WILDCAT BEACH, BELTAINE 5/5/89

Wildcat Beach, Beltaine Silk & dye.

WILDCAT BEACH, BELTAINE

                                — for my students Nat & Erik

At Wildcat Beach I fill pockets with wax opals,

agates and moonstones—pieces of the fallen moon.

Five vultures wheel in a bright sky vibrating

against ruddy cliffs. The ocean eats the strand,

the night eats the sun. We lose track of time.

I point out equus, horsetail fern, ancestor of trees

when the dinosaurs were young. I despair:

so little time to teach the children about life cycles.

I yell at those who want to quit right in the middle of the road—

Five miles is forever. I feel like an ogre yelling at them.

Coddling won't do. No, that’s not it. I was never coddled.

So I tousle their heads, repack packs, clean skinned knees,

offer advice, feed them chocolate—these children I never had—

I am mother without being mother, father without having had one.

It's always a longer walk back, no matter what they say.

I am teacher. I am poet incanting words into true air.

We make a medicine wheel, divide into the four elements,

and writie poetry to the cardinal directions.

One crow commuting up the beach nods to me in flight.

On this side of the San Andreas Fault,

I come to understand the rest is illusion:

Those old generals who set the Gulf ablaze with oil

their dreams are cursed by flames of blue eels

writhing in shallow pools. Fire over water.

I dreamed Easter Island was a mathematical equation of the mind.

Two boys and I sit on the bluffs talking of neutron stars

and the desire for a simple life filled with ritual.

We watch a bonfire blaze on the opposite shore.

Nat says everything has a spirit—even that lupine bush.

They restore my faith, like the white deer who browse

beneath the stars. Recognizing an absence of ritual

in our lives, we seek something unbidden in the moonlight,

in the water and in the ancient eyes of fish.

5/5/89

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

Reina, a blind, dowager cat of 15,

who has learned to tell lies for more food

and has a paunch to prove her success,

ignores the catnip-stuffed mouse I bring her.

We can't tell her facts:

why it always rains outside each door

in the house at the same time, the dilemma

of eating tuna and the diminishing dolphin population,

or the effects of mercury poisoning.

Has it begun to manifest

its mad-hatterly ways in this idiot savant

well into second childhood?

Mornings, we find her upside down and drooling;

rubbing her whiskers and head ecstatically inside our shoes.

We make jokes about the narcotic effect of ripe shoes and laundry.

But when my new shoes are also

singled out for euphoric distinction,

I realize, slowly, how our conclusions are hampered

by our own anthropomorphic limitations.

It becomes clear, her need for scenting—

In cat terms, as we walk our daily rounds,

our shoes mark the outer boundaries of her territory.

Who'd have credited this blind old cat

with enough foresight to keep tabs on her realm—

She, who had us barking up the wrong tree all along?

10/15/1988  first draft june?
Berkeley

1995 CQ #22 California Quarterly
1991Poet Magazine, Fall issue
1990 Poetry USA
         Sparrow Grass
1989 Green Fuse
         A Night Full of Doves
         Outerbridge