AFTER THE QUAKE

AFTER THE QUAKE


Galloping off after sunsets
like the errant earth
seeking a friend to play with,
I shiver & shake.
wanting to know if its true or false
this quaking inside—
Now we are immobile like the earth.
It takes the shifting of tectonic plates
to move us out of old patterns.
Destruction before growth
becomes evident
after the fact.



1/20/94 Santa Rosa

ON WRITING

True, in reclaiming the poetic word

we need to look no farther

than our own gaping maws.

The jaguar lost his spots in the darkness of sleep,

killer whales danced with the tuxedo of death,

and penguins, first cousins to nuns

and the stripes of the zebra,

imprisoned in the crosswalks of disorderly conduct.

Beneath my pen, small dark blossoms

begin to bloom on the blank page.

1/20/94

NAMES OF POETRY MAGAZINES

I NEVER GOT AROUND TO:

IN: VOICE

RE: VISION

PARA; GRAPH

META:  4

NO THINKING ALOUD

OVERTURE: COLLAGE NOCTURNES

                                    from Elemental Portraits: Nocturnes for Two Pianos,

                                    composed by Kirk Whipple

The beginning and the end of night—

from sunset to sunrise—

is a concentration of songlines to whet the palate:

jazz notes defining the quality of the forest,

a velvet refugee dressed in marimba patterns,

escaped blue notes outside the key.

Not technical études, but the theater

of neon rain in concentric ripples.

Where does night's vagary begin and end?

We seek the piano score for modern landscapes,

not a dreamy ideal of romantic music.

As if out of oscuridad, a sacred text

finds the first phrases of the moon.

The vibration of human existence resonates

in the music walking us out of ourselves,

the thighbones reminding us

of the steps taken: syllables of the air.

The melody lingers deep inside

long after the overture of the dream ends.

The nocturnal eye of the nightingale

waits for further instructions

from the coda:

                        an endless stranger

                        inside the depths of night.

THE SUN DREAMS IN THICK ROPES

THE SUN DREAMS IN THICK ROPES

In the false warmth of mid-winter

the firebox hisses & snaps—wet bay logs singing

to the ever-present odor of woodsmoke and soot-covered walls.

Last rainstorm the roof leaked,

the ceiling lamp became a bowl of blue light

beautiful as the sky, but colder

like the jewels I found in sleep.

I want to open the front door,

last night’s dream unleashed the lions,

the door won’t close.

With her back to the stove, she sits, reading the paper,

her white hair in random waves.

We have no words for the solitude of morning

or the repetitive spoon against the coffee mug.

The sink purps, an isolated drop of water catches

the room reflected upside-down.

I am groveling on the floor—

acute angles of wall and ceiling never squared.

I think of my mother off in the city;

how I love her so much it hurts

it takes me longer to recognize

my grandmother’s love,

the endurance of woodsmoke,

and childhood to carry me

through this morning

to where the unnamed father

is also a part of the equation of loss.

It takes me 40 years to recognize

that in the layering of years,

unbidden tears need an outlet

like water seeking its own level.

Precious water lost

during the drought years can never be replaced.

Ordinary loss prepares us for what is ordinary.

What sustains us is memory, something more profound

than the weight of time to hold us down,

the repetition of days carries us

into the uncertain present.

The regret, remorse—hard edges of words

cut us to the quick like a stubbed toe,

the pain made larger than life

because of the incipient cold

holding us back this winter morning.

1/16/94   Bishop Ranch, Healdsburg

I think these were from a CPITS AC retreat not Elderhostel

IS IT TRUE OR FALSE

IS IT TRUE OR FALSE

I believed stories that the world was flat,

that it ended at the fence line, 

though I could see beyond it.

It is clearly an illusion, something to do with faith

and the shifting boundaries of the adult world.

She forgot yesterday’s milk

and it expanded, little paper lids perched caps

on the frozen necks of the bottles.

I only needed some sugar and to beat the cats to the cream.

The milkbox made a perfect stool to observe the known world,

the western hills ringed in fog—

milk separating the mystery from the field.

It’s true that dragons lived beyond the known world.

That the snake across the road was as big as a tree limb.

That the pale ghosts of fallen trees in the arroyo

were seen to move at dusk from the corners of the eye.

That no one believed in my ghosts who writhed at dusk;

I speculated they were bodies asleep in the leaf mold—

True or false: fiery centipedes glowed like phosphor on rotten logs,

and stung me in my sleep. That I really was an abandoned child.

Once ants really ran up my pants and I left them, screaming.

Once I thought gopher mounds were powdered chocolate,

my mother’s glass tubes of oil paints in the closet, vanilla ice cream.

I was afraid of the veins in chicken legs at Sunday dinners.

Is it true I didn’t understand the meaning of loss or beauty

and otherwise abstract notions until after the fact?

Maybe I dropped out of kindergarten because of the snake.

The chain across the road kept out the known world.

Was it true that living beyond the county-maintained road

meant we were invisible, untouchable in our poverty?

I remember the wealth of red earth and bay trees against summer sky.

Any car coming this far meant visitors, a break in routine,

A car weaving its way up the valley might be my mother.

Or another false alarm. The word “father” was a vacancy with no name.

Is it true or false that the shrapnel of memory is invisible or sharp

as the unspoken words that continue to survive us?

Or that in the darkness beneath my bed they waited

all these years to grab my ankles after all?

1/16/94  Bishop’s Ranch, Healdsburg 

I think this was from an Elderhostel class I taught there

AT THE READY

AT THE READY

                                    —for William Stafford, (     - 1993)

Poetry will always be a wild animal. . .

that won’t yield to ordinary learning.

I tell students to let their minds lean

forward and fill in the missing words

to reclaim the self, the poetic soul

lost in Dante’s inferno.

Descend into writing to reclaim the poetic word.

We need no longer discern

between the dreaming and the waking.

Words will unveil the self to the self.

Reality bends itself toward sleep

to emerge as the wingtips of doved hands.

If we are lazy we will never find the way—

The muse only comes to those

who are holding the pen at the ready

for small dark blossoms to bloom on the page.

1/14/94             Bodega Bay