ELEGY FOR JOHN OLIVER SIMON

And where did you go, my as my grandmother might have said. 

With your tousled hair and eyes made of fallen bits of the sky, 

the clouds knew you and wept for you when you left us.

The mountain summits knew you, and wept for you.

The desert remembered you and mourned for you.

Memory circles the rug by the fire like a cat or a dog 

settling in for a long winter nap, but finds little comfort there. 

The fire snarls, the logs pop like a gun, or the cracking of a whip, 

and smoke curls around my hair like a snake. 

It is late, and last night the tomcat was speaking of you 

as he patrolled the edges of the garden. 

He looked for you among the squashes and the rhubarb. 

He spoke of lost tuna dinners and wondered why 

you did not pull up the weeds, why you did not rise 

and go to your notebook with pen in hand. 

Rendering the next sonnet in your mind. 

Once you promised me the moon, and the sun rose 

in my belly, with that broken promise, we came undone. 

You promised me what was not possible 

and we spent our lives running from the truth. 

We ran to the opposite corners of the earth 

in search of something holy and profound 

to nourish that rage and hunger of art, each in our own way, 

the baggage of the past burdening us down.

We didn’t see the swift current, and its bright undertow 

bending the night to its will, where the water-ouzel 

hunted among the rocks for the coinage 

of small silvered fish glinting in the morning light. 

My grandmother said, to let a bird in, 

was to let death come into the house.

When I go down to to the well of sorrow, 

I find you among the cresses and the mosses. 

Sometimes I perch on the low stone wall 

to watch the first stars appear in the eye of the well. 

What is still alive between us, is memory, 

perhaps more mine, than yours, 

as we each hold different bags of grief 

made from the same skin of the heron.

And so I mourn for you, and the flight of birds

stitches the sky into a mosaic of loss. 

The birds gather strands of my hair, 

weaving time and sorrow into a web, 

a nest where the small speckled eggs of memory 

incubate into truth, and we remember what was good, 

all the betrayals of dailyness fell into dust 

until all that remains are the remnants—

those small scraps of love we once held so dear.

 

Shards of grief and loss litter the landscape of memory, 

piercing us to the core. But they have have moved the walls.

And we hung onto the next best thing, 

never allowing grief gather in its wings and to settle in, 

or to take root and to go to seed, we abbreviated 

the process into meaningless soundbytes, 

ready to move onto the next best thing.

 

You left before the pandemic, good move. 

Because if the cancer didn’t get you then covid would have. 

It felled us like flies after the first frost, 

five million dead, and still counting. Will it ever end?

It’s as if the black death came to pay a visit 

and the world came undone. 

The psyche that scarred us for centuries, continues on. 

Everyone is looking for explanations, reasons why, 

challenging the concept of Godhead. 

Who would do such a thing to us, and why?

And yet you still come to me in dreams.

You were my guiding star, my shining light, 

and what I learned, for you were also my teacher.

And for that I am grateful. 

8/27 Writing through grief workshop with Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza, Soul Bone Literary Festival, MIU, Zoom event

Horse-divers for dinner

It seems I’m necking a bottle of wine for dinner, followed by an ice cream chaser and an adult gummy bear. Adulting is for the birds. To be fair, I had an avocado horse-diver. No, not avocado toast. Since the pandemic, my meals have become rather peculiar—partially because I am noshing from the food bank, you eats what you gets, and are given, but also because of a profound lack of motivation. I did have a dinner of sorts planned, but old rice, thawed, is related to sawdust. OK so I was desperate, the rice was marginally better than expected. I was off my feed after an unexpected wisdom tooth wrestling match with some elderly kale redolent of old sneakers with a piquant bouquet of canvas and athelete’s foot.

Silver spoon

I have an old silver spoon, it was once John’s silver spoon, before that, his ex-wife Jan’s silver spoon, she left it behind. A relic from the Victorian era when people had matching silverware and when cutlery was coinage routinely lifted by the unscrupulous scallywags to pay gambling debts. I don’t know why that spoon called out to me. I don’t remember how I wound up with it, but I think I must’ve lifted it when we split up. Something was owed to me.

I also wound up with Jan’s baby ring, both of us were Sagittarius, golden topaz birth stones. John, an Aries, couldn’t be bothered with such things. Reina the cat probably didn’t know the difference between silver and silver plate as long as her tunafish arrived on time, and it didn’t rain outside each door at the same time.

John’s house was an odd cobbled together affair, a cottage built before indoor plumbing, and it was dank and dreary. The windows shed little light into the house as some rooms were later built around it. The bathroom window led to a light well, once an outer wall, someone’s remodel plans gone awry. But there were marks of gentility, the hardwood floors laid out in the careful pattern around the floor furnace, also a later addition.

It is always late afternoon in the house of memory, with John waking from his afternoon nap, groggy and eager for coffee. The Italian espresso maker hissing like a snake on the burner on the Wedgewood stove.

Long light of fall, shadows take on that purple glow. And pumpkin-colored sunlight measured time on the hardwood floor. John said something about a translation he was working on. Maybe it was Otto Raúl‘s poem onto new colors I don’t remember, but I loved Otto Raul. 

We had just returned from a long summer in México meeting all the poets. My own poetry exponentially shifted as we explored the underbelly of Mexico. The new vistas, new diversions enriched my writing. But the urge to keep it authentic, keep it art versus the sensationalism of something new, was always the challenge. 

I’m standing in the living room, debating whether to stay or to go, the cat circles my ankles wanting to be fed. She is a consummate liar and it is never enough. Same with John. Is always never enough, as if he might miss an opportunity in a parallel universe to hook up with someone else. We were always circling the marsh of that self-created quagmire. He said, if I love you, am I trapped forever? I had no words for that, and we let it slip back into the void. 

The sky is stained with indigo and twilight. We were living in parallel worlds. You could see a sprinkling of stars emerging from the shadows of the earth, the penumbra like a sine-curve. I watched a late cloud catch fire and glow like the northern lights. There’s a name for it, noctilucent. Ethereal gossamer garments studded with evening stars. 

The silver spoon glows like a half moon and reflects the subtle scattered light. 

8/25 Telling your truth workshop with Carolyn Holbrook. Soul Bone Literary Festival, MIU, Zoom event

Following the tip of my pen

I follow my pen to wherever it leads me. Today it carries me to the edge of the page where I jump into frigid waters like a penguin on a rapidly melting ice pack. Better than a cliff. Nothing is true ground or terra firma when you get down to it. If you are unsure and cannot give your writing a place to land, or perhaps a home, then what? My overriding goal is to make friends with grief, not letting it get in the way. But letting it stand on its own two feet. Or is it four feet? I acknowledge it, no need to take inventory of all those past transgressions, or to make a portmanteau of grief, for it will manifest itself in odd ways, and causes a chain reaction of sorrow. I am in love with the sound of my felt pen upon the page. Like a cat licking a pizza box, and I marvel at the fluidity and grace of my handwriting. It’s been years, decades since I’ve handwritten anything so the retro aspect is a welcome change in this electronic world we now inhabit.

8/25 Telling your truth workshop with Carolyn Holbrook. Soul Bone Literary Festival, MIU, Zoom event

Perpetual Calendar

I remember the adults filling the house with their loud voices and the way they made the Irish crystal in the old Murphy bed turned into an armoire, ring and chime like a carillon-—it was as if the crystal needed to sing about the past. The crystal was from my other grandmother, the one whom I never met, the one who committed suicide, and left a note telling my father to become a priest, my inheritance. I know nothing about my grandmother Viola, for whom I am named, and next to nothing of my father either. So much was denied, so much was deliberately buried. Those goblets and finger bowls were from another era were mine, all mine. And they were only allowed to dance on the makeshift long table set for 23 relatives once a year, for Thanksgiving. I was especially enamored of the holidays as that was my birthday week and sometimes it even fell on Thanksgiving. The timing made me curious enough to turn to a perpetual calendar printed on the back of the telephone book. Now understand I am a disaster in math and I learned to read late so this was like finding buried treasure when I saw the pattern. See, I love science and already I was making hypotheses even if I couldn’t pronounce the word yet. That would take decades before the words would come. First, I had to learn to read. When I did, I was voracious, I couldn’t stop reading. My life was shaped by a world of books and then I discovered Scholastic book services where you could buy books for $.10 each so I babysat and did chores for my neighbors. Every task was equal to dime, every task equaled a book. Sometimes I bought books by the armload and then the kids made fun of me saying I couldn’t possibly have read them all. But by week’s end, I had read a months worth of books, and they had read none. We had no TV. Anyway I digress from my story, I finally figured out the pattern of my birthdays. A one day shift for every day of the week, plus 3 more days, to compensate for the three years between leap years, and the pattern emerged. After the table was cleared I anticipated my birthday cake. I hoped it was chocolate. I had my fingers crossed. I waited eagerly as they put the pies on the table, pumpkin, apple, lemon merengue— I turned them all down, but no chocolate cake appeared. I burst into tears. Everyone fell silent, even the crystal, and the wine glasses were silent. And then my mother realized it was my birthday, it was my birthday. And she, even she had forgotten me. I was ten. Story of my life. So much for perpetual calendars. A lot of good that did. 

8/24 Annika Fajardo, writing for children Soul Bone Literary Festival, MIU, Zoom event

IN MY GRANDMOTHER’S GARDEN

I was thinking of my grandmother 

who was more practical than prosaic, 

how she loved the fragments of beauty 

that the voracious deer didn’t devour.

It was a running battle with the roses, 

that climbed up the trees to escape their hunger.

What survived was whatever the deer wouldn’t eat.

Remember the daphne, with its variegated leaves, 

and the narcotic odor of lily-of-the-valley?

The deer ignored the poker plant on the bank. 

The pyracantha and hawthorn grew twisted

like the bay tree, to avoid their appetite.

It seems that the deer hankered after anything blue. 

Borage, forget-me-nots, violets, and houndstongue

slid down their throats in seconds flat.

Sometime my grandmother would hike up the hill 

to transplant wildflowers in the garden, 

wild irises and poppies guarded the lettuce beds

and hidden chard prayed among the rhubarb & potatoes.

She preferred the down-to-earth aspects of the garden

that fed us. She, having raised eight children, 

was a practical woman, and I was her ninth child, 

my half-brother, Guy, who arrived in a bassinet 

left on the doorstep one hot summer morning, 

was her 10th child. Then came along my cousin David 

for weeks at a stretch, followed by his sister, Sinead—

That brought it up to an even dozen children she raised.

Hunger was always at the forefront of her mind,

having inherited survivor’s guilt from the Irish Famine.

She lived on a half-pension, barely making ends meet. 

But we never wanted for food, or beauty either. 

It was never about yet another mouth to feed. 

She tended and cared for her plants, life was hard.

But she lived out the end of her days, mulching

and tumping and banking the soil, turning it,

in the garden of her grandchildren.

8/24 Write On! With Susie Terence

PILGRIMAGE

—Collage from Mary Oliver poems, The Journey, and Wild Geese. 

In your despair, did you crawl on bended knee, 

seeking salvation in distant meadows?

Did you circle the sacred peak three times?

Meanwhile, the wild geese seek true north, 

calling out for their homeland in the sky. 

Sometimes we forget that the journey 

is both the answer—and the question. 

As I mend the ends of my life, stiff fingers 

seek the melancholy dreams of leaves 

among the detritus of fallen branches. 

While the stars burn, supernovas waken, 

saving more lives other than just mine. 

There is no one way to tell a story.

The power of the word made real.

Listen to the wild geese stitching the lake

with their wings. It is a quilt to keep us safe. 

No matter which way the wind blows,

the path leads ever onward,

it knots the lake into a gossamer shawl 

made of twilight and the lost skeins of sunset 

while the geese circle, and settle in, 

to converse about the day’s progress.

8/23, Writing through trauma workshop with Carolyn Holbrook. Soul Bone Literary Festival, MIU, Zoom event

Writing through trauma with Carolyn Holbrook

           Poet, mend thyself —Carolyn Holbrook

I find myself missing John Oliver Simon more and more these days. I find myself saving up things to tell him though he’s been gone nearly 5 years, since before Covid. It makes me realize anew the importance of living life fully and in the present tense. It’s pointless saving up for a rainy day. 1. Because we are in a prolonged mega drought. And 2. But the drought of the soul is a desert indeed. It’s so easy to elevate someone to mythic status especially when they’re gone, said Joan Baez, a savior is a nuisance to live with at home. 

I recently extricated myself from an abusive relationship of 21 years. I don’t miss the poor attempts at gaslighting, but sometimes I miss the man. He was great fun at parties, the singer always at the center of attention, but that was also the problem. There was little room for me. And eventually it was easier just to fall into the pattern rather than buck the system. So I gave pieces of myself away. No one else to blame. I let it happen. But at least I had a room of my own and my writing sustained me.

Ironic, it was at John’s memorial, when I was asked to sing/read a poem I had written to John long ago, Horseflesh, with music composed by Jorge Luján, and I could see the jealous rage in Neil‘s eyes—perhaps because he felt I didn’t love him like that. And truth be known, he was right, I didn’t love him like that. Not anymore. He had squandered what little love we had long ago, with indifference. I was living in a vacuum.

Ironic too, in that my poem also triggered jealousy in John’s latest lover,  So much so, that a stranger came up to me to tell me how Susan hated me. The stranger said, watch your back. I decided to make friends with Susan, instead. I also couldn’t help but think that relationship was 40 years ago. There is no logic when it comes to range and jealousy. The heart feels what it feels.

My life is a river

I’m standing above the river. I am not of the river, but I identify with its raging torrent. I am mesmerized by the sheer power of the river as it tumbles down the gorge. It’s a real river, one of many I have met. This one is the Fraser River. A deep gorge. It stole my heart with its ferocious beauty and sheer power. Not like the Skeena River, with its broad glacial brush strokes that sweep across the land.

My life is a river, lost in the eddys and currents where fish rise to mouth the skin of the lake, taking the damselflies stitching the surface on late summer afternoons. I realize it’s been decades since I’ve swum in the river. Any river. Was a time when I spent summers in all the creeks and rivers of my childhood, my youth, and my younger life, as I shaped and honed my craft, the river ghost, and sacred water guided my way.

A river, a road branched that became a tree with spirits in the limbs, and birds. Eternity among the branches. Inconsolable suffering, an unredeemed sky drawn back to the land.

8/20/22 CPITS symposium

Navigating the 1960s in Marin County

It seems that I hold onto some things forever, like anger, and perceived slights. They blossom and fester in my garden of injuries, but sometimes they dissipate like fog. I do my best to understand that because I suspect that deep down, I assumed that my parents didn’t love me. Therefore, I cannot love myself. There must be something wrong with me for them to have abandoned me so.

Sure, my mother told me she loved me, and surely she did in her own fashion. Sometimes, if she had a car, she would whisk me off to the city where the urban and rural worlds collided.

Though, I was born in San Francisco, I was raised by my grandmother in the country. So it was all alien to me. I am grateful that my mother attempted to shield me while expanding my horizons even if I didn’t want expanding.

I remember one party were a man washed my feet in rosewater, it was so sensuous. I was about 15 but when he tried to lead me off, my carefree mother, turned into a tiger, the guardian of the gate, telling him I was underage, and it wasn’t going to happen. He dropped me like a hot potato which wounded my feelings.

I don’t think he realized she was my mother, we looked so alike in age, but it made me realize that, despite her myriad shortcomings as a parent , she did love me and cared about what happened to me.

I’ve gone way off strip script, but that’s OK too. I think we were at a party in Larkspur, at least that’s what it felt like at the time, somewhere similar under the redwoods. Maybe Mill Valley, she knew a lot of alternative folks as she embraced the counterculture as much as it embraced her.

She was an artist, an actor, costume, designer, and later also a writer, and I was newly formed. I was a teenager, negotiating the distance between an insulated life in the country with my grandmother, and the societal upheaval that was rocking the known world all around us.

I lived with a foot in two worlds, that of the country bumpkin, where my horse was central to my being, to this other edgy world, where everybody was redefining themselves in a society that was unraveling at the end to edges, like a black chrysanthemum exploding from the center.

My mother did not open that world for me. I was already exploring it. This is how we cut school and wound up at People’s Park, and Sather Gate to see Abby Hoffman, not to mention the peace marches where we marched against the war in Vietnam and the atrocities of the war machine that encompassed our lives.

CPITS annual zoom symposium

Asia Moore is speaking on the power of perspective, it is ironic. I am annoyed by our guest speakers who clearly have not done their homework, and decide to tell us what they think we need to know without knowing who their audience is. They don’t realize that we are fully fledged poets in our own right, contributing to the state and national poet laureates of America. But I can’t share that thought in the Zoom chat because it’s disabled. So I will take the easy way out and not participate at all. Abdication too is a tool.

She plays hip-hop, edgy music as we freewrite which totally derailed me. Moving me right out of the piece and the moment. I can’t completely shut off the sound. Students may like to write to music to make it different. But I don’t. OK I get that totally, but I am disappointed that we didn’t have a choice and we had to listen to the awful music. How can I possibly pick up from where I left off? Now I am in time present and no longer in the moment. Where is my river? Where has it gone to.

8/20 CPITS, annual symposium, Asia Moore

The color of fog

Having lived my young life in a dark fog, call it a ground fog —it was a way to escape the adults who became erratic as the ravages of alcoholism, that dark fog began to descend upon that 50s vision of suburbia. The worlds never meshed, the optimism and conformity gave way to the turbulent 60s. I was far too young to be a counted among the movers and the shakers, but my mother delved into the darkness of the drug culture. For or a moment optimism shone, the city of hope in a bowl of light, we didn’t see beyond the edges of civilization, thinking it was the center of the universe. But as the darkness descended, all those hippies and some of our own folks began to die in doorways or in barrels from overdoses and drug deals gone wrong. The color of fog changed into despair. I watched so many people lost in that fog. Mine was a protective fog, insulation me against what was happening around me. That same fog protected and insulated me from a world falling apart. I emerged unscathed and slowly I found my poetic voice as it began to emerge from the fugue of darkness.

8/20 CPITS Symposium with Luis Rodriguez

Open wounds of childhood

When I was a child I was busy saving myself, because the usual suspects were MIA, my parents having long since fled the scene of my upbringing for the seductive smoky darkness of Northbeach bars. My default parent, my grandmother wasn’t the sentimental type. If I did something stupid, she’d grumble under her breath, so I learned to hide my wounds. Like that time I broke my arm. But there were times when hiding open wounds was impossible. We were walking home from catechism class at St. Cecelia’s, savoring the sweet chewy splinters of a Big Hunk bar one overcast winter afternoon. We took the low road because it was safer than the highway. Not many cars on the road in those days, but there were fewer bullies. Burly Charlie Vollenweider and his lanky friend Chalmers Ingersoll, atop the cliff above the highway, waited for us: me, Kathy and Marie Nielsen, and the Nunes girl—little Catholic girls running the gauntlet. I was relieved the boys were stuck on the cliff. They jeered and lobbed rocks at us from the top of the cliff. We ran from the barrage of rocks. One hit my head with a crack that sounded like a baseball connecting with the bat. I screamed and ran down the road, sobbing, my knees buckling under my chin as I fought the road rising up to greet me, a wash of hot blood trickling from my head. When I got to Arroyo Road, to cross the highway, a driver appeared by chance, and slammed on the brakes. I remember a green Pontiac.Was it my aunt? A neighbor? A stranger? They drove me home. My wound was dressed by my grandmother, adept at triage, having raised four boys and as many tomboys. The sheriff was called, and of course, the Vollenweiders were summoned, and accused me of lying. The immigrant divide was playing out in our living room as Mr. Vollenweider raged on like a prosecuting attorney, you could see where Charlie got his bullying skills from. Charlie smirked at me. It was my word against his. I was a mere child, not yet ten. So, nothing ever came of it. Who would’ve believed a child? Three witnesses and an open wound weren’t proof enough. The doctor finally arrived from Pt. Reyes, with his little black bag in tow, diffused the tension, but I couldn’t stop shaking. The light he shined in my eyes was like a knife. They wouldn’t let me sleep, and the headache numbed my senses. In hindsight, Old Man Vollenweider was protecting his son. But whenever I brush my hair, the dent in my skull, and a small betrayal knot of scar tissue where that rock pierced my scalp, is a constant reminder of the battle scars and injustices of childhood that we all carry. That afternoon I learned that the bullies came in all sizes and they always win.

8/17 Write On! With Susie Terence

reading update

I read for two open mics, the first was at SF’s Bird & Beckett, on Monday the 12th with Kim Shuck and Molly Fisk, and the second was on Tuesday with Stella Bertalis for MoSt open mic (my 3rd reading with them. Gary Thomas and Ian Miller were featured readers. Slowly, I am rebuilding my poetic community via Zoom. I read my recent trees and fog poem both times. Before that, I stumbled upon the Soul Bone literary festival in Iowa, via Molly Fisk’s reading where I read at open mic, and took many of the classes as well. I actually like the ability to go to a poetry event via zoom. They are becoming less and less frequent as people begin to gather together, but I am liking the long distance relationship. And surprisingly, I have stayed active during this time of sequestration via zoom. I’ve gotten a lot of new writing orders. It’s been very rewarding. When it comes to free writing workshops offered over the Internet, I am shameless. I find that it helps me to write in directions I have not expected to. So, whenever possible I try to notate my sources at the bottom of my poems and prose pieces whenever possible. 

My last memory of Robert Duncan

My last memory of Robert Duncan, when I was still new to poetry, we were all loitering on a street corner in North Beach after a reading, whose reading I don’t remember, probably himself, and there was Duncan standing by the lamppost, holding court, talking talking and we were all mesmerized. Paul Mariah, Robin Blazer. Who else? If only I had a photo, instead of memory. We couldn’t bear to leave that street corner. He had me at Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow.  I was hooked. I was also an eavesdropper, newly arrived to poetry. The traffic light kept changing from green to red over and over again. Stop, go, stop, go, as twilight settled in and the stars appeared.

Dream Journal: making coffee for John

Last night I dreamed that I was at a rustic cabin retreat deep in the mountains, long shadows and minimal sunlight. We were a gathering of poets. Someone asked me to make coffee, and though I searched everywhere for a pot to boil water in, I found nothing suitable. I had seen one earlier, but I let it get away. And then I couldn’t find it again. I rummaged through dark cabinets. On the bottom shelf, there was an ornate plastic punch bowl with a metallic sheen, matching cups, and a variety of small vases, but nothing big enough for boiling water over a camp stove, or an old fireplace. John Oliver Simon, who had asked me for the coffee, said he would take me to a place where there were larger vessels. I thought it odd at the time because he had me ride piggyback, so I rode him like a horse and centaur as we traveled across creeks and meadows, traversing glorious mountain passes that took my breath away. The blue netting covering his face was like a mask, but it was slipping, so I straightened it for him, tenderly stroking the face of my old love. We never did find the pots. The journey was the goal. When I awoke, it was as if he were Charon and we were crossing the River Styx, but I had no coins by which to pay him. It was another visitation dream. And somehow it felt like an old debt had been repaid.

the last travel dream I had with John was right before his death: John Oliver Simon dream

A HOARDER OF SMALL THINGS

I am a hoarder of small things with plain stories to tell 

if you look closely enough. How that one lone yellow die, 

buried in the dirt—its lost mates, long gone—

still hankered for the darkness of the leather liar’s cup 

that tumped down on the mahogany bar like a fist

at Speck McAuliffe‘s Lagunitas Lodge. He rolled the dice.

The long mahogany bar was my runway, sticky as flypaper, 

where I could crawl and observe the adults up close. 

My aunts, thirsty after picking berries in the creek,

amid sizzling crickets and relentless summer heat, 

nursed tall Tom Collinses garnished with lime, while I

was thinking of the pies that my grandmother would make.

And Old Pete, the last real cowboy, a mule skinner,

perched on a stool at the end of the bar that no one dared use, 

rolled his cigarettes one-handed, and lived out back 

in a Slipstream, with his strawberry roan in a makeshift corral.

And Speck wiping down the bar with a threadbare rag,

told stories punctuated by a nasal Boston drone 

by way of the Mission, like a politician or petty king.

Those ivory dice decided the transitory fate of so many, 

from who was going to buy the next round, calling out

from snake eyes to boxcars, was there enough time 

to knock back another one, or to leave the wife behind?

After all, it was midday. In the cavernous darkness of that bar, 

time itself was suspended. On leave. But no one ever turned 

down the politics of a free boilermaker or a whiskey neat.

I listened to their unfinished stories that bled like old wounds, 

ate the odd snack of stick matches or cigarette butts, seeds  

that even Pete’s mean old green parrot, rejected.

He swore like a sailor every time that liar’s cup hit the bar, 

and churlishly rejected my childish offerings,

no matter how carefully I tried to disguise them 

amid the hulls of sunflower seeds. His baleful yellow eyes

like small suns followed me as he edged closer 

to grab my finger, his black leathery tongue 

and cruel beak seeking revenge on all humankind.

8/10 Write On! Susie Terence 

• See part 1, The collector

The collector

I collect photos of landscapes and paintings that move me, an inspiration bank for new art. I never know what will grease the wheel but I do know if I collect enough imagery, it fuels the tank and fills me with longing, or if I am lucky, an urge to create. I don’t know which photos I will use, or how it will come out. That isn’t the point. Captured beauty, whether my own work or by the eyes of others, is still beauty.

Sometimes I gather chert and jasper red and green, abstract art embedded in lakes or creeks. Jewels glistening in sunlight and I feel rich when I add quartz and agates to the dragon’s wealth, in the layer of memory. Our small creek filled with treasures in the crimson roots of the alder caressing the water, so like blood, tiny dark seed cones like announcing Christmas in summer.

Sometimes I collect old coins and nameless iron gleaned from the garden, and admire the way that copper mimics the plants with their verdigris dreams. The rudder board of an old boat, brass screws. And my latest treasure, a big brass number six, part of someone’s address purloined from I know not where. The nail hole to mount it to a door or fence, both long gone, turned it into a swan’s eye and once I saw that bird I couldn’t let it go. It rides shotgun on my dashboard along with the river rocks and a brass cleat waiting for a jib line to tighten the sail.

8/10 Write On! Susie Terence

Lá Fhéile Lúghnasa Sona Daoibh go léir

Lá Fhéile Lúghnasa Sona Daoibh go léir. Lá fhéile' translates as 'feast day', 'lá' is 'day'. Sona translates to 'happy'. Sort of. And, 'daoibh' means 'to youse'. Singular is ‘duit.’ And ‘go léir’ is an extra everybody and y’all thrown in for good measure. The ‘go’ is a timeless oddity sometimes translated as may (you) as in may you all have a right grand time. And if you wanted to toss some extra blessings in you’d tack on Beannachtaí to the front end of that sentence.

“Peace to sky. Sky to earth. Earth under sky, strength in each, a cup full, full of honey, mead in plenty. —Cath Tánaiste Maige Tuired (2nd Battle of Moytura).

And as promised, the second installment of Lúghnasadh. 

Lúnasa, the beginning of harvest season, technically begins Aug 7 because our modern calendar doesn’t quite jive or jibe if you prefer, with cross-quarter celebrations juxtaposed halfway  between the solstice and equinox. 

Lúghnasadh is one of four agrarian festivals, once called Brón Trogain (the earth’s sorrow), followed by Samhain, Imbolc and Beltane. The Welsh equivalent of Lúghnasadh is Gŵyl Awst, in Breton, Gouel Eost (August festival), and the English equivalent is Lammastide (I mentioned that last week). 

The beginning of the harvest season is called Lúnasa in modern Irish (also the name for August—no Caesar here!), Lùnastal, in Scots Gaelic, and: Luanistyn in Manx/Vannin. But it’s the same bringing in the sheaves party however it’s spelled.

Dedicated to the god Lugh Lámhfhada, Lugh of the Long Arm—master of all the arts, this end of summer celebration marks the beginning of harvest season, also referred to as Lammastide, and to the Tailteann Games. Lúghnasadh ( -násad means an assembly) was a time of visiting holy wells, with lots of feasting, fighting, and fu- I mean, matchmaking, and horse and cattle trading. Possibly some raiding too.

The earliest written reference recording the Games and festivities is during the 15th c. in the redaction of Tochmarc Emire ("the Wooing of Emer"). Writing came rather late to Ireland, a country steeped in oral tradition since time immemorial, during the early Medieval era—there was a lot of catching up to do to record and preserve the distant past. First came the threat of the Vikings to annihilate Irish culture, followed by the larcenous British Monarchy. My grandmother said, Sinn Féin: Ourselves, Alone. Or, We, Together are saving culture story by story, no matter how imperfectly told.

The shape of the universe

Long ago, when I was struggling to grasp a concept of how the universe was shaped, I was thinking along the lines of the time-space continuum, gawd only knows why, how the past and the present could coexist at the same time. Using Kekule’s concept of problem-solving via dreams,  I dreamt that the universe was vast grid system by way an explanation, or perhaps it was merely a metaphor. But in the dream the lines didn’t run parallel or horizontal, no flat universe grids (that model is only for cats, those gravity-masters), the grid lines bent up at the edges, the way a straw looks like it’s in two places at once in a glass of water, and then it became circular, or bent. Sort of like being inside a Möbius strip. A warped universe. So I spent the morning making Möbius strip timelines with beginning, middle, and end. That model accounted for the past and present, but not the future. Epic model fail. The universe is roundish or sphering with a twist. Or two. Maybe even a Gordian knot. And we’re trapped on the inside, like mitochondria. The gravity of this situation is flawed. Not to mention the timeline. The origins of the universe is/was a singularity of infinite mass turning itself inside out, becoming a multiverse. Everything to-ing and fro-ing while expanding and contracting  at the same time.

DIGGING

As I excavated an old flower bed 

covered with years debris and duff,

the tump and pitch of the shovel changed songs

as I delved deeper into rocks and loam. 

Green chert and jasper emerged, obsidian flakes.

I dug past the debris, old paint rollers, beer cans,

shredded plastic, onto an age of opalized bottles.

Then, deeper into the dark jumbled ivy roots,

an artifact from my halcyon days at College of Marin.

My sculpture of Fat Kate on her throne,

emerged from tangled slumber, a relic of the past, 

when love was young & all things were possible.

Then, a Greek kylix, a jughandled goblet 

glazed with cobalt and rutile, a wine-dark ocean

streaked with sea foam and silvered feathers, 

oxidized iron green swaths across a borate bowl. 

Thano always told us to destroy our flawed darlings.

But we were young and thought we knew better.

The coarse clay that we mixed in the pugmill 

was gritted with pulverized pots, our failures, 

recycled to give strength and courage to new pots. 

What survived were not the masterpieces, 

but those failed vessels, the rejects we threw back.

The handle and spout held onto the flawed teapot, 

50 years underground. Hardpan packed into the belly 

insulated against the atrocities of weather and ice. 

It was like an archaeological dig excavating the past 

as I dug deeper, uncovering treasure after treasure, 

raku pots shards that once glistened in metallic hues, 

now mottled with age from the acid soil that leached 

bright copper carapaces into celadon streaks.

Only an oxblood pinchpot held its rubied stance 

against the rough markers of time.

I dug down deeper until I found the old coins, 

quarters and pennies from 1929 and 1937. 

Terminus post quem. Until I could go no further.

When our family moved here to this land, 

how much was a penny worth then, 

and what were their dreams made of?

8/3 Write On! Terri Glass

Lammastide and Lúnasa

Image: “Lammastide,” British postage stamp, 1981.

Lúnasa, the beginning of harvest season, technically begins Aug 7 because our modern calendar doesn’t quite fit with the cross-quarter day celebrations between the solstice and equinox. Dedicated to the god Lugh Lámhfhada, this harvest celebration and Tailteann Games, marks the beginning of the harvest season, also celebrated as Lammastide in Britain and Northern Ireland. I’ll give Lugh his due on Aug 7.

Today, Lammas Day, aka Loaf Mass Day, from Hlaef-masse, is celebrated Aug 1. The hlafsenunga, 'blessing of bread,' from segnian, is 'to make the sign of the cross.’ The Auld Lammas Fair, a traditional fair dating back to the Renaissance, is held in Ballycastle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, every year on the last Monday and Tuesday of August. There is also a Welsh variant, Gŵyl Awst that ties in with Lammas Day rituals. 

In a book of Anglo-Saxon charms (no, not Bede who was strangely silent on the subject), Anglo Saxon monks blessed the first loaf of the new harvest, the Lammas bread, decorated and baked in the shape of a sheave, an owl, or a corn dolly, broken into four farls, and tucked in the corners of the barn to protect the new harvest from vermin and harm. 

Corn dollies were made with the last sheaf of grain so that the spirit of the corn had a place to winter over until they were turfed into the ground during the first plow. (Corn means grain, not maize.) The time of the agrarian goddess and the Greenman, a time of blessing of the First Fruits of harvest. 

The Old English name for autumn is hærfest. A sheep was let loose in the stubble fields and whoever caught it got to keep it. It was also rent day. In many parts of England, tenants brought sheaves of freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on the first day of August. The landlords in turn, gave their tenants a gift of a pair of gloves at Lammastide to show their authority and benevolence. 

A day that debts were settled, labourers hired, households moved, contracts and promises made. And from that, arises the term, “latter Lammas,” a day that will never come. And of course, there is John Barleycorn, who must die.

HEADED FOR CHIAPAS

We rode the overnight bus cross-country, 

snaking our way from the coast up dirt roads, 

13 hours of hairpin bends threaded

up steep mountain passes like a tapestry.

You can only hold your breath for so long.

Near the Chiapas border we stopped at a pullout

to stretch our legs, while waiting for the engine to cool, 

clouds of fireflies circled us. We were so high up,

I mistook them for the stars overhead.

7/27/22 rev. 2/18

WORD BY WORD

WORD BY WORD

     —For John Oliver Simon

Because I wanted to write about risk, I couldn’t choose. 

Because I had a plethora of memories to choose from, 

I drew a blank, I was a stalled page, a blank screen

where you sit in a small storm, isolated by the elements. 

Sometimes writing is like that, a clean slate 

waiting for you to say something, anything at all. 

But I’m in love with the act of longhand, 

that journey of letters scrying across the sky, 

proclaiming acts of birdsong and mountain passes, 

earned word by word, step by step.

Was it the time I scaled Half Dome, 

and hung my legs over the ledge, 

listened to silly music rise up from the valley floor? 

Or the time we found our own Thank God ledge 

on Mt. Tallac where I hovered like a bird on the brink 

between land and air as he shoved me into the rock face?

In that moment the cliff taught me balance, 

not just a matter of passively occupying space, 

but conforming to it, becoming one with the mountain—

which required an earned respect. And trust in the other.

That time we scaled the rock chimney at Sonora Pass

where we proclaimed eternal love at the summit,

the sky and the clouds as our witness.

But the journey back down the chute was treacherous. 

Portent of things to come. I dislodged a rock 

that clattered deep into the crevasse, where I found 

a small pocket of quartz crystals gleaming like stars.

Or was it the time we tested the tensile faith 

of that rope bridge as we inched across the gorge,

the headwaters of the Urubamba River

rapids assuaging the stark hunger of the rocks 

gnashing their teeth below us?

It seems we are always on the verge of leaving 

each other behind. That is the dance.

When it came to all the men I’ve loved, 

I never learned where the trail ended, how to cleave,

or where the river began, and without wings, 

I leapt blindly, followed the vagaries 

of the heart bursting into thin air,

in search of my sullied craft.

7/27 Write On! Terri Glass

Facebook punking 4.0

Facebook is either broken or it’s found a new form of gaslighting/ punishment for those of us who think outside the box. Right now every single comment on my posts comes back as a broken link. When my Facebook account goes wonkers, I find myself asking how long am I in the Facebook doghouse this time? Set to the O Brother Where Art Thou song, You’re in the Jailhouse Now.

It seems like there is a yellow card warning, and a red card warning system, with a secret extended time out period ,followed by Facebook shenanigans, and ultimately jail. My feisty friends Andrew and Tori know it well.

Turns out the punitive time out warning penalty is much longer than the actual duration of the offense. So we’re on active Big Brother watch. I’ve been issued both yellow and red warnings for using language figuratively. Facebook doesn’t like metaphor or aphorisms either, and says it goes against “community standards.” It’s a good thing James Joyce is not a Facebook user, is all I can say.

Certain words trigger the Facebook AI po-lice bots. No one knows exactly what they are. But I have figured out some of them: Slav-  ery. Kil. il as in Bill is one. Nuk with an e, as in “to microwave something” and the use of cho- with a p, as in “to crop a photo,” triggered a few of my latest warnings. Hate speech this time. do I have to get inventive in order to use those words? Guess I’ll work out my aggression by Chopin some wood. 

Naming one’s duty

Naming one’s duty is a tricky business. I suppose I could be a tree or a horse, but then what? Having shaken off the shackles of Catholicism, the Lord’s Prayer is too deeply ingrained in my psyche to casually cast it aside. Shall I name my last request? Give it a reason? Shall I finish it off with a bird of praise? Pluck its feathers from my teeth?

7/24/22

RAINCORPS

Out of death comes life. 

Carrion wasps lift the fleece of a dead sheep, 

make it seem alive. It rises up like a cloud 

takes flight in the long sky, 

turns to rain falling on parched earth.

7/24

adjective noun verb adjective noun

Dark death emerges, shining life,

dour clouds growl, dancing wind,

fluttering stars weep, o parched earth.

7/24 Poets & Writers workshop, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Exquisite corpse form

OAKFIRE

Yet another wildfire, 

I come undone again, 

the firescars of summer

emerge, we carry 

the scars deep inside, 

as we watch mesmerized by ash 

smoke calligraphing the sky, 

while the skeletons of trees, 

ancient oak and madrone 

hold vigil with wind and clouds. 

Living in this world of fire 

we constantly check the horizon 

for signs of the approaching inferno, 

we make plans, and wonder 

if we can make it home in time 

to grab memories packed in bags. 

Everything comes down to this:

our lives are compartmentalized 

and categorized according to 

want and need.

7/24 Poets & Writers workshop,Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, nonce based on Quincy Trope's Seven Elevens 

OH, WIND

OH, WIND

     —for Pádraig Ó Tuama

Oh, wind, with your restless hands 

rippling the deep grasses on the hillsides, 

your invisible corpse suppressing the morning fog 

until it flops over like a cat wanting a belly rub, 

your breath pleating the hems of a lake 

or fanning the wildfires scorching the earth 

until we succumb to detachment,

until there is no other choice left except now.

Oh, wind, bring me detachment,

bring me a place of no boundaries 

because we daily drown in the detritus of dailiness

and sometimes we forget the larger picture.

Bring  me no countries, no alliances, 

until we are no longer earthbound. 

Oh, let me be more like the birds of prey 

circling updrafts and searching for a pattern 

larger than the confines of the mind.

May it be.

7/24 Poets & Writers workshop based on a Pádraig Ó Tuama prayer exercise a Collect poem

In the name of the bee, the butterfly, the breeze. Amen  —Emily Dickinson

Published in Fly Like the Clouds of Time, 2022 California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology

Fugitive colors on Vincent van Gogh’s paintings

Vincent van Gogh, Bouquet of Irises, 1890, the background was lemon yellow.

I can’t help but wonder what this painting of Vincent van Gogh’s irises would have looked like when it was new, the yellow-green cast would not have been there and the blues would’ve been more intense. Perhaps even purple. His Bouquet of Irises against a Yellow Background (above) probably depicted purple irises, not blue ones. The yellow-green background to has shifted color and was probably closer to Naples yellow, as Vincent described it as a lemon yellow.

Irises painted May, 1889, at the St. Paul-de-Mausole asylum, in Arles, were once purple.

How much color degradation by photo-oxidation, or chemical reaction to varnishes added later has happened since this canvas was painted? Did Vincent use cadmium yellow or lead-based chrome yellow? Or yellow ochre? Zinc yellow favored by one of his contemporaries, Georges Seurat, too, is unstable. In other words the colors we see in La Grande Jatte are no longer true. They have shifted. 

The invention of new synthetic colors for textile dyes during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s coupled with the revolutionary invention of paint in a tube in the 1850s, directly led to the era of Modern Art. Not only had the painter’s palette, brightened considerably, painters were having a field day, literally, out painting in the fields, en plein aire. having forsaken the confines of the studio for the bucolic countryside. 

There was a major painting revolution going on. Artists were painting directly from life, not from smudged field notes and memory. Impressionism was in full swing, followed by Post-Impressionism. Color was king. No more drab chiaroscuro paintings. But artist also needed bold new colors that were more stable. There’s the rub.

What we are seeing now in many of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings—especially the yellows—is not what Vincent painted. Chrome-yellow turns brownish-green when exposed to sunlight. Ditto that with the reds and blue-purples. In his famous Bedroom at Arles painting and the many Irises paintings, Vincent used red lake with organic bug-based cochineal, and both were fugitive colors that either darkened, or faded to white. As it is, those white flowers in the field were once red poppies. And the brown buttercups were once yellow.

If we are to understand Vincent van Gogh’s palette choices, we need to know what pigments and binder mediums he used. And how they have changed colors with the passage of time. For example, linseed oil, the most-favored vehicle that binds pigments to the canvas, yellows and darkens with age. Too bad safflower (sunflower) oil wasn’t yet invented. For me, this is all sort of a hold my beer kind of epiphany. I need to recalibrate a long-standing notion of what I think of as Vincent‘s color palette.

It’s a good thing Vincent mixed cobalt blue pigment into his irises as well, otherwise we would be viewing a field of white irises. At least I think he used cobalt. He probably couldn’t have afforded lapis lazuli or ultramarine blue. There was a new synthetic ultramarine blue on the market, but it was terribly pricey. And surely he knew that azurite goes rogue and turns teal green or even black with age. 

Ants in my tea

 My morning tea had a little extra zing to it—with several stranded ants madly racing around the rim of the cup. A piquant acquired taste. Or should I say piqu-ant? Since the sugar bowl is locked down tight in a clicky-lid dish, it had to be from the sugar spoon. Formalic acid, like drinking sourdough yeast starter.

TOTAL ECLIPSE ON THE BIG ISLAND, JULY 11, 1991

On the Big Island, in the City of Refuge, 

how we all stood at attention, saluting the morning sun 

as the mist parted, and we watched the bright orb 

slipping into a nightgown of stars. 

How we gasped as the stars reasserted their raiments 

and the goddess was well pleased with her handiwork. 

The black flower of the sun blossomed 

in the wilderness of the sky as the moon covered her face, 

and the solar flares became petals, a corona of fire.

Oh how we were rendered speechless, 

uttered primal guttural phrases as Bailey’s Tears 

dripped stringed pearls of light into the darkness. 

During totality, you could see with the naked eye 

the silhouette of the mountains of the moon.

And time itself stood still. Even the raucous wind fell silent.

And when the fabled Diamond Ring appeared, 

the couple on the beach, draped in feathered cloaks,

exchanged vows and leis. It was either a good time 

or a very foolish time to get married. And why not?

The moon and the sun continued their odd love affair

and the confused birds all went back to sleep.

The waves stopped conversing, the wind and fell silent.

I sat in a tidepool where bright fish gathered,

cloaking me with their yellowed brilliance 

that faded into grey in the darkness, I held them 

in my arms as if I were the madonna of fishes, 

while sea turtles hovered like islands or planets.

I took the flower from my hair, a night blooming cereus, 

and let it go into the sea, waited for the light to return.

7/20. Write On! with Terri Glass

Cormac McCarthy’s Olivetti

       —Cormac McCarthy July 20,1933-June 13, 2023

I can almost hear William Faulkner sluicing a vein with all that O-negative blood resonating in Cormac McCarthy’s writing. A seething ghost informant. Both of us distantly related to the first Cormac McCarthy, having canted back to kiss the Blarney Stone. In love with conjunctions. And, and, and…. A man who couldn’t keep his day jobs, who carried a 100-watt bulb so he could write at night—no matter what fleabag hotel room he called home. And I love the fact that Cormac used an old Olivetti that cost $50 from a Knoxville pawnshop. And that hand-to-mouth living from grant to grant, a story I know well. A well that goes dry when you least expect it. Nothing but dust and bitter darkness aligned with distant stars. There is something poignant about Cormac auctioning off his 50-year-old Olivetti for a quarter million in order to fund his writing residency at the Santa Fe Institute. A haven of scientists, and of course, Cormac. And a friend found him a replacement Olivetti for $11 in a thrift store. Those Olivettis were the Italian race-car typewriters of writers, sleek, svelte, built low to the ground, and extremely transportable. He’d take the old Olivetti to the gas station for its yearly blow-out with the air hose. To think 5 million words poured forth like a river of regret from the paten of that old Olivetti. Talk about mileage. May he be granted 5 million more words. I learned to render my random scribblings into poetry on a enameled powder-blue Olivetti purloined from my mom’s paramour. That Olivetti was more like a moped than a race car. The matching zippered case was like a mod-squad mini dress. White go-go boots and all. All those bottles of whiteout. But when I couldn’t find new ribbons for it, I let it go. I had to let it go.

Fund the National Endowment for the Arts

I have worked a lifetime in the schools, as an artist in residence, 50 years to be exact, and without the National Endowment for the Arts, which also funds our state and local arts partnerships, I could not have reached so many students where traditional teaching methods have failed them. You see, I am dyslexic. Albeit undiagnosed. The arts are the only thing that saved my life. I am both a visual artist and a poet. Because of art I learned to read. Because of art, I became a writer, and have won numerous awards for my work. Art allowed me to access my intellect, and also to grasp critical thinking skills—and my life goal has been to share this process with young students where traditional educational practices have failed them. This was all was made possible through the auspices of the NEA, and the CAC. Please support the arts. Art literally saves lives.

A weird spa day

When I saw the price of BioElements body cream on eBay I nearly fainted. $65 for 4 ounces? I got the bright idea to spruce up what was left of my old (read rancid) BioElements body cream with my equally old essential oils. 

What I thought was lavender oil was lemon oil that spilled al over the place—now I smell like a piano in a used furniture store. It seems like such a good idea at the time using up all that old oil. The little plastic lid that was supposed to control how much oil comes out of the essential oil bottle flew off—oil spilled everywhere. 

My Winix air purifier is going completely nuts, it’s in the red with all four fans going for all they’re worth. Soon it will achieve lift-off. Luckily because the lemon oil was so thick I was able to mop most of it up. But some was on my hands which I rubbed on my feet. I rubbed the excess oil on my feet and legs as I had nowhere else to wipe it….damage control. Put it this way, my toes think they are well lubed honkey-tonk piano keys at this point. 

I’m showing the grain all right. I was able to mop up quite a bit of the lemon oil and smear on some furniture. The furniture is happy, my air purifier is not. My little teak pullout desk board is now very shiny. Now I can’t go outside into the sun because lemon oil is phototropic.

What makes this entire story ludicrous is that I did it twice, first with Rosehip oil. The lid dolloper literally flew off. Rose hip oil all over the place. I did not expect to have two freak accidents today. It seems when I’m going to royally fuck up I do it in spades. 

Ophiuchus the 13th constellation reinstated

On top of everything else, according to NASA, the 13th constellation is being reinstated, after being in Facebook Jail for some 2000 years, thus bumping the astrological signs as we know it out of whack. I am not willing to give up my star sign Sagittarius to become a Scorpio—even if I was born on the cusp—so Ophiuchus gets a prime time slot in the sky. I only just learned about it the other night, on Crimson Rivers, a gory French murder series from Walter Presents. I can’t even pronounce it, and the snake thing, well… sounds so Medusian. Not liking this moment of synchronicity at all. Serpens Caput indeed. Give me a centaur any day over a scorpion or a snake. Had to learn to like scorpions and snakes. I used to have nightmares about scorpions. It took a lot of willpower to overcome my fear and to appreciate them. Oh yeah, and today is National Celebrate a Snake Day. It’s all in the stars. Ssssssss.

Backside of the moon

My flabber is gasted and my mind blown daily by these NASA photos. The back ass of the moon. When’s the last time you saw that, if ever? You do know that the moon always keeps its face towards the earth. I think that earth image is Baja California. This photo may be from the space station. John Butcher said it might be a Photoshop overlay since the ISS is between the earth and moon, only  230 miles out. One theory down. Jeremy M Shaver said there’s another satellite beyond the ISS space station that could’ve recorded the photo. Edward Carl Hylin said it’s a genuine NASA photo of the far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, taken by DSCOVR. Thanks, guys!

From NASA: “Behold the moment when the moon passed between Nasa's Deep Space Climate Observatory and the Earth, allowing the satellite to capture this rare image of the moon's far side in full sunlight. We don't see this side of the moon. 

This is because the moon is tidally locked to the earth and doesn't rotate. So we only see one face of the moon from the earth. Humans may likely land on the far side of the moon before the end of this Century. This is indeed beautiful shot.”

📸 NASA

Patrice Vecchione workshop: Write your life open, journal

Patrice Vecchione says to write with your heart, write with your eyes, and write with your life wide open.

What am I looking for within this writing life? To be open is to change, to not be static, to ask what if, and let’s see, maybe include curiosity and exploration, and especially trust. The closed fist and the open hand, the relief of trust and the infinite possibilities that we, as we sit at our work, will uncover truth. 

We are open, free, but not always able to speak about life as we feel it, but we mostly choose not to. So take my words, these words as strong as my mind. I would use my words to write near and far. In Galway the bird stands for all things and Saint Francis and the sea.

1. At the center of my life is my work, the calm within the urge to create. Everything revolves around it. It is how I define myself, how I see myself. I was one of those children who failed miserably at school, I learned late and I learned slow. As if in a fog. Reading outwitted me until the end of third grade. I can still remember the day I learned to read.

The overwhelming feeling I am left with at school was that I was hopelessly sad. But at the center of my life was the quest to explore distant vistas, discover secret valleys that led me up to the mountain passes where euphoria sleeps. John Denver called it Rocky Mountain high, but, for me, it was every mountain pass. 

Maybe it’s the exhaustion or a lack of oxygen, but where I feel most alive is when I am in the mountains. My knees know their relative age, so hiking is now problematic. There was a time when I hiked all the fireroads of West Marin road and the sky was the limit. 

And I feel that I am not writing what I should be writing about—par for the course. Sometimes writing is a shield and when I crow about my accomplishments, I feel guilty, I am so used to being slapped down. Is it a Catholic thing? Pride goeth before the fall? Or has it more to do with not tempting fate? Not tempting the devil to eke out his revenge on your success. Not tempting the furies to take it back a few more millennia.

Jumping Jupiter!

Jupiter as it has never been imagined before. The James Webbie infrared cam has outdone itself. I am gob-smacked. OK, so the image is computer enhanced, making the invisible visible! But beauty x beauty = beauty. It’s a real gas. Planet, that is. No land. But when my eyes land on this—no words. WOW. More images here:

Approaching my 70th birthday

Approaching my 70th birthday, my journey having arrived at the home stretch and the question is, "how are you going to live out the rest of your days" arises. Yesterday‘s mail from Social Security arrived with dire warnings that time was running out, that I  needed to register before my 70th birthday, brought it all home, full circle. It’s suddenly all very real. This aging process. Time is running out. I didn't sign up for this. Yet here I am. I feel lucky having lived a life rich in creativity and adventure. All the travel I’ve done continues to inform my sullied art. I got the adventuring out of the way in my 30s and 40s while I still had knees that worked. I swam in the Galapagos, traversed the Andes, straddled the equator, went to the USSR bearing gifts, lived in St. Petersburg and Amsterdam. how I loved those cities of light. I loved fiercely and mourned when the relationships inevitably failed. But I was always running from the past. It’s frightening to see how so many people begin that cognitive slope of decline long before they reach this age, but I must be one of the lucky ones. My mind is busy putting together thoughts and rebuttals, always ready for the next argument, always ready to challenge the norm, as if life itself depended upon it. But sometimes the fear rises up like an unwelcome tide. When I was 20 I couldn’t imagine myself at 50. When I was 50 I couldn’t imagine myself at 70. And yet here I am inside this uncharted wilderness of age, the same landscape of my childhood. What I’ve gained is knowledge but that’s cumulative. Knowledge is not wisdom. Joseph Campbell talked of the hero’s journey, those rites of passage, not gathering statistics or fact. Like what Einstein said, creativity is more important than knowledge. My hero’s journey, having survived a childhood where I was shunted off from parent to grandparent, with aunts and uncles threatening to either adopt me, or to send me off to boarding school, left me shaken, with no sense of home—so the hills became my refuge. I was a feral child. And from that world of uncertainty, I retreated to the realm of my horse, she became my escape, my solace. As I rode the long ridges of West Marin, we were like needle and thread stitching together the carpet of a storied life as we traversed fire roads, into a map that I could navigate and find my way back home. How am I going to live out the rest of my days, as best as I can, savoring the odd moments of ordinary beauty, while climbing that steep slope of that last mountain pass with one foot in front of the other.

7/14 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick

THUNDER MOON 3 haiku

In the sky’s pale arms

wind whispers secrets to the pines,
gibbous moon rising.

Thunder Moon spreading

a shimmering quilt of stars,
disturbs night’s dark song.

Buck Moon’s throbbing heart

sings a song of silvered light

& adamantine stars.


Moors are not Black

A Facebook poster from LA, in an epic sleight of hand, repurposed the story of Calafia (yes, it’s spelled that way) to fit his own modern socio-political needs, wrote, “The state of California was named after the mythical Black(Moorish) Queen Califia. (Khalifa).” Ok. The story of Calafia stems from a series of medieval stories translated into Spanish from the Portuguese. The term in Spanish and Portuguese, that means dark or black, but not white—is a case of what gets lost in translation. This idea that Amazon warrior queen Calafia was a Black African is a modern American binary interpretation.

Then the poster went on to say, “It is well documented that of the 44 people who founded the City of Los Angeles, 26 were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. What is amazing and not taught in California schools is that the majority of the founders of San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent, or that Orange County, Beverly Hills and Malibu were once owned by people of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. According to the story, California was an island where only Black (Moorish) women lived, gold was the only metal and pearls were as common as rocks. The women were the most powerful women in the world. When Cortez arrived in California, searching for this mythical queen, her influence on him was so severe, he paid tribute to this powerful Black (Moorish) Woman Queen Califia by naming California after her. California literally means, “the land where Black (Moorish) women live." History has been hidden for a long time.” 

Sigh. Of course he provided no references for that last bit of repurposed history. Whereas it is true that Hernán Córtez named the long peninsula Baja California Sur, thinking it was an island, after Calafia. But we seem to be mixing apples with oranges. Calafia was an Amazon from the Hyperborean north, beyond the realm civilized (Classical) Mediterranean world. She was other, therefore exotic. And the term negra could mean swarthy, or dark, but not African. And certainly not a Moor. This is like saying Cleopatra, a Ptolemaic Greek, was black.

Also the term, Moor is not synonymous with Black. If anything, it’s the opposite. A Moor can be anyone from Arabia to Iberia to North África—Egypt, Alexandria, Morocco Mauritania—which probably means homeland the Moors—regardless of skin color, and the Berbers of North Africa were all called Moors— because they converted to Islam, and spoke Arabic—and literally shoehorned their own culture into Arabic ideals in order to be considered part of the elite ruling classes.

The term Moorish refers more to religion and the Arabic language/culture rather than to skin color. Also, for centuries, the Arabs were the undisputed ruling class, so to self-identify as a Moor was to be part of the ruling elite, or not be a slave (Black). The matrilineal Berbers were in a fix and they had to wholesale invent patrilineal Semitic genealogies in order to fit into an Arabized world.

The Habesha Ethiopians, Eritreans (Abyssinians), and Tuareg—who self-identify as Berbers, though dark-skinned, do not consider themselves as Black, but Semitic, though some are also Christian. And for the record, sub-Saharan and Sahel Africans, the Arabized Maghreb Berbers, aka Moors, during the 15th c., are light-skinned.

Sadly when the Berbers began to identify with the ruling class Arabs they gave up their matrilineal society and had to construct a patrilineal Arabian lineage which create it all kinds of havoc—especially for the Berber women who lost most of their freedoms in a Moorish world.

Moorish means more than anything else—meant non-Christian, therefore, in European eyes, exotic. Shakespeare’s Othello was a Moor. You see where this leads to. Let’s just say, it’s complicated. And if you actually read the novella from which the name comes, Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) penned or collected by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the late 15th c., Calafia is referred to as an Amazonian warrior woman who lived in the far north—beyond civilization.

So here we have a strong woman, with warrior superpowers, from a post-Moorish subjugated world, call it Iberia, where women collectively had few personal rights. Perhaps the model for Calafia was a Sub-Saharan Greek, or a Maghreb woman. 

Note the use of the terms Moor and Arabic in this quote, taken from references of 14th c. Arabic scholars….

“In contemporary Hassaniyya Arabic, the language spoken by the Moors (Arabs) of Mauritania and Northern Mali, the terms ‘Whites’/‘Blacks’ (b ̄ıda ̄ n/su ̄ da ̄ n) are used to distinguish between Moors who are, in status, freemen, and those who have a slave past. A different Arabic word for ‘Blacks’ (kwa ̄r) is used to identify non-Moorish Africans. In contemporary Tuareg discourse, colour-based terminology is used to distinguish internal social status and to denote those who are termed ‘Blacks’ (koualnin), whether people of servile origin within Tuareg society, or to refer to non-Tuareg ‘Blacks’…. In the pre-colonial Arabic literature of the area, the term ‘su ̄da ̄n’ is most often used to refer to ‘Blacks’ who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Moors…” THE JOURNAL OF NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES

But Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), a novela redacted by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the early 15th century, is a sequel to a popular 14th c. chivalric romance novela, Amadís de Gaula. While the novela suffers from a lack of literary style, it achieved notability “in 1862, when Edward Everett Hale concluded that the novel was the origin of the name California.”

“Sabed que ala diestra mano de las Indias ouo una Isla llamada California mucho llegada ala parte del paraiso terrenal la qual sue poblada de mugeres negras sin que algun uaro entre ellas ouiesse: que casi como las amazonas …”

OK, not only do we have Amazons from somewhere beyond the Black Sea, but also a mythical knight from Gaul. A far cry from Africa. Here’s the thing, the Spanish term negra/o is also used to refer to any people with swarthy or dark-colored skin (both native and foreign). Including the Moors who were considered freemen vs. slaves. 

• Califia, warrior queen
• POETRY TEACHING NOTES: Naming Califia
• CALIFIA SPEAKS:
• I DREAM OF CALIFORNIA

WAKING SLOW

I wanted to waken slow 

and write something holy and profound 

like finding a buried treasure trove 

on those gleyed trails deep in the forest. 

I wanted to be paid in birdsong and stellar light, 

reflecting off mirrored montane lakes 

deep in the mountains where carnivores

hunt on glaciers older than civilization. 

I wanted to waken with a cup of coffee in hand 

ready to render those fleeting moments 

into words, polished and sharpened 

with nuances of carborundum 

where the opinions of poets 

aren’t brushed off linen tablecloths 

by the baseless butler brooms of apathy. 

I wanted to mend the rents and tears in the fabric

of those missed moments in the past 

with a polished thread, where the darning needle

becomes a silvered road to stitch 

all those lost moments into a quilt,

those lost moments that have slipped 

irrevocably into a skein of untended fields. 

Those golden what if moments 

where only in hindsight, do you realize, that yes,

there were always other choices to be made,

but the bouncer at the trapdoor of the heart said no. 

What did he know of love?

I wish I had married the men I loved 

at least once, maybe even twice. 

I wanted to look back and say that I lived 

every moment fleshed in the round, 

that the prisoners were of my own choosing. 

I wanted to swing on the long arms of that clock,

stop time in the middle of the town square, 

dangle my legs into the air like a heron or a stork, 

say, that clock in Prague that charts constellations,

but my gut said no, and stupidly I listened. 

I wish I had traveled more. Just like that time 

I turned down a yes to the Great Barrier Reef, 

or to the Outer Hebrides dressed in indigo twilight.

I always thought there would be more time, 

but now as I stand at the lintel of that waiting room 

where age, and the erosion of memory is palpable.

I want to contemplate the sand left in the hourglass

as an end to a life well lived, as best as I was able,

considering the crossroads of familial inheritance

I was given—with no roadmap, or Michelin guide. 

InterestI squandered my days curating the detritus of the past.

All those portmanteaus of wrinkled what ifs

lost luggage circling all the carousels of the world

waiting for someone to take them home.

I wanted to inhabit a place of memory where love 

was the only viable stamp in my passport.

I wanted my heart to say yes yes yes.

7/13 Write On! with Terri Glass

First views from the James Webb Space Telescope

 “We are stardust, we are golden.” How can you not love this stuff? I’m all agog and a-drool here. Pure poetry to be able to see back in time into the heart of deep space star nurseries. 

The progeny of the 1990 Hubble, the colossal JWST, or Webb infrared telescope camera, was conceived in 1977. After many mishaps and missed dates (it was supposed to be built in 2002, and ready in 2005), it was finally launched Dec. 25, 2021. It took six months for Webbie-cam to reach its destination, and to send back these stellar photos. Wow, I am gobsmacked. This is the most extraordinary news in three years.

Hubble photos took weeks of constant exposure, Webbie-cam managed to see through all that cosmic dust and achieve absolute clarity and enlightenment in just 12 hours. But unlike Hubble and E.T., if something goes wrong, the golden-eyed Webbie cannot call home, nor can astronauts take a space jaunt to tweak it. Webbie has enough juice to last about 20 years. Then it’s lights out. Sayonara, so long and thanks for all the fish.

The gold-plated lens array, designed at Stanford, is 21.7 feet across, the size of a VW Bug, and looks like  bee’s dreampad, or a MI6 prop from GoldenEye. Because it is infrared, it has a special shield array, and orbits in the forever shadow of the moon and earth. “JWST operates in a halo orbit, circling around a point in space known as the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point…” In other words, direct exposure to light or heat would fry Webbie-cam san. It’s like totally chill, dude.

Webb is orbiting a million miles from Earth, and is geared to peer through impenetrable clouds of thick cosmic dust, into the secret hearts and wombs of the earliest galaxies and stars ever born. We are literally looking back billions of years in the space/time continuum with these images of ancient “high redshift” starlight. In this case, red stars are the oldsters. White stars are teenagers. OK, my mind is sufficiently blown, folded, stapled and mutilated.

One of my favorite nebulae along with the Horseshoe, or Omega Nebula, is the Eta Carinae Nebula, host to a hopping hot young star nursery, and home of the Mystic Mountain, the Homunculuse Nebula, and the Keyhole Nebula in the Carina-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, at a mere 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth. And who doesn’t love the gas ring of the Southern Ring Nebula? Aka the Eye of God. And for the record, I’m a Sagittarius. We don’t need no stinking badges.

The bee-ginning of the end is nigh

I always get a kneejerk reaction to the Facebook honeybee memes. At least the circulating memes have been updated to include other (native) bees. Part of the premise of the so-called Einstein quote in conjunction with bees is that we will disappear from the earth in four years as well if the honeybees disappear. But most New World foods are not pollinated by bees—and certainly not by European honeybees. Not that I think extinction of any species is ever a good thing. 

Speaking of truth versus fiction, it’s interesting to note how many memes are but half-truths. They need a pithy quote, an authority figure (in this case Einstein) and an erroneous extrapolation to support the straw argument. It’s not a question of challenging one’s faith or belief, but a willingness to look at both sides of our quasi-scientific biases in order to see the larger picture. 

Folks from my California native plant groups, are focused on helping the environment, but in their misplaced alliance, they don’t see the irony in planting native plant gardens in order to feed non-native European honeybees, which are classified as livestock. Euro-bees certainly help agribusiness, but not necessarily the environment—as they compete with our native bee species. Besides, butterflies want equal rights and equal billing as super-pollinators when the next doomsday bug meme comes along.

Many native bee dining favorites happen to be toxic to European honeybees including buckeye, azalea, rhododendron, death camas, corn lily, mountain laurel, sheep laurel, and locoweeds. Do we next suggest getting rid of those native species because their nectar kills those euro-bees? Gardening articles actually suggest not planting these native species for a more “bee-friendly garden.”

We have 1600 species of native bees in California alone, including Yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, Sweat bee, Halictus spp., Wool carder bee, Anthidium manicatum, Mining bees, Andrena spp., Long-horned bee, Melissodes spp.,  Leafcutter bee, Megachile spp. to name a few. They can drink the toxic nectar, ingest the pollen from these “toxic” plants because they co-evolved with them. 

Here’s the thing, honeybees certainly help the farmers but they don’t necessarily help the environment as they are non-native species—except in Europe and North Africa. If anything, they drive the native populations of insects away, and hog all the local food sources. Check out this National Geographic article. And this Scientific American article.

What’s really killing the honeybees? Pesticides, and varroa mites are a real problem. Monoculture is the real killer. And it is having an illicit affair with Round-up. As for our native bees—they too are threatened by pesticides, loss of habitat, and competition from those Euro-trash bees. 

We need to build more bee hotels and create habitats for our native species too. And maybe send those non-native honeybees to bee school. All is not woe. Italian x Carniolan hybrids, are supposed to be more resistant to the narcotic charms of the buckeye. Sounds like both the nectar and the pollen is toxic—like the hallucinogenic mad honey produced by rhododendron and azaleas. I wonder if honeybees hallucinate?

TODAY I AWOKE

1. Today I awoke wanting a divorce 

from my country of origin, and

I'm not even married, but I’ve had enough 

though we’ve been joined at the hip since birth. 

Somehow I always found a path forward 

even when ideologies clashed like cymbals 

on the bloody killing fields of Vietnam, 

of Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Aleppo.

And the glistening wounded words of my despair,

is the destruction of women’s rights, human rights.

We have spiraled into a second-world country status.

But the world itself has changed irrevocably, 

young men mow down fellow citizens with A15s

as if life were a weekly video war game. 

I don’t want to live in a country, 

trapped in this marriage of convenience,

where we routinely slaughter children in schools,

(two dozen massacres since Uvalde), I weep 

for the fallen in niteclubs, theatres, and parades,

where we strip the basic rights from people— 

where we legislate who to love, who to marry, 

who to give birth to, all regulated 

by repressive “Christian” ideologies. 

What happened to the separation of church and state?

I'm too depressed to even render this into a poem. 

I don’t want artifice. Like Dylan, I too want 

to rage against the dying of the light.

I’m too angry for my sullied art to emerge. 

I cannot think on those terms,  

because to do so, is to render and to codify it,

and codification, the heart of the problem

those SCrOTified codpieces of (in)justice 

sitting on the bench draped in robes of darkness,

where they truly believe women are unequal. 

I just want to stop this world and get off. 

America is a failed post traumatic experiment, 

and to think it all began with a tax on tea 

and we are daily taxed, both mentally 

and physically. The problem is I see no way out, 

no shining dawn to bring us new hope

in this country of origin and this is not a poem. 

It is the dark venous blood of broken treaties

seeking the formless tears of the sea.

Rain on the Fourth of July