Draining the swamp

Quinine, a drug with many, many adverse side effects, is used to kill parasites. Parasites. As in blood parasites from malaria-infected mosquitoes. Hence the popularity of gin and tonics in the tropics. Once malaria was thought to come from the bad night air. It took a while to make the connection to mosquitoes. To get rid of the mosquitoes, people drained the swamps. I don’t know how they discovered quinine helped check malaria. It’s awful stuff. One of the few good side effects of quinine is that it’s also an anti-inflammatory agent for people with autoimmune disease—like lupus. Flannery O’Connor had lupus—the wolf disease. Quinine is plain old deadly. It’s a trade-off. Coronavirus is a virus. A virus, not a bacteria. It’s neither a parasite, nor a protozoan, for that matter. The only parasite is the orange paramecium in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, the above swamp comparison does great disservice to the lowly paramecium. Draining the swamp begins in the Oval Office. That’s how we got into this mess. We didn’t drain the swamp on time and now there’s a malarial stench across the land. Not to mention the fact that, after the great Cheetolini fired all the scientists, he now considers himself to be an expert on the coronavirus, comparing himself to be on par with doctors, ignoring the maxim, First, do no harm. People are dying from quinine overdoses because he said to take it. Shades of Jim Jones. What Koolaid are they drinking? Swamp water by any other name. And now the parasite in the oval office has added Lysol and bleach cocktail cures to the presidential whackjob list. You can’t make this stuff up.

Endgame?

There is an inherent flaw in this sheltering-in-place. We buy time, flatten the curve, slow the spread of the virus—then what? We’re still vulnerable, unless we’ve got antibodies by contracting the disease & the virus doesn’t mutate into new strains. A vaccine takes time to develop. Interim endgame?

Yes, asking the hard question is always unpopular. Some people mis-took my statement to suggest that I’m questioning the concept of shelter in place, which I clearly am not. The word flaw is a bit of a red herring. A provocateur. And my Republican acquaintances are still in denial, telling me and no uncertain terms, challenging my critical thinking skills, because I dare to challenge them in their beliefs that Trump has done everything possible for us and is a good president. He dismantled the CDC infrastructure, FFS. Why don’t they get it?

DRIVING DOWN HICK’S VALLEY ROAD

DRIVING DOWN HICK’S VALLEY ROAD

Driving down the backroads
meadowfoam assaults my senses
and vernal pools flood the eye.

I slam on the brakes
& step into the honeyed air
I’m late, but the heart

still dreams anyway.
It’s the journey that matters
not the appointments.

4/4/20

Ten true conversations with famous people

Post ten true meetings where you’ve had meaningful face-to-face conversations with famous people, but one memory needs to be a lie.

1. I once took photos of Kenny Rogers at his request with his local friends—he was very kind to me and asked about my photography, poetry teaching, and then he comped me in for the show for my trouble. I was also actually paid for my work. I was surprised that I enjoyed the show so much.

A year ago today, my iPad was stolen

A year ago today, just hours later, while my friend was recovering from surgery with a stiff latte at Peet’s in San Rafael, my iPad was stolen. Facebook Memories just restored a lost bit of writing to me. A poem, DESPERATELY SEEKING LATTE. Not a great poem, not quite an April Fool’s joke. I was not expecting that. But this fool will suffer it gladly. While I was doing a good deed for a friend, someone took my lifeline. Thank god someone loaned me an old iPad so I was able to limp along until August when I replaced it. I am ever so grateful to Sam and his family for helping me to defray the replacement cost. I don’t use my flip phone as I hate phones. Besides, I have no reception deep in the hills of West Sonoma County and West Marin where I divide my time. Most people have smartphones, I have my iPad. My cyber link to the world, my lifeline during this time of social distancing. Who could’ve even imagined this scenario? And yet, here we are. As the song goes, If we ever get out of this world alive.

So much for SIP, apparently the rules don’t apply to cyclists, Covid journal

Yesterday’s bicyclists were incredibly arrogant riding side by side. I passed several yesterday on county backroads, and they literally refused to pull over. Don’t forget that they are not using the backroads to get to a job, or for business—but for a leisure activity, recreation, which is a luxury. Perhaps they too should be banned from using the roads during this time? Ditto that for the dense clot of motorcyclists parked by the CLOSED Nicasio reservoir taking freakin selfies. Clearly joyriding. 

I need to use those back roads in order to get to my care person, I am a care provider. And I, for one, am really tired of the indifference of bicyclists in general. Why do they feel so self-entitled? They drive in their BMWs, and Priuses to West Marin—they don’t even live here—and then they bicycle down the middle of the roads, making an assumption that they own the road. There are huge flashing road signs telling people to stay home, that the area is closed, and still the steady parade of bicyclists continue to ride, assuming the warning doesn’t refer to them. Our back roads are, in essence, blocked off, with huge flashing signs to stay away—the next step will be the CHP checking everyone’s ID if this continues. What infuriates me is that none of those bicyclists assume that this message is for them, they are not going to a job or running errands, in their tight little spandex outfits. There’s no place to put anything on their bikes, like groceries. 

Other than that, Sam and actually had a blast yesterday, we took the long way to Rohnert Park, down Chileno Valley Road, we saw the wild swans on Laguna de San Antonio, and all the cattle in the bright pastures even a highland coo. No bagpipes. It was utterly beautiful. Surreal times. I am grateful for the work I do have. 

Because I work in the schools as an independent contractor teaching poetry and visual arts, I have no work whatsoever. So I am hunkered down for the duration. As an independent contractor that means we have no unemployment, no health insurance, and the list goes on. All those coronavirus incentives do not include us gig workers. There are a lot of us. And I earn the bulk of my income during April and May. Lean times ahead.

Breaking protocol with Shelter in Place, shopping expedition, Covid journal

Yesterday I had to break protocol with SIP, and deal with shopping, gas, food, bank, supplies, etc. Bank of the West in Rohnert Park was closed, so I used the automated system—which I’m not fond of, but it was a piece of cake. I even instructed a fellow banking neo-Luddite how to use  it. The other banks were open, everyone was adhering to the 6-foot rule. My friend discovered the wait was painfully long at Wells Fargo, the line wrapped around the building. No accommodations were made for the disabled, or for seniors. Let alone disabled seniors. Shame! At least most folks were wearing masks and gloves. Hardly anybody was in Grocery Outlet. But unlike the women, who, like me, wore masks and gloves, made a concerted effort to maintain a 6-food distance between each other, with our shopping carts wedged between us—we engaged in shopping cart tarantellas, not easy to avoid each other in the aisles, but we managed. But oblivious unmasked young male dudes insisted on strutting down the middle of the aisle, taking up everybody’s personal space, leaving me to stick my head in the frozen food freezer to maintain social distance. So I looked like I was trying to bellyflop into the freezer. At least at the 99¢ Store, people were more aware. I need a cattle prod on an extension stick. Never did find TP, zinc lozenges,  hand sanitizer, 60% rubbing alcohol, bleach, vinegar, or sanitary wipes. But I got a lead on hand sanitizer. Griffo Distillery on Scott Street in Petaluma, across from Lagunitas Brewery, is giving away 6 oz. bottles of 70% vodka hand sanitizers to seniors, or selling them to the GP. I’ll try and get some Monday. Friends place standing orders for alcohol, hand sanitizer, bleach and TP. One asks for martini olives if I manage to score on the Griffo vodka. We are becoming a nation of fish. I need a turn signal bulb, and O’Reilly’s Automotive does web order and curbside delivery. One can only hope that Bob’s Red Mill cereals will be replenished soon. I’m down to my last serving of 7-grain cereal. None to be had at Andy’s or Lucky’s either. Bob posts that they’ve run out of grain at the mill. But are back in production. What motivates me to brave the world? When the tea, cereal and milk run out. Otherwise, I’ll make do with what I have. My diet is becoming increasingly erratic. Luckily I bought a mondo-pack of TP before all this madness began. I won’t mention all the idiot recreational Marin bicyclists out there who insisted that they owned the road and wouldn’t ride on the side—or even in the bike lane. Clearly all those flashing Stay Home signs are not meant for them. They are special. Assholes, that is.

Corona dream

Last night I dreamed a tightly curled succulent, the size of a baseball, opened up its knife-like leaves into a crown, a corona. It sprung into action when I approached, instilling both beauty and fear. It was tracking me, almost sentient. There was no escaping it. It followed me everywhere. I dreamed I was infected, and woke up in a sweat. And of course, I panicked. We once had a sepia-tone lithograph Arkle, a famous Irish racehorse on the living room wall, and I decided colorize it, to make it look more lifelike by lightly tracing around the outside of the horse with a red pencil, the kind teachers used to correct homework. The addition of red line really made the horse’s flared nostrils seem alive. You could almost hear him breathing. I also embellished a photo of my grandmother’s long-dead brother. She was not happy. See, in the old Irish tales, animals from the Otherworld always had red auras, red-ringed ears, and noses. They lived forever. Decades later, when I scanned the family photos, that embellished photo of my great uncle, was the sole survivor, and I had to remove the traces of my childhood art. Penance. Fortunately it was a sepia-tone, more forgiving to work with. Survivors say the color of their dreams changed—so vivid, that there were no boundaries between waking and dreaming. It was as if they had entered another realm. Lately, I’ve taken to coloring soft red lines around my dreams in order to keep them alive.

Disguise dream

Last night’s dreams led me to the past. I was cast in a role from the late 1800s. I searched my closet for appropriate clothing and decked myself out in layers of long dresses, a facsimile, for sure, but I had no appropriate shoes. Modern flats would give me away. It was important that I was incognito. My life depended on it. But pulling off the disguise was proving a difficult task as I had given away nearly all my clothing and shoes when I fled my ex-boyfriend’s house last year. I found some old Reeboks but they were mismated shoes, singles—one red, and one black. How on earth did that happen? I loved my red pair, and wore them to death until this century—but the black ones were from the 1970s. Egad. Time collapsing. I awoke, wondering how I would adapt. How I would be able to pull off the disguise. How I could fool the audience. Then I remembered the black paint. Forget about the Velcro straps. I could disguise that, easily enough. Problem solved. Then I remembered it was April Fool’s Day. What kind of joke was that? And who was pulling the strings?

MOTIVATIONAL ROOTS

A friend asks,What motivates you?
Wanting something good or fearing the bad?
Born at the edge of autumn, in late November,
the convening darkness motivates me,
diminishing light relentlessly spurs me on.
A slavedriver. Call it fear, call it death. Call it desire.
But, yes, that’s what motivates me.
Creativity is its progeny,
and gratitude is something earned.
Call it a state of grace.
That’s what survives us.

1/4/20

2020 April Poem-A-Day Challenge

Don’t forget to visit the pre-writing prompts in March, suggested by yours truly. I even get a mention! We are a captive audience, after all. The hot link dates will take you back to Robert Brewer’s page where he also in ludes examples. I will post all the prompts here to keep my big haired blog somewhat tamed. If that’s even possible. Or you can go directly to Robert’s blog where all the prompts are listed.

April 1   Today is the first day of the 2020 April Poem-A-Day Challenge! Each day, I’ll provide a poetry prompt and a poem to get things started. You can secretly poem along at home, or you can share your poem in the comments below.

For today’s prompt, write a new world poem. There are new worlds and there are new worlds. You could write a poem about discovery of an actual planet. Or maybe your new world is actually a state of mind—or a series of books! In a way, I consider each new challenge a bit of a new world. Let’s explore this one together.

Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want. In other words, it’s more important to write a new poem than to stick to the prompt.

AT THE LAGUNA 3 haiku (photo)

AT THE LAGUNA

Though the park is closed
father & son cast off their lines
while fish ignore the bait.

They will remember
this day stolen from the book
of time—if they live long enough.

Egrets patrol the floodplain
lost angels stitching the sky
to remnants of the shore.

BROKEN GUITAR STRING

BROKEN GUITAR STRING

The clerk made me a cuppa tea
We nattered on about Ireland.
Her red nails bled on the counter.

Violet said she was from the north.
I ate a shortbread. Looked for horns.
Her husband sucked on an unlit pipe.

She said, that’s my son.
GLORIA blared on the radio
He’ll give you a ride home.

Van was taciturn
It was a long ride home
a hostile wall of silence.

Get your pandemic solidarity howl on

Get your Easter howl on tonight at 8PM to show solidarity & support to healthcare workers, first responders, care providers, & workers in SonoMarin. #solidarityat8 The entire town of Mill Valley is in full chorus every night. Even in Nevada County people are ringing bells and howling their hearts out. Some SF communities have also been drumming with pots and pans.... Howling reported in Forest Knolls too. We’re alive, we’re still alive. Occidental and Sebastopol may have been late joining the party but they’re definitely getting their howl on right about now. I howled until I was hoarse. Such solidarity. It’s confusing the coyotes, though.

Our new gobal village

Well, here we all are. It seems Marshall McLuhan was right after all. Just a little ahead of his time. #GlobalVillage is brought to you by #Covid-19. The medium is the message, and apparently it is brought to you by Facebook. McLuhan was a bit more than a one-horse town, than that quote. But he coined that phrase in 1964.

Weird, when I was in high school, we were really paying attention to the likes of Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, Ram Dass, and Mario Savio. We could flash those revolutionary quotes at the drop of a hat. But we were also a politically aware high school class, on the vanguard. We were so badass, we shut down the Marin county draft board, it had never been done before. We were the first high school in the nation to do so, and we were also the first high school to go on strike. 

Drake High School made the cover of Time Magazine and also the 6 o’clock news. We were clocked by the feds—the FBI and the CIA. I remember cutting class to attend those Free Speech rallys at UC Berkeley. Our school president was Jared Rossman, brother to Michael Rossman of the FSM fame, probably helped to motivate us—we had a direct line to Mario Salivo, as it were.

I remember when Marshall McLuhan nattered on about the concept of one big global village, and I thought he was nuts. We can’t even manifest one happy family. I thought he was a stark raving dreamer. Yeah, yeah. He was. But he was also a visionary. Back then, there was no internet, no Facebook, no pandemic disease to unite us all. He predicted the World Wide Web three decades before it was invented. Let that sink in. I’ll wait.

I know Marshall was in Marin during that tumultuous era of social upheaval. That got me Googling. I found a 1999 directory that listed the Marshall McLuhan Center for Communications, in San Anselmo, Ca. TG for the Internet—I was able to find the connection, and not rely solely on a vague memory. After all, as Robin Williams said, if you remember the 60s, you weren’t really there. No wonder McLuhan was forefront. Here we are interconnected by the World Wide Web. Giants walked among us, even way back then.

In “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,” published in 1964, McLuhan said that the communication medium itself—not the messages it carries—should be our primary focus of study. He postulated that “artifacts as media affect any society by their characteristics, or content.” I’m paraphrasing Wikipedia, so here is a direct quote that explains it better. Wiki itself is a perfect example of the global village in action.can access, communication is the message. No more trickle down from the top theory.

“The term global village describes the phenomenon of the world becoming more interconnected as the result of the propagation of media technologies throughout the world. The term was coined by Canadian media theorist, Marshall McLuhan and popularized in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). Literary scholar Sue-Im Lee describes how the term global village has come to designate “the dominant term for expressing a global coexistence altered by transnational commerce, migration, and culture.” —Wiki

I vaguely remember something similar from a Richard Brautigan article—remembering the crazy milieu that was Marin during the 1960s and 70s. Marshall McLuhan and his wife were at the epicenter. There were a series of extraordinary community lectures held at Olney Hall, College of Marin. That’s where I met Timothy Leary, Allan Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Joseph Campbell, Bucky Fuller, Paolo Soleri, urban experimental architect of Arcosante, who was re-defining the ways in how we lived. Pre-commune days. And that is where I probably met McLuhan too. 

Everybody was hanging out in Marin at that time. It was an heady, if not head-trippy time to be living in. With the somber backdrop of the Vietnam war to kindle our angst, we were redefining our boundaries, our worlds, moving back to the land. Our older siblings were moving to communes and rethinking and redefining the whole shebang that was the 1950s. And we were not going gentle into the 1960s, that’s for sure.

Alan Watts was living on Varda’s ferryboat in Sausalito, Stewart Brand was setting up the Whole Earth store next to Marin Surplus in San Rafael. Ravi Shankar was playing mind-altering sitar right down the street from Drake High School in Fairfax at the Ali Akbar College of Music. We would drop in and tune out as we walked home from school, the odor of incense, and other herbs, pungent in the air. We couldn’t help but be altered by a new consciousness. It truly was a New Age dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

“Stewart Brand drifted into the Zen-tinged New York art scene of Ginsberg, Cage and Rauschenberg and thence into counter-cultural groups like USCO and Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. These "New Communalists",… sought an escape from the whole system of confrontational left and right politics and the psychological fragmentation that - as illustrated by Kesey's seminal "One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest." Drawing their energy from cybernetically-informed thinkers including the designer Buckminster Fuller (inventor of the geodesic dome) and ur-media theorist Marshall McLuhan (coiner of the term "global village"), Brand and his peers began to design a possible future for themselves not as workers or managers, but as Fullerian "Comprehensive Designers" - or "an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist. …His answer was The Whole Earth Catalogue, a collage of adverts and articles covering everything and anything … that the budding Comprehensive Designer might need. The Catalogue was an instant cult hit, not just among back-to-the-landers setting up experimental communities out in New Mexico, but also with the computer-obsessed inheritors of the Rad Lab tradition, who in research laboratories across the US, but most especially in MIT, Stanford and Xerox PARC, were busy designing cybernetic systems that included everything from the prototype Internet to the first video game, SpaceWar.” —Wiki

This was our world. We may not have had the words to describe what we were living, it took the hindsight of media analysts to puzzle together the fabric of the times that shaped us all, one way or another. 

I never thought I’d be so dependent upon the likes of Facebook to see who’s still alive, who’s died, and who is now fighting the disease. This is our new global village. This medium is our new black plague domesday journal and even Monte Python is in the audience. Bring out your dead!

From a Facebook post, rev. 3/26/23 

The difference between herons and egrets

Someone posted a photo of an egret, and a war on avian semantics erupted. Rule of thumb. Egrets have black legs. Great egrets have black legs. Snowy egrets have black legs and yellow feet. They look like they’re wearing Nikes. Apparently fish can’t resist yellow feet. The other four North American species I don’t know. I can’t vouch for. Great herons are never white. But herons come in all colors and sizes. Mostly big. Bigger than egrets. North American egrets, all six species, are always white—except for the very rare Little egrets of Florida. They do things differently down there and come in six colors and they do pastels rather nicely. Pink beak and lavender eyeshadow, a fluffy champagne neck ruff, and pearlgrey coat, they’re the trocaderos of the Egret clade. They have to be, herons and egrets have no real tail feathers, so it’s harder to get laid. Here the fancy ruffs and headgear. The rest of the world, all bets are off. No regrets. And just to confuse things, sometimes the Florida heron has a white phase. Don’t ask. If California is the Left Coast, what is Florida? You have to look at other things to ID them. Like size. Headgear, beak. Think big. I know. I had a California heron size me up in Amsterdam. A zoo escapee. He was taller than me. And a bully. We didn’t see eye to eye. I’m not talking about the itty-bitty unripe green herons along Lake Merritt, or the croaky night herons here. Just to confuse things, Heron is a name applied to the entire bird family Ardeidae. Scientists are still arguing about the distance of relationships between herons and egrets. For now, all six species of egrets are a type of heron. I don’t like that, but there it is. But herons are real assholes, they indulge in siblicide, they shove the weaker ones out of the nest, while egrets just love their nest mates. Cuddle bugs, all. Definitely true Californians at heart.

Buying art supplies during a quarantine

While my compatriots madly storm the stores like paratroopers to corner the market on toilet paper, I ordered art supplies—a full set of pastel pencils nestled in a sleek cherrywood box with brass hinges. We each have our priorities. It was a rare bucket-list kind of moment. No AmazonPrime to defray the cost. Despite the quarantine, the package arrived from Britain, outer wrap shredded, but the inner sanctum, a bubblewrapped cardboard coffin, kept it safe from harm. The pencil box delights me when it opens like a double harpsichord with a full keyboard. The pencils on the upper tier scream a rainbow arpeggio to the palate of the modern age, while the somber earth tones beneath strike a darker chord of the past. Both sets are necessary to render the face of art. The dilemma I face is whether or not I should use my last half-bottle of alcohol as a blending agent, or to sterilize my hands from the virus? And I have only the one pad of paper. It seems we are a nation of assholes, grasping the wrong end of the shitstick. Who will be left witness the subtle arias of those pencils, or any art, for that matter, if the curve doesn’t flatten soon?

Quarantine haiku with Chad Sweeney

GLOBAL TAKEOVER (pet haiku)

Truck screeches to a halt, honks,
but the chickens are unflappable, they know
they own the middle of the road.

3/24

AMARYLLIS (home haiku)

Each day I turn the pot
so the forced bulb will straighten up.
But the bud prays toward the light.

3/25

LOVE IN A TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

Ex-lovers, the kind
I once wished dead, forward emails
on how to beat the plague.

3/25

SPRING AND ALL

Alpha rooster proclaims dominion over his flock
The hens ignore him, go about their business
Young cock discovers he too is part of the ritual.

3/26

ESCAPE ARTIST

Amaryllis stem
grew another foot last night—
but still can’t leave the pot.

3/27

ON THE WINDOWSILL

Old beveled hand mirror
reflects a patch of grizzled sky
a soft Irish day, said my gran.

3/28

FRIENDSHIP HAIKU

The best thing she said:
something like 50-plus years later
I still have her back.

3/29

STORMFRONT

Knees and stairs creaking
together, life’s ups and downs—
one step at a time.

3/30

Tuesday Haiku (Basho style)

( setting)             Drinking tea in bed
( subject)            Waiting for it to kick in
( sudden             Why? Still on lockdown.
perception)

3/31

SUN CLOAK

My Gran never said
our freckles were kisses stolen
from the Otherworld.

3/31

WHAT THE TURKEY VULTURE SAID

I don’t mind waiting
but it’s stiff competition
from the politicians.

3/31

MEASURING TIME

You ask why I write
haiku in a time of plague
Baby steps. Baby steps.

3/31

SHOPPING EXPEDITION

Each time I have to shop
my virus exposure meter resets to zero.
Still, the nightmares continue.

3/31

SODA ROCK WINERY, AFTER THE FIRE

Wine barrel cooperage behind a facade
a giant game of ring-toss gone wrong.
The warthog’s rusted kingdom.

3/31


WHAT MOTIVATES YOU, GRATITUDE OR FEAR?

Born in late November, at the edge of autumn,
the diminishing light & encroaching darkness motivates me
call it fear, call it death—but I am driven by it.

4/1

PATTERNS

She said, Silent & listen
are anagrams. I must be bored.
I said, Careful, poetry is a gateway drug
to the road to perdition.

4/1

DOOR TO DOOR SERVICE

According to yesterday’s headlines.
Drinking is up by 41% in the Bay Area.
I’ll drink to that.

4/1

HICK’S VALLEY ROAD

Driving down backroads
the odor of meadowfoam
vernal pools flood the eye.

4/2

NATALITY

Another passage
around the sun, still breathing.
How we count the days.

4/3

WRAPPING THE PRESENT

I give to the self
this day, a gift wrapped in light
the breath of laughter.

4/3

CANCELED

Sat in the front seat
watched the sun cross the driveway,
Hey, I’m still alive!

4/4

FEEDING TIME

The chickens circle,
they know I’m inside the car.
At least they’re not vultures.

4/4

NOWHERE TO GO

I sit in the car
sipping coffee and writing.
Window to the world.

4/4

WHAT MY MOTHER TOLD ME

I was made at sunset
in the back seat of a Ford.
Now I wait for the night.

4/4

SOLIDARITY

West county was late
Getting their howl on—the dogs
too joined the chorus.

4/4

FOWL GODDESS

They see me coming
When I step out of the car
Chickens gather round.

4/11

Quarantine, Day 10

QT.Day 10: I’m now eating some strange food combos—delving into a questionable food hoard I should’ve tossed last year—if not the year before. PS: the chocolate seems fine. Bread, crackers, pasta, and even flour is sold out in most stores. We hereby declare the gluten-free era to be officially over. Stolen from Angela Morrison’s wall. I won’t mention the TP shortage. You know shit’s getting real when the TP and booze flies off the shelves. This is like shopping in pre-Glasnost USSR. 

QT Day—whatever. Eating increasingly strange food combos. Lunch has extended into dinner hour. Drinking is up by 41% across the board. Who knows what lurks in the dark recesses of the pantry. The Preppers must be having a field day, drinking up their liquor stash, and you know what comes next, the ammo... 

Today I decided to dress up and wear a sweater I was saving for good, and put on a bra in order to go shopping for food. Out of milk, and low on hot cereal, I ventured forth into the world today. No Red Mill cereal to be hard in the stores, no Goldfish or decent tea. But I found two 6-packs of Pellegrino grapefruit soda And some milk. Score! Shopping is a socially distanced contact sport. Cattle prods on my shopping list.

My shopping routine. I wear gloves and mask. I maintain at least 6 feet between myself and other shoppers. I use a credit card. I put my groceries back in the cart and wheel it to the car where I bag it. No bag, or bagger necessary. I wipe down my keys, credit card, gloves, turn them inside out, and I wipe my hands, and the inside of my car—especially the door handles, steering wheel, and seat belts—with an alcohol wipe. 

I rotate my masks as the virus cannot live long on porous surfaces. Also, the virus cannot live for long on porous surfaces—like masks. The dashboard is a good place to cook your masks and gloves as it easily reaches 130º on a sunny day. Even if its not sunny, the dashboard gets pretty warm. You can also give cloth masks a zap in the microwave. And I do wipe down my gloves. Q-tips are useful for touching keypads when you forget you gloves.Since I only have a few pair of gloves, I use a rotation system.

For the COVID-19 victory garden, focus on the brassica vegetable family first, and lettuces, so you’ll have food sooner. All leaves are edible. Then the solanaceae—tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant; and the cucurbit family—squashes (you can eat the flowers too). The root vegetables are long term, but you can eat the greens of beets, turnips, kohlrabi, and carrots (but not potatoes!)

Global critter takeover

Global critter takeover: truck screeches to a stop—brakes squealing & hissing—to let the chickens cross. Honks at them, too, but they’re unflappable. They know they own the middle of the road. 

The wild turkeys are now so cheeky with all this social distancing and lockdown stuff that when I was driving back from Forest Knolls (where I am a care provider), a turkey refused to give up right of way in the middle of Nicasio Valley Road. Hilarious.

Meanwhile in North Wales marauding Kashmiri goats gadding about have taken over the town. In our absence, animals everywhere have taken to the streets. There is no more “down on the farm” shit a spokescritter reported from the Animal Liberation League, or ALL ours again movement.

Welcome to this first ever countdown to the April PAD Challenge!

Wow, I even got credit for the suggestion. Guess I’m going to have to play catch up as the usual epic Facebook fail, culling you friends posts, was in operation and I never saw the entry. I will post all the March  prompts here. And start a separate page for the combine April entries. I’ve made the date with a hyperlink so you can see Robert’s poem prompts and examples on his page.

Welcome to this first ever countdown to the April PAD Challenge! This was an idea suggested to me on Facebook by Mo Hurley, and well, it’s just a good idea with so many people locked indoors with little to do but read and write poems. So let’s get at it!

For today’s prompt, write a time poem. I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt in a time warp the past couple weeks—with a day feeling like a week (or even a month) and a week feeling much longer. So your poem can about that, or it can deal with time travel. Or write about being late, being early, or right on time. Heck, do a countdown. There’s no time like the present.

Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want.

Pumping gas in a time of coronavirus

The gas pump handle was something I didn’t even think about when I topped up at Costco on Wednesday evening. I was trying to be responsible by keeping my tank full in case of emergencies—something I had learned during the October wildfire evacuations. I was so careful not to touch the card reader, or the buttons or the gas grade selection button. I can’t remember if I used my alcohol gel before I recorded my mileage. Social distancing is hard enough. All this constant monitoring of unconscious gestures takes some getting used to. And as if to make up for lost time, I’ve been thinking about that gas pump handle a lot these past few days. Imagining all kinds of symptoms. The only thing I can hope for was that the Costco gas pump attendant was wiping down the pump handles periodically—but I doubt it even crossed his mind. Faced with the unforgiving math of epidemics, we are living in such extraordinary times. The entire world is having a time out at the same time. We will not emerge unscathed, nor will we re-emerge as who we were. The past has irrevocably shut its doors behind us. O brave new world, indeed.

2020 April PAD Challenge Countdown, a little early

From Robert Lee Brewer: So for people who loathe change, the 2020 April PAD Challenge is still happening, and it’s still starting on April 1. However, someone (ahem, that was me) on Facebook suggested I start the daily prompting and poeming earlier this year, since so many people are self-quarantining and social distancing at the moment in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

So it took me all of a split second to think, “Yeah! Let’s get poeming!”

(2020 April PAD Challenge: Guidelines.)

We’re going to call it the 2020 April PAD Challenge Countdown. It’ll be a fun warm-up for the actual poem-a-day challenge that starts on April 1 and continues on through the end of the month.

2020 April PAD Challenge Countdown

Since this is all spur-of-the-moment and never-been-done-before territory, here’s how we’ll roll:

• Beginning on the morning (Atlanta, GA) of March 22, I’ll post a poetry prompt and my own attempt at a poem each morning for the rest of March. That’s 10 days of daily poeming!
• Poets around the country and the world can swoop in, grab the poetry prompt, and write a poem. If they wish, they can share their poems in the comments on each day’s prompt. If they wish to keep it for themselves, that’s cool too. It’s all about the poeming.

And honestly, that’s all there is to this thing. It’s a chance to poem and connect with other poets, and it’s totally free and something people can do from the safety of their homes. So get ready to break some lines, y’all!

https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/2020-april-pad-challenge-countdown-announcement

Blue-eyed grass superbloom 2010 (photo)

First day of spring. Blue-eyed-grass superbloom 2010, Alexander Valley, Highway 128 at Soda Rock Lane. Some of the blue-eyed-grass (really a diminutive type of simple iris) were not only indigo, but violet, pink, and a few were white. Every year I’ve been stopping at that meadow across from the campground, and it's never bloomed like that again since. I wonder if it'll put on a spectacular show this year? And who will be there to witness it? I have been teaching poetry to kids at Alexander Valley School every spring for nearly 30 years. But maybe not this year. Visiting the valley, as the poet in residence for two weeks—an integral part of my annual ritual, is interrupted by the arrival of the coronavirus. And I wonder if the wildflowers of Pine Flat Ridge have recovered from the Kincade Fire. Are they out in force? Masses of superblooms, and  no one to witness the lupines and blue-eyed-grass talking to pieces of the fallen sky. And bybthe way things are going, as we all shelter in place, we may be lucky enough to escape with our lives.

Emily Carr, Canadian painter & writer, Group of Seven

Autumn, 1922-23, oil, Arts & Crafts style (1913-27) Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

One of my favorite artists of the Pacific Northwest, Emily Carr,  (Dec. 13, 1871 – Mar. 2, 1945) was also a writer who chronicled the stories of the First Peoples of British Columbia. Carr’s memoir, Klee Wyck, inspired me to travel making a pilgrimage of sorts to the then remote Nootka villages of Tofino and Ucluelet on western Vancouver Island, and later, to the village of K’san on the Skeena River, in the late 1970s, where I promptly got sick and spent a few days camping in the bushes outside of town—to the consternation of my boyfriend, the villagers, and jeweler-woodcarver Vernon Stephens, who had once driven us from the middle of nowhere to another middle of nowhere. Another story...

Though relatively unknown and unrecognized in her lifetime, Carr was one of the first North American Modernist painters to use the Post-Impressionist painting style. She bucked the prim Victorian society and studied art for three years at the California School of Design/San Francisco Art Institute, and later, Carr spent a year in France, 1910-11, where she met the Cubists and Fauvists. Their use of bold color and broad shapes greatly influenced her work.

But upon Carr’s return to Vancouver, no one was interested in her work. She toiled in domestic obscurity for 15 years, managing an apartment complex in Victoria, until 1927, when a piece was accepted to a National Gallery of Canada exhibition where she first met the Group of Seven. She was the only woman painter to be included in the Group of Seven, modernist painters who changed the face of Canadian art

After being told that Canadian totem poles and trees were unsuitable, and simply unpaintable, Carr defiantly went out and painted them anyway—for the rest of her life. She finally gained some recognition for her work when she was nearly 60. After a series of heart attacks in 1937, Carr gave up the rigors of plain air painting, and wrote seven books, winning the Governor General’s Award for Literature in 1942.

I have seen many of her paintings in museum collections, but not this one. A reverse image search referred me to the dubious ArtPoster and Pinterest sites, several titles suggests it’s called,  Lone Cedar, or (Cypress) Tree in Autumn, or simply Autumn, ca 1920, painted variously in Brittany, or in British Columbia.

I have a lino block that I carved in high school that is similar in style. I wonder if I saw her work back then? Where? At the De Young? SF Art institute? I got to see her work later, in Victoria and Vancouver. There was an article on Emily Carr in the Sunday section of the Chronicle, California Living, circa 1972, which contained a retrospective of her work. I saved that article and read it again and again and again. She was uniquely a one of a kind artist.

It took some doing, but I found the painting, it’s called Tree of Autumn, 1922 - 1923, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 44.5 cm, done in the Arts and Crafts style (1913-1927). Collection of Glenbow Museum, of Calgary—which explains why I never saw it, though I’ve been to Calgary, I didn’t visit the museum. Purchased in 1956. Note bene: As of 1990, it’s housed at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Another extraordinary painting I’ve never seen before is First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, oil on canvas, Fauvist style, 101.5cm x 84cm. 1912. Audain Art Museum, Whistler, British Columbia. “In 1912, following a journey up the northern coast of B.C., Carr produced a number of works with First Nations motifs in her new style. However, these works were not well received with audiences in Vancouver and Victoria.”

First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, Fauvist style, 1912. Audain Museum.  Wiki

Earth reboot


The upside of this pandemic global lockdown is that the air quality is improving—it’s as if we were finally taking climate change seriously & actually doing something about it. It demonstrates that if we stop polluting right now, we could potentially reverse the 11th hour effects of global warming—and reboot. Maybe a econd chance to get it right, for once.

CORONA, an acrostic poem (Why did Google flag this blog entry as a server error?)

CORONA, an acrostic poem 

Clouds drifting in the wind
outside the window, houses keeping us safe,
rogue virus finds a new audience
on the wings of planes it travels
near and far, within days we are immobilized
and there is nowhere safe enough to hide.

3/13/20 Friday the 13th

Malcolm X ES
Berkeley

Interesting, I never finished the poem, I found it in the last lesson plan folder I used, it was the last in class class I taught before SIP, then the world changed. 

To see if I could fix the apparent Google URL problem, I copied the poem and pasted it into a new entry. Let’s see if that resolves the issue. Nope.

Love during a time of coronavirus

Love in a time of coronavirus. Do what makes you happy. Today is the first day on your inner bucket list & it’s called now. How will you spend those IOUs before it’s too late? Be the love you want during this time of cashing in on all those old bucket lists.

ODE TO A SCRUNCHIE

           —after Neruda

You were painted with exotic flowers
from the Garden Isle
where the fog drooped 

on the back of the volcano
like an old gray cat 

while the sun struggled to shine
through the thick drizzle at Kalalau Point 

where fogbows ringed the rainforest 

and the ocean whispered secret stories
of the people who once lived on that beach below.
Scrunchie, you tamed my hair
during a time when nothing else would do.
But you’ve slipped back into the wilderness 

on your own, lost in a strange concrete jungle, 

a weary traveler so far from home,

to find something else to tame.

3/11/20

Hammer Montessori School

Facebook cremation ads

Now this is creepy. Facebook ad algorithms assume I might be dead while Facebooking because I’m getting a plethora of burial / cremation ads. Not good timing. Thanks. I thought death was the ultimate social distancing act. How does that aspect of social media work again? Really good WiFi? I must’ve hovered overlong over an article on green burials. James Lee Jobe said: Cremation, your last chance for a smokin' hot body!  Ah, ghoulish humor.

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

Hand washing song

 My hand washing song changes throughout the day. I’ve moved on from singing Happy Birthday to If I were a rich man—with a Flinstone finale: yabba daba do! I’ve washed my hands more times in the past week than I have in the past month. Or year. I wash them so much, they are dry and sore, and they ache. Hand lotion is no longer working. I’ve resorted to using Vaseline under my hand lotion. The upshot is my hands always smell of roses.

Dan Rather said: As I wash my hands for the umpteenth time and hum the opening verse of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, twice (I prefer it to happy birthday) my mind turns to the potent  triumvirate of fear, anxiety, and risk.  He’s peering into his 10th decade, so death is on his plate. And now we’re all in the same boat. Leveled by a virus.

Van Morrison’s hand washing song is Humpty Dumpty. Allegra Broughton said that she sings It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. She goes all Christmas while another friend stumbles through a bar song, 99 bottles of beer on the wall. He says that once through is usually enough. You could get lost in the bathroom vortex and never come out again singing that song. Too bad there’s no chardonnay song. I fear we’re becoming a nation of fish.  

Zana Darrow, who complains of dry skin and hangnails from overwashing, said: I discovered you could also just count to 20. When that gets old, 20-40. Or 20 odd numbers. Speaking of odd, I suggested that she try prime numbers next. She said, That would just make me mad. We’re all going a little bit mad these days. 97 bottles of beer on the wall... Is it 5pm yet? 

added, revised 3/21

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

Pax moon over San Mateo bridge (photos)

Purim moon over San Mateo bridge, ©Maureen Hurley 2012

Passing over that same bridge eight years later, returning from another teaching gig in San Jose, remembering that first residency, also in Willow Glen, never dreaming I’d find myself back here again, not like this, wondering how I pulled it off way back then, considering the distance, the time, making the best of the arduous journey, taking the scenic long way home for beauty’s sake, the fog licking the coastal hills where Portolá once camped, was it also under the Purim moon? Telescoping time, that moment when a memory from the past collides with time-present. This time, it was earlier in the day, so the full moon was higher in the sky, a standard issue white, but I was remembering that old orange moon hovering over the Coyote Hills, pondering how much my life has changed, never sleeping in the same place more than a few days at a time, yet the same moon still rises, like Lazarus, over the bay. The next generation of blue-eyed cormorants preening themselves on the pylons. They say your cells replace themselves every seven years, The next generation of cells have replaced my old self. Who I am. Today, we wrote color poems, a young  boy wrote a poem about picking tangerines in Israel, the tangible scent and sweetness of the globes against a blue sky, in his remembered country. He writes blue is the color of peace. He sits across the desk from an Arab boy who can only write about action figures. He writes that red is the color of peace. Poetry is a fine line, a peace fire. We are all so far from home. The whole world is a very narrow bridge. Shalom. Salaamit. Pax out.

Purim Moon, Eden Landing Ecological Reserve. ©2012

Cross-culture clash

School parking lot guard spots me dithering outside my car, thinks I’m a soccer mom waiting to pick up a student. She yells, Yo, mama, you wanna move, So the other mamas can unload too? I looked around to see who she’s talking to, was I blocking someone’s way? No car door open. Like DeNiro, I point to myself and say, Are you talk into to me? She says, Yea, Mama, I’m talking to you. I say, I’m nobody’s mama, I teach here. She goes defensive, says, I don’t mean no disrespect. When I say Mama, it’s a sign of respect. I said, But I’m not ready to leave, I’m still organizing my stuff. She’s angry because I’m upset. I’m being hustled and I can’t find my fucking car keys. It’s as if we’re taking different languages, not English to English. I mentally translate the conversation into Spanish, which doesn’t help. It’s still out there. No common ground. I’m thinking maybe orange is the new black. Do I need a shiv? I  retrace my steps a third time. She thinks I’m stalling. It doesn’t dawn on me to tell her about the missing keys. I couldn’t hit the road—even if I wanted to. It’s quickly escalated into a lose-lose situation. Everything lost in translation. I find my car keys in the back seat beneath a heap of poetry folders. Weird poetic justice. I jump in the car and take off up 280, still steaming at the 92 exit, wondering how it all so quickly went south. I pass a pylon of cormorants sunning themselves on the San Mateo Bridge, and say hello to the blue-eyed boys preening themselves against the concrete. The color of their eyes proves that blue is better for seeing in reflected water, you’d think their feathers too would be as blue as the ocean’s dreams.

Coronavirus advice

The best coronavirus prevention strategy is to not touch anything, and to wash your hands early and often with soap and hot water. Be more like Dr. McDreamy, or Lady MacBeth—lather for a good minute. If you’re not sure how long a minute is, sing the entire Happy Birthday song as you scrub. Don’t cheat by singing it too fast. Lives may depend upon it. It goes without saying, don’t shake hands. Instead, sing Hand Jive, and bump elbows. Don’t touch your face—we touch our faces upward of 90 times a day. That’s how most viruses are transmitted, running that index finger across your itchy nose, or ramming said finger up it, and, no, you can’t use your pinkie instead. Also avoid rubbing your eyes, or donning that classic thinker’s chin-in-hand pose. Don’t touch strangers, strange hands, knuckle, or knee-knocking is OK, strange pens, or pencils, doorknobs, door jambs, light switches, or handrails, bannisters, etc. And, no, that hand sanitizer is not a very effective preventative. Worse, it provides a false sense of security. Purell has been chastised by WHO for false advertising. Hand sanitizer needs to be at least 60% alcohol in order to have any effect at all—not 60 proof. And, no, you can’t drink it. Try some elderberry wine, or a Corona beer with lime, instead, you’ll be happier for it. So will Corona, which is losing sales because of this virus. According to the CDC, and WHO, wearing a mask If you’re healthy, is unnecessary—unless an infected person sneezes on you—and then you’re way too close. You’ll just overheat, but it will keep your hands away from your face. Ditto that with rubber gloves. A Darth Vader mask is a plus. If all else fails, try rubbing your fingers with hot chili peppers as a reminder to not touch your face. Avoid crowds. Vigorously defend your three feet of personal space in public, but remember, using samurai swords and cattle prods are frowned upon in public. Claymores are way over the top. Social distancing is really a thing.

And no, the virus is not a Democratic plot or hoax to derail the election. And for gawd sakes, don’t kiss the cat. It’s already traumatized enough as it is. And add pangolins to that no-kiss list.

(My photo is of the El Cerrito car wash, at least my car is all scrubbed up. Scalpel!) —Maureen Hurley

Old guitar

Last night I got to play an old guitar from the 1900s, lightweight, lovely triangular neck, smooth action, brilliant tone—turns out it was from the lineage of a prototype for the famed Martin guitar. Of course, I couldn’t play worth shit, it’s been too Zana Darrow Started playing in high school. I got my Martin when I was 16. I opted for a classical, but played folk music on it. I loved the sound of that Martin, that’s why I got it. It came from a pawn shop down on Market Street. A 1964 Martin with a Brazilian rosewood bridge. A controlled substance, as it were, so I can never take it out of the country. It’s been too long since I really played the guitar. But it was interesting to see how some of the old licks came back after a lot of bad noodling around.

GUADALUPE RIVER

The river is a loom that weaves the threads of this city into a cloak of technology and light. Crossing the Guadalupe River, I slip in and out of time, simultaneously the small pueblo that once was, and the glittering city that now is. How technology simultaneously shapes and stretches us, robbing us while it teaches us of the past, shutting those doors firmly behind, and nailing them firmly shut.

INSIDE MY HEART

Inside my heart is a coyote of madness
drenched the color of sunset, 

inside my heart is a vast ocean of stars
where the ancestors of the past 

come and go like the tides.
My heart remembers what was once said 

in the false secrecy of distant rooms.

It wants to forget how the wheel of the sun 

is relentless in its search for time across the sky.
My heart is unusually good at hiding in the dark.
It turns into slippery shadows of denial

where anger takes its own time coming in.
Getting dressed in the dark 

or putting on its clothes inside out, it’s always a fumble.
My heart needs to learn how to avoid the dark holes.
It misses the song of the morning birds 

when it soars across the desert of despair.

Hammer Montessori School

Horse Kittens!

Three itty-bitty kitties are sleeping in the dark cubbyhole next to my bed at my host house in San Jose. My host family’s feral cat moved in a while back, and decided that it was a very good place to have her babies in the oldest boy’s bed. OMG Baby kittens! Tiny, tiny kittens with eyes open wide. Welcome to the world.

They are in a dark cave, and I don’t want to use a flash on them. I’ve made friends with the mom, with smoked salmon. So maybe tomorrow I’ll take them out of their cave and do a family photo. Mama kitty loves me. It means I have to sleep with all the doors open so that she can come and go. But the babies are fast asleep. Two gray tabbys, and one orange boy. God help me, and give me the strength to say no.

A friend said, “The eyebrow arches a bit at my use of baby kittens,” but it reminded him of a story of a woman who saw some mares and foals in a field. She had a brain freeze, couldn't remember the word "colts," & blurted out "O Look! Horse kittens!"

Snacking on Goldfish and chardonnay

I’m on the road with limited choices, so I’m snacking on Goldfish crackers and swilling a bottle of ordinary Forestville Chardonnay. So totally me. Someone said to choose your bottles wisely. Because I’m on the road, my options are limited. However, I killed off the last of the Forestville Chardonnay. Since I live in Wine country, it’s not hard to choose just one favorite wine. I do love all of the northern Sonoma County Chardonnays. Way better than the Napa Chardonnays, which are way overrated, not to mention overpriced. Forestville, a place where I once lived, is fine. But it was bought out, and the new owners have traded marketability for swillability. 

Actually, my back is killing me from being on the road, all that driving from Sebastopol to San Jose and the aspirin didn’t even make a dent. I took four baby aspirin this afternoon, and it helped minimally. I cannot take Tylenol. And I try to avoid Advil at all costs, I seem to gag on it more often than not, so my drug pool is limited. I’m pretty sure my body is trying to tell me something important about Advil right now. I had to take so much of it when I tore my knee I think I ODd on it. 

I’m living in a strange little basement apartment where I’m staying for the next couple of days while I teach poetry to kids in San Jose, but I like it. The bathroom is only 6 feet tall. Hobbitish.  But a long hot shower on my aching back was beyond divine. 

So, will I go to hell in a handbasket for eating lemon curd straight out of the jar? If only I had some here. However, the Chardonnay ain’t bad with my killer pancakes. Just had one slathered with lemon curd. Yes, the saltiness of the Goldfish and the vague cheesiness sets off the Chardonnay nicely. And the fact that there are baby kitty sleeping next to me, I can barely contain my joy. I could be miserable, but I choose not to go there. I treat it all like a big adventure wondering what will come next. I am a miner of joy, reveling in the ordinary and the profound.

from Facebook posts

A DREAM OF FIRE

If I were a dream of fire,

I would blaze during the darkest of times.

I would carry the embers of hope

to those lost in the obscurity of time,

and those who know longer

carry the candle of hope,

extinguished by circumstance

beyond their control.

The downtrodden, the homeless,

and those who have lost their way

among the stars of the misbegotten

who can no longer dream of a time

where hope was possible

or maybe even alive.

2/21/20

MX ES

Scanning marathon old family photos

While scanning old family photos I learned a lot of family history—how my cousin Patricia D’Arcy sang for De Valera in SF, who in turn called his friend in Tacoma, which turned out to be her Ward uncle, and de Valera never knowing they were related. New photos emerge of my great-grandmother Jane Rose Sullivan Walsh in Bantry. What was amazing was that we had another photo clearly taken the same day, so she must’ve sent different photos to all her children in America. One of her with an Irish setter, another of her with a pitchfork. Some copies of old photos I took where mine were destroyed years ago... different angles of photos at family parties where I had some photos. A news clipping that corroborates the story of my grandfather’s and coworker Henley’s unfair demotion at the SF Sheriff’s dept., so Sheriff McGinty could hire a crony as undersheriff, which became a landmark case, where my grandfather fought city hall and won. See Bernard Reilly va. the City and County of San Francisco. A photo of former fireman Pat Ward leading the SF pipe band on stage and performing /opening for the Chieftains in SF. Lots of clippings of both Jerry D’Arcys, Jr.  singing for the SF Giants, and other police events. An article on Mike Collins, Gregorian singer, loads of photos of him and his brother Frank, who was killed in a car accident at 22. Many photos of my grand-aunts Kitty and Peg. I had no idea Peg lived on State Island, I knew she lived in Bantry for a while, she went back and forth. When The Big Fellah, Michael Collins was shot by the British, they left Ireland for good. I think he was a distant cousin of Peg’s husband, also named Mike Collins. She moved to SF during the Depression. A photo of Peg singing family parodies of Captain Jerry D’Arcy’s  stolen bagpipes to the tune of Danny Boy at parties. Oh Jerry boy, your pipes were stolen from the bus...

In Fresno

Sitting outside, in a walled, gated community where I can’t see the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, but I can feel their presence, their siren call, and the sting of snow in the air.

EAGLE OF THE NIGHT

Once I was the eagle of the night
I dreamed of dragons in the clouds
sleeping in the secret hearts of volcanoes
where embers where the jewels of the stars
where the rain fell in secret supplication on the sand
embedding its secrets on all the beaches of the world.

3/13

Hammer M ES

SHADOWS

Fill the sink with shadows
& watch the moonlight disappear.
This is how it begins, in shadow
& circumstantial evidence
trades places with the night.

OLD PUZZLE

Seeking help from no one
I was stuck in the darkness
like a broken dream
held together by a vase of hope
that shattered and fell to the floor,
lost pieces of an old puzzle.


2/12

Feeling discombobulated

I’m feeling a little discombobulated today, feeling out of sorts. Displaced. Bereft. Sort of gritting my teeth through the day. Trying not to take it personally. I arrived at my San Jose home away from home, and unpacked my gear, almost ready to teach for tomorrow. Going to Savers to see what I can see. Sometimes you just have to hit bottom in order to go back up like I said, trying not to take it personally. Of course a mocha freeze helps. Better today, after tea. Time to jump into the foray.

ON THE ALMADEN EXPRESSWAY

On the Almaden Expressway
old cholos in lowrider cars
cruise with ancient chihuahuas
riding shotgun.

Along the Guadalupe River,
willows test the air for signs of spring,
while wild plums erupt into cumulus clouds.

2/11
San Jose

Old cholos lowriding
on the Almaden Expressway
With toothless chihuahuas
riding shotgun.

On Willow Street

Willow Street was aptly named as it follows the Guadalupe River, so lovely to see the water flowing. And the willows. Perhaps they’re hesitant after so many years of drought, but they’re turning green and orange around the edges anticipating that first moment of spring. I never realized that Almaden  Parkway follows the Guadalupe River, and this is why Willow Street is called Willow Street. The family that is putting me up lives on Willow Street, across from the old church, Sacred Heart Church? where I went to as a child, the neighborhood is still strongly Latino but gentrification is nibbling away at the edges. 

BUCKEYE HANDS

First signs of true spring:
buckeye buds opening the green prayer
of their small leaf hands.

2/4/20

UNSEASONABLE SNOW, IMBOLC, 2019, rev.

A poem so extensively revised, from a few fragments, I think I should move the creation date to now. Well, revision does it mean to see it again

After the deluge, an unseasonable snow
left a carapace of black ice on the roof of the car
and on the translucent petals of the impatient jonquils—
their papery white petals translucent as glass.
You could almost hear them ringing like small bells.
Yesterday, it was barely cold enough for the snow to stick
but it whispered in a strange, silent tongue on the ridges,
unlike the droves of rain that broke the drought.
During the night, the temperature plummeted,
archiving traces of fallen snow—scattered clumps
of snowflakes frozen on the windshield left calling cards—
delicate patterns etched in ice that refracted the morning light
into prisms of iridescent hues.
This cold snap, a reprise in the death knell
ringing in the toll of mass extinctions.
As I drove north on country backroads,
the grizzled pates of the coastal mountain ranges
transformed by St. Brigid’s pure cloak,
fair stole my breath away.
Welcome spring.

2/4/19
rev. 2/4/2020