An Imagined Life Worth Living, poems & photo published in Medusa's Kitchen

An Imagined Life Worth Living

• SUMMER ON BARRANCA CREEK, WEST MARIN

• HAND TOOLS

• MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

• DUN I, IONA

• 13th WAVE

• TO MY POETRY STUDENTS

______________________

Our thanks to Maureen Hurley for today's poetry! Mo will be reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center this coming Monday, June 18, with Chris Olander. Scroll down on the blue board at the right of this column and click on the link to hear Mo read to her poetry students, and while you're there, click on the photo for more about Rattlechapper Chris.

Poet & artist, Maureen Hurley has won many grants, awards and fellowships including 8 California Arts Council grants and two KQED SPARK artist grants; she holds a MA in Creative Writing, but owes a thesis on her MFA at SFSU. As an artist in residence, she teaches Bay Area kids poetry & art through California Poets in the Schools and Young Audiences. She grew up in the wilds of West Marin and currently lives in Oakland near Lake Merritt. 

DUN I, IONA

DUN I, IONA
(after a translation from the Ohlone)

I dreamed you were a sliver
of light glinting on the curve of the sea
On the machair, the rabbits
cleansed their scalloped sand porches
while amid the lambs, the hares stood sentinel
I dreamed of you dreaming me
on the granite dome of Dun I,
at the center of the island
between a rowan and an oak
in a crevice at the well of age,
the falcon's eye, a distant sun
dancing on the edge of the world.

2/5/12

published in A MOUSE THE COLOR OF MOUSE ©2012
Poetry Inside Out, Center for the Art of Translation
Medusa's Kitchen, 2012

2 Baja photos published in Medusa's Kitchen

St. Elmo's Fire In Our Fingertips

Sunset, El Dorado del Mar, San Felipe, BC, Mexico

3 photos published in Medusa's Kitchen for Burns' Day

Happy Feels Like A Poem

Robert Burns' desk

Robert Burns' house in Dumfries, Galloway

Highland cow, Argyle, Scotland

2 photos published in Medusa's Kitchen

Touching A Sore Place

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

My grandmother’s hands
were torn and speckled with pigment
fair northern flesh burned by the fierce California sun.
A rebellious knotted vein rose up like a stone.
Souvenir from a strand of barbed wire
strung to keep the deer out of the garden.

Her freckles were an archiplelago of islands
adrift on a moon-milk sea.
They were Brendan voyagers in curraghs
headed for the New World
with a warrior phalanx of shields
raised up against a common enemy, the sun.
But they failed to protect her children,
when the melanoma set sail for that country
from which nothing ever returns.

I remember her wide spatulate fingers
that rubbed floursack sheets against the washboard
that mended jeans, made dresses for first day of school
and how I was ashamed they were not store-bought.
I remember the way she weeded the gardens,
dug up the praties, stacked wood for coming winter.

From her, I learned the survival of hands.
No caresses were needed because her love
was as fierce as the sun that burned her skin
as she labored in the garden or at the clothesline
she kept us safe, and provided when no one else would.
As she knelt to pray in the Sunday pew,
the sun shone on that knotted vein
and it was so beautiful—the scarring and freckles,
a skin painting of faith and tenderness.

8/28/10 rev. 12/12/10
Medusa's Kitchen, 2012
From Ellery Akers' workshop, Petaluma, CA, 

Poem and photos published in Medusa's Kitchen

Repent Nothing

• I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

HAND TOOLS

HAND TOOLS

There was an old pruning saw
I favored that folded in two
with a wingnut hinge
curved handle and blade
two crescent moons
that hung from a rusty nail
on the wall of the back porch
of my grandmother's house.

The saw curved like a comma
and I could pull down hard
on it with my 12-year-old arms
and cut the slender branches
that threatened to pull me
from the back of my horse.

No one else to do it for me
I made do as best I could.
Like the time the Toby's Feedstore
driver delivered a ton of hay but
dumped it at the bottom of the hill
because he couldn't be bothered stacking it
assuming there was a man about the house
to take care of such ordinary things.

I was faced with hefting hay bales
a tenth of a mile up to the old barn
and the sky spitting, rain was coming.
No matter that it took me most of the summer
babysitting to earn enough money
to buy that ton of shining oat hay
for my old glue factory rescue horse.

I wailed, wiped my nose on my sleeve,
jabbed rusty hayhooks into a bale
and frogmarched it to the barn.
Then another, and another.
It was hard work for a child.
It was the only way I knew how
and I was never going to make it
before the rains came.

My grandmother took pity on me
and together we heaved the bales
into the old wheelbarrow but the path was muddy
so we strung together a series of planks
and wheeled hay up that hill all afternoon.

A passing neighbor saw our plight
an old woman and a slender child
bent over a rusted wheelbarrow
grunting and pushing hay to the barn.
In no time, he hefted the bales up,
safely stacked under the eaves.

Then the rain began to pour in earnest.
We were thankful but I felt betrayed
by my own frailty and inability to manage
such a Sisyphean task. I was grateful
that the rain hid my raging tears.
The old horse, sensing my distress,
sidled over and rubbed her muzzle
across my aching arms, her breath,
small comfort on my cold, wet skin.

10/19/10
Medusa's Kitchen, 2012

I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

I was born within sight of the ocean
and a nervousness dances
when I stray from the coastal hills of my birth.
The slopes of Mt. Barnabe sheltered me.
The long arm of the ridge wrapped itself
around our house holding us in from the world.

Afternoons I'd ride the crest of the ridge
testing the odor of pine and bay.
Sweet lethe, the crickets sizzled
in the rattlesnake grass
shaking a soft rhythm in the breeze.

9//10/10
Published at Medusa's Kitchen, Dec 7, 2010

4 poems published in Medusa's Kitchen

4 poems published in Medusa's Kitchen

SUMMER ON BARRANCA CREEK, WEST MARIN

• ALKALI DUST OVER DEATH VALLEY

• ANSEL ADAMS' STUDIO

• A FIFTH OF BEETTHOVEN

13th WAVE

13th WAVE

I was a child at Venice Beach,
floating in the calm sea beyond the surf,
when out of nowhere, rogue waves rose up
like translucent jade knives, formed crests
against the throat of the deep summer sky.

Out of my depth, I swam to greet them.
That was the drill if an Outsider appeared—
Swim to meet the wave before it broke you.
Dive through the crest to avoid its force.
Swim and dive, swim and dive. Deflect the blow.

Rise and fall, rise and fall. Far from land,
I watched the blond shore grow ever distant.
The waves played me—like the father I never had—
tossing me up to the roof of the sky. In terror,
I waited for the right wave to bring me in.

But I grew numb, the sea sapped my strength,
I was too far from shore for lifeguards to see.
When would my crazy mother—sleeping it off—
stonedeaf to my brother's wails, realize I was gone?
I was a child alone in a vast sea. Breathe. Breathe.

Out of nowhere I heard my grandmother's voice:
"Always count the waves," she said. "Find the set."
9, 11, 12—I counted, but couldn't find the pattern.
Then, on the horizon of a wave, the fin of a dolfin.
A break in the set. He looked me in the eye. "Now!"

We caught the 13th wave toward the safety of shore.
I lay facedown in the sand, too tired to be amazed,
or say "Bye." Who'd believe a child's tale, anyway?
I said nothing about the waves and the sea that day.
It was my secret—a matter of survival, at best.


8/1/2009

Poem published in Memories of Southern California: Poetic Recollections, Four Feathers Press, Don Campbell, Editor, 2022

Medusa's Kitchen, 2012

TO MY POETRY STUDENTS

TO MY POETRY STUDENTS

—The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Do not be offended if I don't remember your names.

My children are as varied as the voices of the wind.
Do not assume that because I don't call you by name,
that I do not know you. For I remember all of you,
the poems you write & all your faces shining
with the first faltering words of hope.
Do not rage against the wind or lack of memory
as if the sun had risen prematurely at daybreak
painted with rosy yearning, only to find the clouds

had forgotten how to properly mourn the tragedies 

of a world drowning in the vagaries of the heart.
For once I stood alone with the voices of the wind,
my own song hanging at the end of its chord,
like Munch's silent scream echoing off the canvas,
a nocturne of loneliness, an etude seeking rebirth
before I called it poetry, before it called for me.

Sleep returns lost memory in minute increments
of time swaddled in the supplication of blue solace
unburdened by prayer or the length of the road
set adrift in the traceless grasses' slow current.
To love words requires only the longevity of a mind
that is part redwood, & part bristlecone pine
& a threshold  for a mouth that is part estuary,
& part river to address the worded islands of the world.
Remember to write of what is visible and seen
pay homage to the slender names rooted in oak,
lichen & moss, reed & bracken fern, lupine wolf  & moon.
Treat your poems like long lost kith and kin.
Someday when you can forgive their waywardness
they will be Diogenes' lanterns on dark, restless nights.

4/22/09

Medusa's Kitchen, 2012

ALKALI DUST OVER DEATH VALLEY

Yesterday we watched dustdevils
whipping up from the alkali flats
and deserts of Badwater and Armagosso Valley
dissipate like a maya veil toward the east,

over the mountains of Las Vegas.

The dust turned the deep cerulean sky
into a pale shadow of its former self.

We gritted silica dust between our teeth,

tasted ancient salt on our lips

and though our eyes blurred and burned,

the sunset was a spectacular flash of fire.

The next day, the poet William Pitt Root

wrote from a neighboring state

how the dust blew in from the west 

dimming even the sun.

I thought of Dorthea Lang's photos

and the Saharan dust cloud visible from space. 

The sharqui and the shumali sandstorms of Iraq.

The lack of rain and snowmelt. The names of wind.

In this way, I realized how everything, 

even distance and time 

is right on our back doorstep.

4/18/09 

Medusa's Kitchen, 2010

SUMMER ON BARRANCA CREEK, WEST MARIN

after Jack Gilbert's Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina

There was no hot water at my grandmother's

country home in the wilds of West Marin

though it was the only home we ever had.

After my grandfather died, we had only each other.

The neighbors were absentee city folk.

We were alone in our bee-loud glade on the hill.

Come Saturday night bath time, she'd fill 

the big oval copper pan from the indoor tap,

gravity fed from the artesian spring he'd hand-dug,

and she'd lift and slide the coalscut onto the hob, 

its charred wooden handles curled like the fists

of an anxious child awaiting punishment or delight.

I'd run my hand along the green enameled ankles

and ornate curved legs of the kerosene stove

as I lay half under the glass gallon jug that gurgled 

and spluttered, glugged and belched like a cozy beast. 

I loved watching twin blue flames lick and rasp 

the copper, combusting into fiery dragon's blood.

I anticipated the momentary slide into warmth

where she'd scrub a week's worth of grit

and hard play from my skin, never imagining

that her loneliness would bathe my psyche 

until I emerged from the baptism of bath to live 

her dream of an imagined life worth living.

4/15/2009

Medusa's Kitchen, 2012, 2010

ANSEL ADAMS' STUDIO

This morning I looked at Colin Wills photograph of Tenaya's hoary white head in the distance, and yes, the glacial polish enhances it. Blows it out while the foreground verges on inky midnight.

Such extremes of black and white were Ansel Adams' trademark. The f/64 club, shoot with lens wide open. See what you can see.

I knew those mountains well in my youth. When I was young, my aunt and grannie rented a tent cabin at Camp Curry. My life was forever changed. I was a child born with wanderlust. In high school, every chance I got, I traveled across the state to Yosemite. Wild coming-of-age times, camping in the Big Meadow—a be-in, and the feds busting everyone.

I remember stopping by Ansel Adams photography studio in the valley. I was too afraid to speak, too afraid to take a photo of him, so I was content to watch him instead. He was an island of silence amidst his gaggle of photography students—all male I might add.

Little did I know, that in one half-life later, I'd spend time with Ansel's cousin. At a family gathering, I met the ex-wife Alice who didn't want to talk about Ansel. At all. He had that kind of effect on women. So did John, I might add. It was all in the eyes.

J. Malcolm Greany photo ca. 1950  Wiki commons

ANSEL ADAMS' STUDIO
          To photograph truthfully and effectively 
          is to see beneath the surfaces. —Ansel Adams

Summer afternoons, he'd step out
of the darkroom for a quick breath.
As he leaned against the doorjam,
he'd shove the bifocals up his forehead,
cup his hands, light a cigarette.

As he bent his head to the flame,
small twin suns reflected
on that Half Dome of his pate.

He gazed into the distance
towards Tenaya and Cloud's Rest,
drew the smoke in deep,
his depth of field unfocused,
with lens open wide.

Then he finished his smoke
flicked it into the bin, shoved his glasses
up the bent ridge of his nose
and he stepped back
into the shuttered darkness
to face Tenaya in the negative light.

For a moment, water rippled in the pool
of memory, then closed in over that day
and sank to the depths like a stone.

4/11/2009

Medusa's Kitchen, 2010
Prompt: object, a la WCW Red Wheelbarrow

A FIFTH OF BEETTHOVEN

A FIFTH OF BEETTHOVEN

Yesterday I told my students a story
about Gustavo's crazy cockatiel,
how Kirk the musicman tried to teach it
the opening to Beethoven's Fifth
& how it couldn't get that last chord right,
no matter how much they both practiced,
how the note always fell flat, but the bird

would say entonces, or coño, and include
all the tape recorder clicks & whirrs.

Every time I went: DA-DA DAA Dum,
the class bird catcalled and wolf whistled,
dirty danced on his perch, bopped his head,

puffed out his orange cheek patches,
and crested like a Mohican. I was 

explaining how some words fall flat,

the poet's job to seek the music of words,

was a matter of practice, like doing scales.

Unfortunately, the bird got so worked up
he catcalled the entire poetry hour.

I was hoping he'd just take the Fifth
(or maybe down a fifth) and shut up
before I threatened to squeeze
his sorry yellow ass into a tequila sunrise.

4/4/2009

Medusa's Kitchen, 2010

animal poem

(Later I found out his name was Mo.

Mo the cockatiel, we were twinned names.)