Home Language, Another Gopher Rescue

While my neighbor Richard played Mozart on the piano, a tiny gopher dragged himself across the piano strings, adding an Aeolian touch. The cat had re-caught its prey, and let it loose in the house. Surprise guest appearance. A musical one, at that. After getting over the shock, we fished it out of the piano. A chorus of eager cats resounded an unfinished sonata.

Instead of letting nature take its course, I retrieved the bedraggled, broken gopher and took it home. Sensing refuge, the gophers nestled deep in my hand, and I made it a home in the birthday gift Richard gave me. It's wonderful to receive presents in June even though my birthday was in November. The gift of fishing tackle box for my calligraphy pens, became an apartment for the baby gopher.

On the second day of captivity, he began to eat. He was enough of a baby. that solid food gave him pause. So, I fed him milk, the language all mammals understand. Seeing him his crippled state, the way he dragged his hind end, I wondered if nature should have just taken its course.

I seem to attract wounded baby animals who no longer can go back home, nor can they fully join the world of humans. This is my second gopher rescue for in six months.

In November, a gopher, the color of champagne, was lost above ground, scurrying in the oak leaves after dark. I mistook him for a wild hamster because of his odd coloration. He lived in a glass salad bowl. I drew him from several angles, and fed him grapes.

Biting the bullet, I couldn't release him. He wasn't taming up. What was I going to do with a rare leukistic gopher? I called the animal sanctuary. (One of there servals had camped out in the garbage, so we were on first-name basis). They were happy to take him. I imagine he lived out his days in the lap of luxury at the preserve.

But this one was an ordinary gopher. Besides, two gophers in six months was a little suspicious.

By Thursday, the injured golfer clearly understood the bond of milk and allowed me to stroke him without flinching, the way a mother strokes her young. The way we put pet animals is the equivalent of mammal mothers bathing their young—going back to a universal language.

As I write, he sleeps in the warm hollow of my left hand. Sated from his meal. His tail sticking out the back. He's so gentle. I am amazed how quickly he has tamed up.

But then I realize gophers have no desire to challenge. They spend the course of their lives pushing dirt around and nibbling on routes, unaware of the havoc they wreak on our gardens above.

Gentle creatures with tiny earlets—not like a hamster's, and mouse-like fur, more like burrowing hamsters. They readily respond to affection like any other rodent.

This state we call domesticity, is the language of gentleness asleep in my hand. He dreams and grinds his teeth. This tiny trust of sleep. This country cousin of the hamster cleans his dreaming in his home language, the language of roots.

6/21/1983? It could be July 17, poems are out of sequence. for June
cleaned up a bit 9/2016
He must've died. I didn't write about what happened to him.

MUSIC TO WATER THE GARDEN

MUSIC TO WATER THE GARDEN

Clawing clay notes from the piano,
spreading earth tones from the keys,
a cacophony resounds
in the discordant rhythms
like flocks of blackbirds, off time.

Notes played off each other
too close for comfort,
discordant rubble resounds
in the inner ear,
close to the home of thought.

In the waterfalls of the ear,
you push the notes higher
until they yield their last drop.

6/21/1983
added9/2016

THE DANCER, v 1 & 2

THE DANCER

On the bare wood floor

of the demolished building

in the center of town,

she lifted both arms skyward with hands,

fragile birds, the pulse of her wrist,

on either side, she kept a slow rhythm

to the open air as she turned,

in a lengthy rhythm towards the street,

where an invisible audience

began to hear the music as she danced.

As if each note took on shape and coloration,

there was a sculptural effect to her movements.

The invisible audience in the street

slowly became visible as she danced,

bathed in the soft purplish tones of Aflat.

6/21/1983

added 9/2016

another version

The dancer sits with her legs splayed
on the wooden dance floor.
She bends down head to knee
and back to sitting position
with arms outstretched,
surveying herself in the mirror,
only to see her reflection
slide off the wall.

9/1/1983

ON NATIVE LANGUAGES text FIND hard copy

ON NATIVE LANGUAGES
       No one is ever an expert
       on evening air...

                —C.B. Davis

In the country we speak native languages.       

The languages the birds speak               

are different than the languages of air.

Have you heard the red language of trees in Nova Scotia        

where the tide listens to the wind

blow each day in the Bay of Fundy

Bluejays speak in synchopated rhythm

like sultry evenings in New Orleans            

where a solo clarinet breathes

another kind of speech.

What is the language of moonlight on trees

or of a wounded animal crawling from the piano

after listening three days to Mozart's sonatas.

Who is listening to the language of cells-

reproducing, mutating and dying at will

taking the future brainsong with them?

Je te aime  un petit chat       langue d' Oc

cat’s tongues. The language of yes.

The blue resonance of flowers

keeps careful time with the sky.

When I was a child, each evening I sang:

Here kitty kitties, here kit-kits, here kitty-wits.

The cats knew their song.

The native language of cats,  a memory

following you at dawn

    through the orchard.

The translucent ear looking like a shell 

in need of a tongue.

A deluge of words singing

waiting for delivery

A stirrup-cup of sound:       

White noise draped cat-like

over an armchair.

Have you heard the language of hibiscus  

Plumeria behind the ear proclaiming love:

   follow me.

Or the tilted spiraling language                 

of cantilevered hawk wings                    

leaving small resting places in the air    

for the soft notes of feathers to resound.

Who is listening to the heavy-lidded language of eyes?      

The sky language of a woman 

sleeping alone, dreaming     
whole bars of music
and understanding what the source is.   

On a continual journey with no destination
the air speaks the only native language
the singing language of a single heart beating
of clouds, of thunder, tornadoes
the language of air calling you a song.

Birds of the air are closer to the source.
Air is the only true language.
perhaps the scimtar winged swallows
in their sanskrit flight
beating a cadence across the sky
are the only true experts on evening air.

date? guessing 83?

INTELLECTUAL TITILLATION

intellectual titillation 

   —to Patty Trucksaw and other writers

Stop your

Mind

We

Want

To get

Off.

Father's Day 

6/19/1983

CPITS WORKSHOP POEMS, CAMP CAZADERO, 1983

Ideas from Lou Welch, Jack Grapes workshop

Step out onto the planet

Draw a circle hundred feet round

Inside the circle there are 300 things
no one has ever seen before

And maybe no one even knows about

How many can you write about?

Ever since I lived in the woods
I've had a passion for Mozart

Didn't you know he composed in the woods?

Grass collectively bends toward light

Crow feather sheen on labs room

Collision of relief on wood

Circular prisms of sunlight
parallel inversion

on delineated shadows of leaves on earth

Spoor tracks of trucks

Chicken wire roof, a net to catch sunlight
from falling too hard against the earth.

Wrinkled pachyderm skin
the arch of a limbo

Woodpecker delineations

Shadows of trees keeping them in check.

The leaves maiden journey through the air,
branch tips circling up to light,
breaking away from gravity.

Gentle blur of aqueous tale,
synchronization of grass and wind.
A jungle for thought.

Pattern of blowing desert sand
frozen within the plywood.

All those pillars of sand
locked within an oak,
frozen dreamtime in the Sahara.

LEW WELCH VARIATIONS, 1

Crack of wood elongated grain
shadow of paint
dark red resting on forest grass
curdled cream skies
white clouds floating on wood

Mozart asleep in the woods

"Ever since I lived in the woods,
I've had a passion for Mozart"
                      —Mary Norbert Korte

Grass collectively bends toward sunlight,
a grace note of on delineated shadows
this parallax conversion.

Circular presence of sunlight,
a repetition of melody weaving patterns,
beliefs maiden voyage through air.

Branch tips circling up to light,
breaking away from gravity,
a bird measuring these truths.
Woodpecker delineations
shadows of leaves keeping them in check
the trees asleep
Mozart in the woods

a wire backstop,
a net to catch sunlight
to keep its notes in check

From falling too hard against the earth.

Syncopation of grass and wind,
all the patterns of the Sahara
locked inside of a note.

Frozen time, delineated,
a jungle for thought

Mozart composed this wood.

I dreamed last night the evening sky
came up on the contact sheet
in the developing studio

All my dreams began as prints
white on black and the image
emerging from under the liquid plates,
coming up in the bath
like trees shedding snow.

611/11/1983

Murder by Faberge

To catch a chicken thief, 

you need to live in the hen house.

The clown runs through the forest, 

a knife in the back, 

as he scales the bridge. 

The clown falls into the swirling waters, 

where he floats toe up 

over the rapids and pays with his life. 

The knife throwers,

the twins Mishka and Grishka 

turn toward the arena.

The clowns eyes were wet 

as a Berlin winter.

Date may be wrong on these, it could be 6/25/1983

intellectual titillation 

   —to Patty Trucksaw and other writers

Stop your

Mind

We

Want

To get

Off.

Father's Day 

6/19/1983

AT THE GENERAL MEETING OF POETS

Bill Bradd eats oranges and Oreos for breakfast
while Cindy Frank holds up a half moon of watermelon.
We are poets trying to fit into the guidelines.
Jack Grapes asks if all funding were eliminated
what would happen to us? What would survive us?
Mary Körte has the floor and presents laurels to John Simon.
Someone shouts think duck. Duck?
devorah major says, I’m not going to think duck.
I’m thinking 13 ducks. I have no idea what she means.
We talk about suicide, getting stuck in the old ways,
and what the children are writing. Why we do this.
Holocaust, abuse. Don’t carry the burden so far.
This is the renewal thing, the being with each other thing.
Don’t hurt people with guns. Do it with words.
The reality is that we are all poets.

CPITS meeting, Camp Cazadero, 1983? 84?

ON RAISING PERCHERONS IN THE COUNTRY

ON RAISING PERCHERONS IN THE COUNTRY
I want to give it all up
& raise Percherons in the country —Zara Altair

Sometime, when you've just run
the razor along the skin,
and the parted flesh reveals
2,000 pounds of quivering dappled sorrow
the color of marble—
remember there's no chalk-dust Pieta here—
no virgin lap to keep you from your sins ­
but a quivering wall of refuge,
a place to lean your heart against
when you're tired of standing alone.

No calliope Pegasus of painted lead
or molded saddle to tease and tickle the thigh,
but a real horse will stand before you
in the country waiting for your hand.
At all times, keep a circus canopy
of stars above your head
and when you're ready to touch that solid flesh,

climb aboard that broad back, a refuge. ­
When the beginning note sounds,
enter the arena at a hand gallop. ­
Keep the audience to your left,
on your true side—
then your feet won't slip so easily
from that rosined rump
and you'll become an airborne dancer
riding on the wind.

6/16/1983
rev. 1984
Petaluma

SATURN WITHOUT RINGS

SATURN WITHOUT RINGS

Dadelus pounds out corpses on the typewriter,

Molly's lovely laugh disturbs the brooding irises

as if penitence weren't enough. In the moonlight

Molly dreams of sweet young cocks in a tongue

without words. No handwriting on the wall,

but a Latinate structure of attained perspective,

prosaic forsakening, and a second reckoning pours out

demanding the color purple for its sins.

Bloomsday

Do not forsake them. They know not what they do.

Runaway nightmares: Przwalski's horses

breeding in the moonlight of the mind.

Incest bubbles up from the cesspools

of repressed obsessed prosidy.

Horsemen of the Apocalypse pass by.

Nothing is sweeter than the birds of Mongolia singing.

Not even all the birds of the world.

Beowulf wasn't a man, bu a torturer of the blind.

Better he should have kept civilization in a dream,

finished his pint with Joyce in the mead hall

of Herorot, and just let Grendel get on with it

instead of becoming the standard-bearer of light into the forest.

Grendel asleep in the mere, awaits the second coming,

the Jericho Hounds are howling

a Kaddish of the mind, a figure eight of thought,

a fable in 128 pages or less, at the moon.

Another Anglo-Saxon bites the dust.

The archer awakens, shaking his mighty arrow.

Eros. Me gentl cock percheth in my lady's chambre. . .

Mi choufleur mi amour, are you full? A fool?

Put your head back on my arm

and dream a while longer.

The noble head is rising at cockcrow.

A ghost of fathers. Perchance you dream?

Love of horses and gambling comes

from eating an excess of Chinese food late at night

in curtained booths on Grant St., alone.

Remedy: Eat more fortune cookies. Alone.

The logical universe is a bottle with a message

folded inside the wings of dead angels.

Touch them. It is only marble dust from the moon

rose geraniums. A death in the country. Domo Arigato.

Dijobo, my friend. Is everything all right?

Yes, dijobo. We have fallen.

Suchness of camphor flames leaves no ash;

we worship the theosophy of light

while the wings of swarming buddhas

beat at the mothlight of your face.

Touch me there, too.

Les varieties. . . les girls.

From listening comes wisdom;

from speaking comes repentance.

Repent. And so shall ye reap. Weep.

His normal reaction of saying oh this is so great,

you don't miss me, oh, this is great, and that laugh. . .

Martin L. had a dream but that blinding light

flashed, leaving no color in the shell-shocked sky,

returned again and again in the form of treaties to haunt us.

When they dropped the bomb, people coupled in the streets.

It was the most sublime thing left to do.

What do they dream of in Kyoto, a chosen city,

Hiroshima, a fallen city, and Los Alamos, a nameless city?

Men believed the radiation was imprisoned in molten glass.

We know too much to be truly innocent.

History only repeats itself in books.

Her story collated and bound in slim unopened volumes

covered in kangaroo pouch hide, like a whiff of Ayer's Rock

rising out of the vast plain 2 billion years for something

other than the sun, the moon, the stars

or Saturn to rise out of that desert.

We all push time around by its broom handle.

You ask if I dream. Yes. I still dream.

I ask you, the father of the bomb,

did you dream of lovely comforting colors

when the light flashed in the desert,

and the blind could see light for one pulsing instant

against the darkened retina?

Surely, the Messiah has come in the form of lupines

wolf-flowers blooming in the desert.

Thieves in the temple to rob the color of your eyes

out from under you as you sleep during fallout.

Anything for a dream, no one left to decode the glyphs.

Saturn is still spinning, winged.

Returning and woolgathering. Without rings.

Tintinnabulation. These bells. This language.

Rilke asleep in the brooding shadows.

Bloomsday, 1983

MURDER BY FABERGE

Murder by Faberge

To catch a chicken thief, 

you need to live in the hen house.

The clown runs through the forest, 

a knife in the back, 

as he scales the bridge. 

The clown falls into the swirling waters, 

where he floats toe up 

over the rapids and pays with his life. 

The knife throwers,

the twins Mishka and Grishka 

turn toward the arena.

The clowns eyes were wet 

as a Berlin winter.

6/11/1983

date may be wrong on these, could be 6/25

Ideas from Lou Welch, Jack Grapes workshop

CPITS WORKSHOP POEMS, CAMP CAZADERO, 1983

MOZART ASLEEP IN THE WOODS

Mozart asleep in the woods

"Ever since I lived in the woods,
I've had a passion for Mozart"
                      —Mary Norbert Korte

Grass collectively bends toward sunlight,
a grace note of on delineated shadows
this parallax conversion.

Circular presence of sunlight,
a repetition of melody weaving patterns,
beliefs maiden voyage through air.

Branch tips circling up to light,
breaking away from gravity,
a bird measuring these truths.
Woodpecker delineations
shadows of leaves keeping them in check
the trees asleep
Mozart in the woods

a wire backstop,
a net to catch sunlight
to keep its notes in check

From falling too hard against the earth.

Syncopation of grass and wind,
all the patterns of the Sahara
locked inside of a note.

Frozen time, delineated,
a jungle for thought

Mozart composed this wood.

I dreamed last night the evening sky
came up on the contact sheet
in the developing studio

All my dreams began as prints
white on black and the image
emerging from under the liquid plates,
coming up in the bath
like trees shedding snow.

6/11/1983
Date may be wrong on these, it could be 6/25/1983

Ideas from Lou Welch, Jack Grapes workshop

CPITS WORKSHOP POEMS, CAMP CAZADERO, 1983

LEW WELCH VARIATIONS

LEW WELCH VARIATIONS, 1

Crack of wood elongated grain
shadow of paint
dark red resting on forest grass
curdled cream skies
white clouds floating on wood

6/11/1983

Date may be wrong on these, it could be 6/25/1983

Ideas from Lou Welch, Jack Grapes workshop

CPITS WORKSHOP POEMS, CAMP CAZADERO, 1983

STEP ONTO THE PLANET

Step out onto the planet

Draw a circle hundred feet round

Inside the circle there are 300 things
no one has ever seen before

And maybe no one even knows about

How many can you write about?

Ever since I lived in the woods
I've had a passion for Mozart

Didn't you know he composed in the woods?

Grass collectively bends toward light

Crow feather sheen on labs room

Collision of relief on wood

Circular prisms of sunlight
parallel inversion

on delineated shadows of leaves on earth

Spoor tracks of trucks

Chicken wire roof, a net to catch sunlight
from falling too hard against the earth.

Wrinkled pachyderm skin
the arch of a limbo

Woodpecker delineations

Shadows of trees keeping them in check.

The leaves maiden journey through the air,
branch tips circling up to light,
breaking away from gravity.

Gentle blur of aqueous tale,
synchronization of grass and wind.
A jungle for thought.

Pattern of blowing desert sand
frozen within the plywood.

All those pillars of sand
locked within an oak,
frozen dreamtime in the Sahara.

6/11/1983

Date may be wrong on these, it could be 6/25/1983

Ideas from Lou Welch, Jack Grapes workshop

CPITS WORKSHOP POEMS, CAMP CAZADERO, 1983

EMINENT DOMAIN

EMINENT DOMAIN
—for Will Staple

At the 16-mile marker

the melody of surf leads us deeper

into the heart of the jungle

where we slide on ancient terraces,

and fruit flies rise up

from their mango prayers.

Barefoot, we re-emerge from the tangle

and follow the old Hawaiian trail.

On the cliff, a windmill places us in time.

In the surf a man shows his son

how to spear a fish.

They talk with their hands.

You offer a red flower for my hair.

The breakers confront the fish in you,

and the dorsal fin in me.

The ocean wipes all traces

of speech from our lips.

6/5/ 1983 Kulike, Maui ?

WS Merwin's place

8/90 rev.

1993 We Are Not Swans, Cecelia Woloch

FOUND POEM FOR KENTUCKY PENDERGRASS

—for Kentucky Pendergrass

Suicide is a bridge,
The bottle of wine, the ocean.
Age brings on a comic mask
of reverent death.

The first time I knew
I could kill someone
was when I had a baby.

My grandfather’s sword
is next to my bed
and I wear a purple heart
next to my heart.

I don’t believe in senility.
A friend will drive you to the ocean
and read you a treatise on agent orange,
how 9% will live.

He mopped blood off the floor
after he caught them together.
I took pictures of the house afterwards.

Is it more justifiable to kill someone
before you kill yourself?
The violence is so subtle.
You don’t even know it’s there.

6/7/83
Café Perfetti, Santa Rosa, found poem.

1983, 1984? He was convicted June, 1983
I suspect I was reading the Press Democrat at the time. So I’ll use that date. I was also working for the Paper, so the I who was taking photos was me.

Convicted double-killer Ernest "Kentucky" Pendergrass died in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013. He was 90. “Pendergrass was a big man about town and a widely liked one. So the tragic turn of events that he set into motion while full of booze on the night after Thanksgiving in 1981 struck the county like a temblor. Pendergrass had a shotgun in his pickup when he drove from Santa Rosa to the home on Thorn Road, southwest of Sebastopol, of the newly reunited Rick and Rosemary Edmonds, both 35.”

POEM FRAGMENTS TO MICHAEL LARRAINE

He said:

I am a writer astride Verlane's. white stallion 

and Lao Tsu's donkey and all paths lead to poetry.

My writing appeals to some, its surrealist elements,
Others respond to its Buddhist nature.
Some get off on the language.
And others are tickled by its erotic nature.

In my work I try to hold all the voices
The voices are part of the process 

no one wants to make you solely into it

Making love to you would be like 

both of us getting laid by the White Goddess.
We are both fish mongers
Catch of the day
Neptune coughs back up
Where poor shepherds 

offering the sacrificial lamb to the beast
Except the lambs blood is 1200 years old 

and he died for can't read it
Darkness essence 

we push across the page this writing

Cotati 6/7/1983


To Michael Larraine 

after Lindys poetry reading 

I've been told how my writing appeals to some 

because of its surrealist elements,
Others respond to its Buddhist nature. 

Some get off on its LANGUAGE form
And the rest are riveted by its erotic energy.

I tried to hold all these voices which emerge
It's easy to pantomime a singular voice
All those voices are a part of me 

and none want to go down 

as the sole survivors of poetry.

6/7/1983

EROTIC NITE, GARBO’S

I once introduced  Michael Larraine
as the only poet who can write
of the entire universe
experiencing an orgasm
in the space of a single line,
a.k.a. the writer of the Big Bang Theory.

1980?

I ride astride Verlain's white stallion 

my Harley eats up the miles 

and my men wander another path 

while Lao Tsu's donkey brings up all the rear.
All paths lead to poetry.

6/7/1983



You'll have to confuse 

the state my house is in 

I lead an excused life.

Please confuse the state 

my house is in 

I lead an excused life

Please confuse the state my life is in

I lead an excused existence

6/7/1983

Hawaii poem fragments

On the condition of my camera

you know it's bad news
when the camera repair man calls
and says well, to start with,
when I took the back off the camera
a spider jumped out.
Have you considered getting another?



Well, since you asked,
this dream is a semi sweet
chocolate covered 

macadamia nut in Waikiki.

Since you've asked again
Making love to you
would be like both of us getting laid
by the White Goddess
end comparing notes afterwards.

We're fish mongers throwing back the day's catch
And it's the same finny fish
Neptune keeps slapping back 

on the platter of sacrifice

We are both shepherds 

offering the same sacrificial lamb
to the goddess over and over again
Except the lamb no longer bleeds real blood.
The real blood is 1200 years old 

and has long since faded
into the darkened existence
we dutifully push across the page:
this writing




After making love to you
the footsteps of victory
chalking down
the carnivorous road of need and regret
would resound across the deaf mute page

6/7 1983



Calling Will in Maui
waking up until it's 130 here
so it will be 1030 there
when's the best hot fucking time
to call you I asked.

6/7 1983

She's dressed in red
making brownies after meditation



Hawaiian frog prince

Gary said quick, 

jump out of the truck.
You know what to do 

only you can save him
He's been waiting 

for your kiss all these years.




Washing off Haleakala dust 

Will hands me soap 

He said if you wash my back 

I'll wash yours. 

Gary yells, are you two 

still in the shower?

Question On laurels

Snyder said I thought old poets 

got to rest on their laurels 

and money just came in. 

You have to keep working 

as hard as you ever did. 

Harder. There are no laurels.

When I told Gary Snyder his poems about Cousin Jack spurred me into writing about the ordinary, he said I am honored and he bowed. I said I was a visual artist having come to poetry later in life. I discovered the joys in communicating verbally. He said he wished he was a visual artist, feeling the need to visually express himself. And there you have it. How green is the grass in the next pasture anyway?

Enlightenment 

late fall and mangoes 

for breakfast every day 

for two months 

Repeat on an as needed basis.

6/7/1983

added 9/2016

Drawings from Journal

Lindy’s Cafe reading, Maureen Hurley

GECKO LUCK

GECKO LUCK

In the islands, everybody believes 

that geckos bring good luck. 

Mokoli'i means lizard Island.

I am carrying damp eucalyptus wood
to the redwood hot tub up the hill. 

Two geckos slither down my arm 

another slides down my leg. 

I am covered with red mud 

and the TV camera is rolling.
I'm dreaming in geckos and it all
comes true. Mokoli'i everywhere.

Later, I'm at a party in Kula 

with Will, Jacques, and Gary. 

We are talking about Haleakalā,

the plight of the flightless geese,
and feral pigs eroding the island.
On a painting two geckos are dancing 

on a checkerboard. At home, 

a solitary gecko chucks at midnight. 

6/1983   6/1-6, 83 could be any of those dates

Maui Zendo

added 9.15.2016 edited slightly


TWO GARDENIAS

after hauling wood all morning
I sit in the hot tub, grateful for its warmth
two gardenias break the surface like heavenly farts. 

6/6/83?


LONG DISTANCE CALL

Calling My friend Zara on the Mainland
2600 miles away, I exclaim
your voice sounds like
it's coming from underwater

6/1/83?

EARLY MEMORY: STORM

EARLY MEMORY: STORM

The hillsides were open: deer crossed the meadows intermittently, like domesticated cattle. Under the cover of foggy days, they brazenly came down to the creek to drink. On sunny days they prudently waited for the cover of dusk. 

When it rained too much, water came spouting out from the gopher holes draining the forested gullies, and upper reaches of the hillside. Thinking it was quartz, once I found what seemed to be rendered fat in a gopher hole. White globules waxed my water withered fingers. 

My grey and blue pants that my grandmother had made from a remnant from the church bazaar, were heavy with rain, and hung low on my hips, the additional burden of chocolate mud on the cuffs. My tennies were slurching like a powerful thirst as I wandered up the path, turned into a small river, battling my way home.

Once inside, I dropped my clothes on the thick layer of newspaper that took up residency at the front door each winter. They fell like the hide of some beast too much in a hurry, like the gritty rhinoceros. 

Mad rush to the fire; this is the kind of wet-cold that doesn’t leave willingly. My grandmother clucked about catching cold, the dreaded bronchitis, and the tiny tubes everyone in the family inherited.   

Thick coating on my tongue, dark breath, and roaring ears. In the night I begin a cough that goes on and on for weeks; soon the doctor will give me orange flavored syrup. Years later, I will hate the taste of oranges. 

Tomorrow we will have to beg a ride to the doctor’s whose office is out in Point Reyes. A long winding ride through Taylor Park, where the redwoods cover the sky, and it is always dusk. I suffer from carsickness, but can’t tell the difference between illness and motion.

At the top of Olema hill, near a small curve in the road, we searched for the first glimpse of Tomales Bay. Onto the flats, past the old artichoke fields, I eagerly awaited the pasture where the donkey and goose lived with the wooden “Library Car” caboose. The goose was happily swimming in the volunteer lake at the low end of the pasture while the donkey’s ears dripped at 30° angles as he huddled next to the meager shelter of the chrome-green caboose. 

Green like the smell of the doctor’s office: alcohol and Pinesol. The odd couple lived out their days together, the caboose was eventually taken over by the blackberries and poison oak. I learned to overcome my aversion to orange juice but equated donkeys and geese and green cabooses with doctors. How can you express what is inexpressible?

Another early memory of Tomales fogged in, the steady drip of trees thrumming the ground. I licked rain from the thick potato chip edges of salal leaves, salt tang. At Heart’s Desire Beach, I kept looking for the heart, not understanding the concept of desire. That would come much later.

6/3/83?  CPITS writing