadily while I couldn't sleep. Scared of that thing that was so swollen, my foot or hand or finger.

Stick it in the sink in cold water in the night, let it run, summer moon lighting the open window. Jump up and down so as not to scratch, for the itch was powerful enough to keep you awake, but quietly, jump quietly. The family is sleeping on beds and couches out where we are altogether in the guest house at my grandmother's. And my grandfather's, but he was passive, asleep in the red leather chair down the hill, while we tried to make money renting our house. Those people smashed my red china doll and let the pool go.

At school soak a mud colored paper towel, fibers stretching and breaking down to a pulp, stick it like a bandaid clinging to my not so thin finger. And wish you were home in that heat, not in your desk sweltering, a faint threatening, dabbing the wet mushy paper on your forehead, over and over, wetting it again.

Silly girl, bee stings, breathing, heat exhaustion, stop this silliness.

This is nothing next to a father going insane and a mother sloppy drunk, whispering something to other men, not my father, with a door locked to make it suspicious, to survive, to keep going for the girl who's hand itched so powerfully. terribly all night long in the other room.


...

Sliding Down

Sliding.

Down is no good but for sliding.
Up is ok except for mania.
Even is just plain dull, but catatonic is worse.

Isolation in a black tank ruins your perceptions, someone studied.
Prisoners in isolation go crazy.

Send socially unfit humans to be packed in cages; then they go crazy so put them in solitary confinement where they slide through the inescapable cement; down below the topsoil where nothing lives.

I want isolation.
Social isolation.
Interacting, I am nowhere, somewhere below the topsoil, wishing a huge abyss would appear to slide me away, leaving behind babbling incoherency and/or visibility.

Let me go, let me slide down, like children zipping down a winding slide on the playground, two at a time, though it's against the rules. No running, no games of tag near the jungle gym. No swinging left, only right so no one gets bumped, lest someone is injured in play. No bad words, no hurting shouts of denigration, no play fighting.

You know it, but you do it.
I do it again.
The wrong thing.
I want to say, "I didn't know!", but I had an inkling.

Yesterday I learned that we are subjugated to our supervisors. They may place us in this class or that, teens, young adults, against your will, infants, preschoolers. Where do I fit best I think, sitting in offices listening, supporting the bad childhoods of the little smart mouths.

How do little ones know about bad childhoods? Where did they hear they're having one. Childhood is sweet ignorance, not self knowledge of a bad life.

Hit where it hurts. No. Because never, never to let another child hurt cannot be done. "You hurt your family, who love you very much, but they don't like you, so cry for that now, because discipline opens that door."

Sliding down first, bracing with feet rubbery with basketball soles, then climbing up to hysteria, to the top screaming, throwing flaming, fiery play weapons. Now that will solve it all.

...

Black Drizzle

...
You sneak in, through some signal, though how you two figured it out, who knows. You, you planned this deceit, breaking a trust that was rusted brittle. Don't take this child, who isn't yours, in narcissism.

Belonging cannot be stolen.

You two go out in the night, cold, slipping into black drizzle, no footprints visible in silver damp. Off in the dark for nonsensical pleasure, but it's one sided can't you see that?

Dragged back. You bring back a wrung out child, too exhausted for the next day's life.

Selfishly you break hearts, each one. In spite, you are not aware of the core bond inside, deeper than the gut, deeper than the heart, the marrow. You don't know this can't work.

Except for this.

You leave exhaustion wherever you were.

We send the bloodhound, millions of receptors tracking, none finding the revenge steps. Panting home to wait.


...

Sand

...
What is it about a sandy,
fenced-off piece of land.
...
Sugar sandy in the wind. Chocolate sandy in the rain. Dusty is the real word, but why use dusty when food is available. Watery, swirling sand, under hard hooves, changes each step to a slipper quiet, a tiptoe, of the 12oo lb. beast.
...
I float, thinking, on bobbing waves, sun soaking, easy.
...
Old Frankie, on the ranch all his life, walks with a very slight totter, huffing at the work. I gather up the reins. Chins? In for him, up for me. First the signal. With a heel. Then we glide over days; the fusses, the fidgets, the mistakes. We ride above foggy sand, dreaming of floating.
...
Floating on the Earth.
...
Float, while Earth floats
on it's hot orange crust!

...

Blue bird

...
This morning a blue bird with tangerine belly splashed in our terracotta bird bath. Our summer sneaks closer with this first visit in how many years? Too quick for a photograph, but here nonetheless, providing hope for longer days. Summer teases with a bird this morning then with a black car crash on our road this afternoon.

They say he was teasing. He teased and she swatted his arm and drove off the road, skipping like a stone over the ditch in a dust cloud. She drove between the neighbor's fence and mail box, a mere 6 ' wide, over the neighbor's driveway, and even past the 3' diameter redwood; next flying over our driveway, through the corner fence into the maple tree. Somewhere in that flight the airbags go off and then they climb out.
...
The horn honks insistently.
"What is that sound?" I ask.
"A stuck car horn." he answers.
...
Not until a phone call 10 minutes later did we wonder why and realized a car was in our tree.
"Maybe you should go see." I say.
"Why?"
"Because maybe it's something we should know. Do you want me to go with you?"

"Whatever you want."

"That's not an answer to my question.", I insist, "If you want me to go with, you could say, 'Yes, I want you to go with me.' "

"Ok, fine."

...

I stop mid next sentence, having found this an abrupt solution to my shame at talking; talking past anyone's comfort, anyone's interest. I hear myself and feel a fool. I want go back a few seconds to find a fine place to stop, but I continue on, hearing myself again and then again, finally I just shut up in an uncoordinated way. ASAP.

...
Crashes on Bodega Avenue are endless. Hard to believe no one realizes it's dangerous driving home from the beach. Hard to believe they are driving home near our home, but not near enough their destination to have energy leftover from the thrill of a romantic sandy walk. Not exhilarated enough to keep the sunny, afternoon drowse at bay. No, just far enough away for beer to really soak the veins, slowing reflexes just as age will do later on. Young doesn't know what slowing is.
...
I misread the bumper sticker and offer a prayer, fool that I am. Who am I besides a fool? A naive optimist, a lover of people, seeing the accident in a heartfelt rosy light. Dramatic concern expands my pink heart, my wide open caring heart, beating fast. Children, young adults, fair and fresh, sat on the up-heaved redwood trunk, shivering in it's shade. One van had stopped at the dust flying, and left. Minutes later a sailor parked across the road, "I'm trained, in the military." He notices and records, this you can see in his tanned blond crewcut. Then the cross the road neighbor who is as polite as the others at her house are not, even 25 years later. I read a ribald bumper sticker and misunderstand.
...
Huge, looming red chrome trauma trucks from the station down the street power to the scene five minutes after everyone left for the next shift; now called back, never having understood the honking horn. Walkie talkies communicate something. I talk too much to too many to communicate also, fool that I am, most foolish of all about the prayer, but plenty foolish about the need to know and tell while medics brace necks. Foolish enough for my own pink face to walk away, fast, into the house. The horn stops honking.
...
Today's paper tells of a Brown University student who took a semester at Jerry Falwell's college, politely, carefully documenting in a notebook in the bathroom stall. He is forgiven by understanding and patient, likable students when he returns, though not by those that be. He writes an honest book, telling all in a fair way. He thinks he may become a church goer. He knows not to offer to pray for drunk drivers who eat so much salt water taffy that it falls, pink and white out the passenger door onto the oily dirt near our maple. Myself foolish enough all these years later, still seeing in my mind salty Pacific water filling a candy cooker at the beach.
...
At our house, CHP talks while writing up, while we clean up.
...
"Suspended license."
...
Implying no insurance for our roadside fence destroyed in sharp redwood pieces in the dumpster. Red at the breaks and grey outside as aged redwood boards are wont to do. Red wood so old, we don't even know.

...

Heat and Horses

...

Two days too hot for two-bits riding even though the body craves the burn.

It seems weak to skip what you crave, but to pay with dizzy, panting illness places doubt on the thing. Shivering shakiness doesn't even out the playing ground, doesn't pay the price of loving to work that horse and self.

Even wet hair, neck, armpits, even reflecting helmet, sunscreen, shortest sleeves, even wishing doesn't keep wet skin to an even 98.6, not even bits of shade to share in bits. Not even tacking up in the cooler barn.

If wishes were horses, they say; if wishes were horses what a wide open plain there would be; full with horses running past, for I wish to be running with them, racing while sun and muscle and brain burn in health.

These degrees:
95,
100,
101,
pull reins, pull them to a stop; stop craving.
Flimsy thermostat breaks down til the day that weathermen say,
"Today,
go ride for today!"

...

Cold, Empty College

...
I remember a poet wrote, 'I put my love on like a shirt, my arms pushing through sleeves, hands slipping out cuffs. I put my love on like a shirt.'

I read this in college, a book of poems for an English assignment, presented artistically in Art College. We were free to choose a final paper subject for which I chose ravens. I read and wrote, fascinated and surprised, bird secrets unraveled, brand new information linking to my rich understanding of natural history. From a childhood at the beach, I knew where Kingfishers sat on wires by Highway One, scanning the lagoon shallows, grey blue. Small with strong, pointed beak, prepared to spear an evening meal.

Later, an adult, I tossed that raven paper along with all creative endeavors of the time. First I sliced and burned college canvases of ironic wide-eyed empty faces and romantic spirits living in acrylic bubbles. Canvases transformed from young pride to poison by an admiring artist bastard father. I cleaned that era to sparkling emptiness as if the darkness could be neatened.

Father and Mother delivered my student self to college. Leaving me to fearful newness. I craved freedom, I saw art becoming mine, not just his, not just the family’s. Now my perceived future included me.

The expected excitement turned suddenly. That one year of Art College (now called University, I wonder why) was all I could do. Scared to death by each purchase of brush, pencil, jar of oil, I flopped like a caught fish on cement steps trod by art students from important generations. What daring to think I belonged. By way of the dorm room door I entered into dark pain, hollow, floating, brittle. My roommate left with her older lover, leaving her empty bed for curious parents. Loneliness and an aching heart tore me out of my shivering self.

My own childish love was gone to sea by way of the Navy, by way of opiates. How stupidly I waited loyally. Suffering love was the only sort familiar to me; loving that hurt. I felt sudden death of young passion that had wrapped so closely I imagined I could button him up around me like skin. But what kind of love is a shirt, dead beaten linen, a plant that no longer draws moisture or minerals from field nor energy from the sun?

That deep night of college tipped me onto a black rock, like a maiden in myth, left with sea pounding around, long sleeved skin wrapped tightly against the bone. I kept myself in the wet cold, with only that skin-tight linen shirt, denial roughly clinging. A cold college coed died on her dorm room rock from silence and aloneness, a living hell now understood as chemical imbalance. Imbalance from DNA or soul I don't know. I just knew I couldn't pull enough oxygen from thin sea air. Oxygen, from roiling sea, was useful to gills only, a flooded cold breath. That first semester, a freezing storm blew long, with tide pulling life far away, good for oceanic fish but not far away enough for my release.
...

Now My Hands are Ugly

My hands are old.

I saw the future when I was younger.
When I was very young, I saw the hands of my mother and grandmother.
Big hands, but not so big, just big with apparent bones. Mostly big knuckles, ropey veins that bulged like veins pushed away from muscle of a thick body builder. Bulging like there is no room for veins between hard muscle and skin, so as the skin must give way, veins, strong with life, pump anyway.

My hands were always odd. I hid them in long sleeves. Sweaters, button down oxford cloth girls' white blouses. Constantly pulling at sleeves, hiding hands, I hoped, "Don't look, don't look, don't look please, people, don't look." Pulling long sleeves longer. From grade school to college, to married, to now; old. Boney. I was boney, skinny, knuckley. Then, before now, those hands were not too big. They were small as I was small and petite. A child not yet gaining height or length, or leastwise not until after youth; then arms and legs dangled past hems.

My mother's knuckles grew large, the bones of her fingers still narrow. My mother turned her rings, twisting them back from their slippery upside down place. Diamonds in spidery, silver-gold, a heavy domed setting like a muffin top, they turned around again, and she was forever twisting rings back. Many times her first pointer finger scrubbed the thumb's webbing, at the knuckle at the base of her thumb and now I do the same. Now I think of her when my hand curls to a soft fist.

My hands reach towards lost mother and grandmother. I watched them age, always youngish, beautiful, but hands accelerating into swollen old hands before they were old. My hand veins bulge, my knuckles grow, my ring no longer comes off without sudsy warm soap to assist.

"You look so young, too young to be your age.", I'm told. At 12 I looked 6, skinny, awkward, with boney hands. At 59, I look young with hands of an old man. My mother's hands, and her mother's. But my father's mother had lovely old hands, pearl smooth, holding violin while singing a ringing high soprano; who loved her namesake granddaughter, fussy and delicate as she was. Delicate as I am inside, rough hands or not.

...

Don't Throw Me in an Arc

...
Don't throw me in an arc, like a sea anemone stretching out its arm, its tentacle, to reach a bit of flotsam or jetsam in the rocking, glassy green tidal water, on its slate rock, gripping. Don't throw me up and out over the sea water, big sea waves reaching even above your own waist, threatening my little girl self's feet grabbing for purchase, unwanted screams leaving my throat. Don't take me out past the waves even though you saved kids from drowning and were declared a hero and here your feet stand firmly on the underwater sand.

Don't throw me up, up from the lawn, solid and kelly green. Don't throw me up with your strong arms, strong enough to throw, but possibly not to catch. Up, too high above the manicured lawn ringed by roses and dark clean earth, no grassy weeds hiding the smooth clay. Up, too near the sun.

And please don't throw me up from your shoulders, your strong, warm, hands reaching fingers around my middle, grabbing my waist over my little girls' one piece suit. Lifting me into the clear reflecting aquamarine air while pool waves lap, me dripping with sparkly tears slurping down my sides. No, not up above the tiled hillside pool, high enough to know distant neighbors are doing only God knows in their yards. Don't throw me up above our pool. I'll scratch out my thin arms. Don't toss me up where my tummy tightens, my back goes rigid and my legs churn like sticks..

Do not grab me and throw me onto the mattress. That soft mattress on springy springs, soft enough to catch me with little bounces. The bed where I sleep worried, waking so often I don't know I'm not sleeping. Waking in such velvet dark it could be back stage behind a heavy curtain waiting for the play to start. Don't toss me, my stomach acid with terror, fear for the fall.

The child me often wakes to find myself lost on that bed. The headboad, in the pitch dark, lies away where my hands can't reach. I flail like the girl Patty Duke as the girl Helen Keller for the headboard now seemingly gone. I turn to the footboard, low, patting hands on the bedspread reaching for direction, now truly lost and fearful of a thump onto the cold floor, I sit frozen calling for my mom.

I'm unseeing, but creeping down the hall, not knowing I had slept. I call, "Mom." and open the ajar door, eyes focusing on the mother pushing back the covers. My mother lifts up her wolf face, a monster face that did not relate to the family canid I later grew to know. A face that stays glimmering in the night, fading as I wake, sitting, again on my bed in the dark, lost on my own bed, reaching for the edge, shaking, fearful of falling off into what?

Please, don't ever throw me onto the bed.
...
....

Blowing

......
Up to 50 knots, I'm told.
Wind advisories. Radio stations making sure I worry.
My mind sees whitecaps roaring over black bay waters.
Hoping seafarers are safely tucked away in home harbors.

The maps of wind and clouds swirl over our planet appearing as geometric cloud cover, turning this way and that, hurricane twirls stamped steadily on blue, evenly displaying wind when wind is invisible.

This one strip goes westward, the next row east.
Like currents in the ocean, a misty pattern appears as if fog of our valley was drifting in from the shore nearby, drifting always east, rarely off shore. Links of white chain twists cover our blue ball.

The off shore winds, the Santa Ana, hot from the south, come with destruction occasionally, the wrong way blowing, confusing our temperate zone. Do birds work new muscles? Fighting to their roosts? This house stands in the way, taking a beating from a new direction. The ravaged walls, losing paint, facing west take a break, while the eastern brace bravely.

See the patterned windy belts lying neatly on this latitude following this direction then that on Hubble's camera viewfinder? Geometrically, even and steady?

Back and forth like currents of sea water taking sealife to krill and floating islands of weed and schools of tiny fish.

The sameness carries on as the atomic clock ticking will do; squeaking, emerging from old speakers of decade-aged ham radios. Called boat anchors, because they are so heavy with their tubes and capacitors and steel covers. Their radio waves reaching out, searching for magnetic paths in the air. Are they even like currents or crazy like sunspots? Like x-rays shooting from our star, through the sky and out through our very bones?

Signals blow above hearing or below. Hearers ears turned towards sound unseen. Will antennas help steer the screeching universal time signal, blunt beeping; tuning the boat anchor? How is tuning even possible. Radio men with the patience of a strong Santa Ana wind. Blowing steady for a time.

...
......

If Love was a Melon

~~~~~~~~~~
If love was whole it would be round and firm like a melon.~~~~~~
Cool and strong, it would be sweet as syrup but only if truly ripe: and it would sparkle 

in its juiciness. Ripe as a melon is passionate fruit. It gives to a touch, but not too 

much, and warm as well, sky green on its withering vine softly laid on powdery dirt. 

Damp, dark chocolate soil, 60% cocoa, first breeds life into the seed. Softening the dry 

teardrop. Following come pushing roots like fingers and next leaves reaching up, deep 

green with lightly hairy stems unfolding. They grow, now revealing soft pollen-yellow 

blossoms. Afterwards leaves enlarge. Together they produce, and then they wither, 

losing their deep hues to let the melon come to be in a hoed row under the Sonoma 

sun.
~~~~~~~~~