Early memory, Point Reyes

The hillsides were more open. The brush hadn't yet advanced into the meadows. Deer crossed the fields intermittently. In the forested valleys, on foggy days, they came down to the creek to drink. On the other days, they waited for the safety of dusk.

When it rains too much, water comes spouting out from the gopher holes that drain the water from the higher hillsides. A good place to find quartz crystals, swept up from the bowels of the earth. Once I found rendered fat in one of the holes. Tiny globules waxing my wrinkled fingers.

My pants of gray and blue woven cotton, made from a remnant my grandmother bought at the Lagunitas church bazaar, were laden with rain, and they hung low on my hips. The chocolate mud bordering the cuffs calligraphed the earth.

And my tennis shoes make squelching sounds as I walk down the path, now a runnel from the runoff. I leave my clothes on the newspaper sheets spread in front of the door to catch the winter's mud. I shed my clothes like the hide of a beast —too much of a hurry, I dry off and sit by the fire.

But it is a landscape of wet and cold that doesn't willingly leave you. My grandmother talks of catching bronchitis and the tiny tubules that everyone in our family seems to have.

In the night I begin to cough, and it goes on and on. We hitch a ride out to the doctor. His office is in Point Reyes Station. It's a long winding road right through Camp Taylor where the redwoods crown the sky, and it is always dusk. 

Over Olema hill, near the crest, there's one small curve, where you get the first glimpse of Tomales Bay. On the flats, we pass drowned artichoke fields, and the old caboose, an abandoned railroad car that still proclaims it is the Point Reyes Library, though the only books it holds are written by the wind whistling through broken windows.

The caboose shares a pasture with a donkey and a goose. The goose is swimming in the volunteer lake at the lower end of the pasture. The donkey's ears are splayed at 30° angles as he huddles next to the caboose wall for shelter. He doesn't understand why his friend seeks out water on a day like today.

The doctor's office smells of alcohol and Pine-Sol. Thick coating on my tongue, dark breath. and roaring ears. I am burning. He says 104°. And the doctor gives me orange-flavored syrup. For years after, I will hate the taste taste of oranges.

I remember Tomales was foggy that day. Trees dripped steadily as condensed fog fell to the ground. I looked up a raindrop on the edge of a leaf, the quavering edge reminded me of a wintergreen potato chip.

Last summer, at Heart's Desire Beach, I kept looking for the secret heart. I thought maybe the inlet was heart-shaped, but no, it was an inlet like any other. Not understanding the metaphor, I wondered what shape did it desire to take on?

A stingray gracefully slid across the shallows of the small lagoon and then settled under the mud, using its wings to sift the mud over its body. Only its pale blue eyes were visible, like two tiny pearls fallen from the sky.

When the sun comes out, the water is like dark forests. It's more like a lake than a bay. But periodic shark reports keep it honest. My eyes are like sharkskin, the color of water on a foggy day.

6/1985
added, rev. 2/18

My breath, uneven

My breath comes in uneven, first, it's a series of shallow breaths, then a ragged sigh, and a big gulp that fills the rib cage. I realize I've been holding my breath again because it helps to hold in all that grief, I have a double lump at the back of the throat.

The doctor said Alice was holding in her grief, and that's why Montezuma's revenge was so complete.

When Jim left, I remembered it was at Christmas, I thought my bowels had found the deepest ends of the earth. I watched the skin loosen, the clothes hanging over the bones and still I didn't let go of the breath.

Maybe I hold onto it because I'd rather die than than let it go as I have grown used to holding it like a familiar, and like a mother I'm afraid to let it out of my sight.

It is difficult to sing when I'm tired. I'm beginning to discover how this tiredness is deceptively masking. The lump in my throat.

I remember Mom saying, don't pout. It makes you ugly. Couldn't she see it was facial muscles straining to keep control, and to keep back the tears? I hum a low tune under my breath. She says, don't hum under your breath. Either sing it out or don't sing at all.

I get back at her. For months I don't sing a thing. But in spite of my resolve, I begin singing again, experimenting singing aloud. Singing, singing. My joy is singing.

Years later Carolyn Couls and I go backpacking in the Sierras and she belts out, the hills are alive with the sound of music, and I drop my trailmix on the ground by the meadow stream. A family comes around the bend and the man says, if you can't let it out here, then you can't do it anywhere at all.

6/28/1985
with Mike Tuggle
CPITS workshop?

RANDOM IMAGES



The inlet wraps around the hills,
like a sweet tongue.

Garlands of oranges on either side.


A bear walks across a landscape
of sunglasses, Coke bottles,
tennis shoes, and popcorn.


The referee holds up
challenging hands
in the winner's corner,
he gives us a kiss hello,
and a kiss goodbye.


A woman in a bathrobe
feeds a cockatiel oranges.
The walls and the couch
are the color of water.


6/1985
probably from CPITS workshop
added 2/18

PATHFINDER

PATHFINDER

Clothed in the rainbow scales of morning
I make sure the paths are kept open
that no errant weeds have choked the pathways
during the night, claiming dominion over my paths.
You see, it is everything for me
to keep these paths of men
and the paths of deer, or even mice, open.
It is my job to help them remember the way
because more than one darkness comes
and the forests and fields eagerly
swallow all traces of trails.
But the soles of the feet remember.
I can hear them coming through the tall grass
like a cipher writing out lost history.
See how they bend in the savanna winds?
So many have already walked
until their souls bled in the snow.

5/31/1985 (in my journal as 6/85)
CPITS with Susan Kennedy & Mike Tuggle

I AM poem, after Amergin

I am listless in the fog that turns green 

as if it were liquid dripping off from the trees. 

I am the pungent breath of hot summer.
I am whispering in the shadows, 

telling everyone’s story to the wind. 

I am bright, green and tender in spring. 

Animals come to my green fingers, 

after a long winter, soft white birds 

binds me towards their mouths.

I am a roaring inferno, an explosion under fire. 

I am the feathers of gray doves, 

drifting and settling on the earth. 

I am dark, the dark comfort of soil, 

which regenerates new growth.

I am the tears of sorrow

pressed into the deep bosom of the earth. 

I am the liquid sun, frozen sun, 

the eyes of tigers, of shadows, 

and bees hide within me.

I am amber worn around the neck of a woman.
I nestle in the darkness, thick dust settles 

until I can no longer see. 

6/85

Susan Kennedy Workshop, Mark West School

this seems like a new poem…

I am the cleaner of artist brushes, 

I am varnish, I am turpentine. 

I am amber resin. I am pine, 

I am forests kneeling before the fire.

6/85

Susan Kennedy Workshop, Mark West School

This was notes from a workshop on Amergin that Susan Kennedy taught at my school, it was either May 84 or June 85. I have a whole bunch of other poems and fragments from June 85, so I’m not sure what year this was written—but they were all written in the same purple ink. This was buried deep in my teaching notes. untranscribed, though all the other ones were in my journal. So it was a surprise to find it. (This is why I have to go through every single piece of paper in my teaching journals). I had money from my CAC grant to bring in guest artists, and both Susan and Mike Tuggle were my guest artist for the year. —MH added 2/24

NAMING MYSELF

NAMING MYSELF

Lost in memory, 
I wander in the jungle 
like Eve in the garden, 
green tendrils caress my ankles. 
Plumaria, fragrant blossoms  
beneath my heel. 
The essence of honey and lemon, 
sweet frangipani.
Parrot feathers in the air, 
raucous blooms in the jungle.

6/1985 
Mike Tuggle CPITS workshop
Mark West School

IN AN OPEN BOAT

IN AN OPEN BOAT

These days just keep going on with no end. 
I keep waiting for the tide to come in. 
and contemplate the deep ripples in the mud. 
Deeper rifts in the Atlantic. The tropics. 
Steam off the surface of the sea at dawn. 
Fish dreams. I awoke, thinking of Gary's
strong arms rowing against a cellophane sea. 
And how we talked of Stephen Crane's story, 
The Open Boat, we were caught in a riptide,
talking of fear and of starvation. 
There is a self-consciousness in fear. 
I kept looking for shark fins 
in his beguiling blue eyes.

6/1985
freewrite
added 2/18
slightly rev.

SPEED OF LIGHT

SPEED OF LIGHT

On blank paper, elephantine themes

walk blind through the night.

Is there a reason for poetry?

Ask Einstein about the relative value

of  daydreaming and he will tell you

the sun’s middle name is water.

Mice, afraid of the light

scatter like dark stars.

I try to decipher the messages

left by their feet in wet snow.

  6/85

NAMELESS IN THE DARK

NAMELESS IN THE DARK

            Poetry is the music of what happens.   

                           —Seamus Heaney

We are nameless in the dark.

I imagine myself as a stalk of asparagus.

Wild sparrows come to feed on my red berries

and weave between the green pillars in the garden.

Parthenogenesis, apartheid, Parthenon.

Gods come to live here in the mud

to separate fact from reality.

What did we cross over to become human?

Here in this room where our hearts

write about what passes,

nonsense is a kind of sense after all.

Cool-headed poets walk

with smoke rising from their feet.

Who slept in the depths of the deep night

whispering, whispering until my eyes were heavy

as gravel beneath the foot of the elephant?

A steady stream of students grab paper

as the words flow like run-off after the storm

Chairs squeak to the counter rhythm

of scraping pencils.

6/85

from a CPITS workshop with Mike Tuggle and Susan Kennedy

BEFORE ANIMALS HAD NAMES

BEFORE ANIMALS HAD NAMES

My name is not my own.

They call me the rainbow tiger

but I am more like the billowing fog

coming in each evening

over the mountain for roll call,

tucking the trees, the grass

the immigrant cattle, horses, tractors,

fences, lights, and the people in for the night.

At an infinite pace like slow inverted oceans,

or the cease-surcease of standing waves,

I am drawn upriver to the canyons like a lover

to the secret folds and valleys where at dawn,

the crests of mountains are floating islands.

Sometimes when the sun is right

you can see my opalescent stripes

as I pace the hidden quarters of the world

in search of my name.

5/31/84? written in Mike Tuggle’s class
In my journal, I have another version transcribed 6/85

Under full moon, June 1985 (garbled text)

Under full moon, the Bahamas

We float in the sea
Slow speech drips off rocks like memory
My mother calls me home in her dreams
A conch shell sounded nine times
Bring home the fish because
weeping willow leaves drift in the pond
Ducks chatter. The one lost by the art building 

Closed doors lead to fragrant lawns
I am falling from Daphne's shoulders
following a green mirror from the pond.

Like some burial ground in front of me,
Water wars like banshees in the hills
Real cause,  mother plays piano softly
A young girl in taffeta rustles

there is nowhere else left to go 

(Missing text)
has feathers missing from his neck.
where Persephone emerges into sunlight 
with one hand shadowing her eyes.

Stillness. Redwood like a lake after rain. 
Swollen clearwater chokes bracken ferns and sedges.

This hand uncovers ghosts of the past.
after the fog has lifted. 
Irises whisper to each other 
on the opposite shore.


6/1985


NEED DATE   (garbled text)

BANTU RHYTHMS

BANTU RHYTHMS

—after THE SONG MT. TAMALPIAS SINGS

Under full moon the Azores float in an uneasy sea

and slow speech drips off the rocks like memory

My mother calls to me in her dreams

This conch shell sounded nine times calls home the fish

because there is nowhere else left to go.

6/85 

Weeping willow leaves drift in the pond

ducks chatter. One is lost by the art building.

He has feathers missing on the back of his head

Long corridors lead to fragrant lawns

where Persephone emerges into sunlight

with one hand shadowing her eyes.

6/85 

Walk blind through the night

The elephantine theme of blank paper

afraid of the ink of night

afraid of the light

Is there a reason for poetry

The sun's middle name is water

and mice, afraid of the light

scatter like stars

on velvet tongues of whales

while I try & decipher the message

left by their feet.

6/85 

The mother-tough jacket hung on the nail,

empty, with oars missing

fragile mud in the palmate structure of leaves

hands dressing seeds, embryonic seeds

shaken loose in sheets

this budding lake where we hoard iron

under rowing scows, rust shavings

under empty sleeves.

6/85

like hair falling from Daphne's shoulder

the willow gleans a green mirror from the pond

stillness, redwood lakes, after rain

clay water depths choked with bracken fern and sedges

like some burial ground in front of me

this hand uncovers ghosts of the past

the rug is tightly woven because there is no tomorrow

water roars like banshees in the hills

after the fog has lifted.

Rilke's mother plays piano softly

a young girl in taffeta rustles through empty halls

how many people can offer you green silk thread

when you ask for it?

a child combs her hair into the windy night.

6/85

Cazadero? CPITS?

EXODUS, EXILE AND DESIRE

EXODUS, EXILE AND DESIRE

Clouds cover the moon like a map of Africa

and the moon breaks through the continents.

Beneath the sweet, almost foetid odor of frangipani,

blue-tailed lizards mate,

thrusting ocher bibs of ruffled lace

and arch their backs to a silent calypso.

Distant thunder wraps itself in sheets of ghost lightning.

Arawak Indians once lined conch shells

along the eastern shores of these islands

to remind the sun of its feathered cloak.

We eat sweet white meat of the conch.

What's no longer needed is thrown back into the jungle.

The barracuda sleeps and the shark is hungry.

As we bathe in the sea,

bone-white lilies of our arms

blossom under the full moon.

Translucent fish slide between my thighs.

The fan turns slowly in an empty room.

5/85

1993 We Are Not Swans, with Cecelia Woloch
1991 Poet Magazine
1988 Chaminade Literary Review
         Women's Voices
1987 Blue Window

BANTU FRAGMENTS

From Bantu rhythms

(an elephant is killed by a small arrow. 

The edges of a lake dry up.

He spent the day carving an arrowhead out of Ironwood.

I kept thinking of what I should’ve said to my father. 

The telephone wire stretching across cracks. 

I am asleep while skiing.)

The bottom of the boat is the turquoise of the sea. 

Shimmering leaves shake the sky into water watchfulness.
A fan turning slowly in an empty room.

The last time I saw my father, a heavy dampness in the air. 

There is so much more left to do. 

Sometimes I feel I will never go away from this place.

6/85

RAIN FRAGMENT

The white lines of the clouds are shining,

high and glistening in the light. 

The black horizon line of the clouds

falls down like stripes on pavement after it rains. 

The shining green hills are like the leaves of trees, 

glistening and sunlight after rain. 

When the sun shines, and it rains, 

it is like an outdoor shower, 

and it reminds me of Hawaii.

No date, 1985