The Love Shack of J Alfred Prufrock.

I have dyslexia & often misread things— delighting my sense of the absurd. Today's misread: The Love Shack of J Alfred Prufrock. A former student, Heather, said, Now that they’ve rebooted Cats, I see no reason not to do an Eliot/B-52's mashup on Broadway. "I've heard the mermaids singing, each to each---TIIIIIIIN ROOF! Rusted!" Would definitely buy tickets.

Meow. Sure beats seeing Hamilton.

Synchronous photo shoot on the Petaluma River (photos)

Sinead & I wasting time in a floating Gazebo. Sande Anfang  photo

I was surprised to find this photo on Facebook posted by a poet friend, because I had simultaneously taken a photo of her in the boat as well, neither of us knowing that we knew each other. Small world. What a strange and delightful gift to find on Facebook. Zero degrees of separation.

I posted a comment beneath her photo of us: Sande Anfang.That was me in the gazebo. What are the chances of us meeting in the middle of the Petaluma River like that, each taking a photo of the other without knowing that we knew each other, only to find ourselves posted on Facebook, after the fact? What are the chances?

Sande said: Oh! So cool, Mo! I couldn't see very well. Sun was in my eyes. My friends take their little boat out all the time. Such a blast! It's tough to take focused pictures in the wind and water, everything moving.

I said, We thought to ask you for a lift, just because.... I'm bummed my camera didn't focus. Most pix I took today, I wound up tossing all of them. Yeah, it was one of those days where my camera said Nope nope nope. I need a new camera.

Sande Anfang headed towards Petaluma. Maureen Hurley photo

Sinead and I had been ingloriously unhomed, after the methhead drove his truck into the living room of the Nicasio house on the 4th of July. So we had odd bits of time on our hands, both of us experiencing PTSD from the accident, so we revisited old haunts, seeking some sort of equilibrium and balance. Not much stability on a floating gazebo—more like a rocking bed—like the beds we had to flee three weeks ago. I guess the world is our bed now. No turning back to what once was. A portion of our life has ended. So that day in the gazebo was a little bit of magic, a waiting room while we waited to see what the future would bring.

• Post Truck Stress Disorder
• Happy 4th of July like no other

SUMMER CACOPHONY

Two stray goats—a wide nanny
with one on the way and a kid at her side—

wandered up the country road at dusk. 

The lost goats, looking for home,
were bleating at the front door, 

and the roosting chickens, 

never having seen goats before,

were losing their minds in an uproar,
leaving me to wonder which team won
the chicken nightmare contest:
The resident bobcat or the stray goats?

7/23/19

WAR'S END (3 days after Hiroshima)

What happened to pilot Major Charles Sweeney
after he dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki?
Did he think he could turn the B-29 Silverplate bomber,

Bockscar, around in the wild blue yonder, then fly back
on empty to Tinian, largest airbase in the world,

as if nothing had happened? After all, he'd practiced
13 trial runs, and 3 dress rehearsals. Shame to waste all that....

The Great Artiste wasn't ready, so he swapped planes.

Ground crew warned him the reserve fuel pump was bad.

The mission was moved up two days because of a typhoon.

Nearing the 11th hour, mad Sweeney circled three times

looking for a gap in the clouds, but he was low on fuel,

so his original target, Kokura, with its venerable castles
obscured by clouds, was spared to live another day.
A fuel pump sealed the fate of Japan's window to the world.
Nagasaki, home of M. Butterfly, became the hired wife, Plan B.

Tapping the fuel gauge, Sweeney ignored orders. Flying blind,
he could've aborted, but he bombed Nagasaki anyway,
when it appeared through a curtain of clouds like a mirage.

Looking over his shoulder, the pilot who leveled Nagasaki,

saw an iridescent lightning-infused cloud rising 
faster than Hiroshima, more intense, more angry, 
at once breathtaking and ominous.

Unable to reach Iwo Jima, he crash-landed

on Yontan Field, in Okinawa, both engines, dead. 

The plane hovered on the edge of the cliff like a tired gull.

An officer shouted, You fucked up, didn't you, Chuck?

Another said We had the wrong guy flying the plane.
Even Enola Gay's pilot Paul Tibbets went a little mad.

But Sweeney, who commanded the last atomic mission, 

maintained to his dying day that he'd made the right decision.
I took no pride or pleasure in the brutality of war, 

whether suffered by my people or those of another nation. 

Every life is precious. But I felt no remorse or guilt 

that I had bombed the city where I stood.

Did we also drop evacuation leaflets, like paper doves,

or was that another story of a story told after the fact?
After Tokyo, Hiroshima, then Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito said:
We must now bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable.
A hundred thousand gone. According to the Manhattan Project,
it was a smashing success. But Shiva was unleashed,
and a hundred thousand more burned from within.
The voices of the hibakusha sang a silent aria of grief.
Oppenheimer invoked Vishnu:
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

No matter that the Japanese, already defeated, 

had surrendered, de facto. But we taught them

a lesson, not once, not twice, but three times

for Pearl Harbor. And we taught them again.

Again and again.

7/23/19

Published in the 2022 fall issue of 

War, Literature, & the Arts anthology (online)

Dept. of English & Fine Arts, 

United States Air Force Academy, Colorado

War, Literature & the Arts publication of War’s End

Cock o the Walk (photos)

Pele rarely stays still long enough for a portrait. He takes his job guarding the hens very seriously. He has several vocalizations: Juicy Food Here! Let's get laid, and Danger danger danger. The mangy bobcat nabbed some chickens. But not this year. The cock o the walk struts his stuff. Maybe we should call him Harry, or Hotspur. He has to carefully lift each leg over his own spur. Otherwise, he'd trip. The chickens have only each other to fear. Pecking order is the status quo.

Since the photo assignment was to focus "within walking distance." I took a rather laid-back approach and never left the hammock. As I lolled, I never before noticed that each chicken has a distinctive comb. Kind of like a fingerprint. Even their wattles are varied. Some are like dahlia petals. Others, like roses. 

My cousin once had a hen named Rosie who preferred to roost on the BBQ grill. She didn't get the joke. But her owner became a vegetarian. One hen has a deformed beak, don't let that fool you. She is savage when it comes to bugs and mice. But she is also the most personable. She listens intently when I croon to her. I speak imperfect cluck-cluck so she can't always make out the words. She always politely answers back.



The last bird is the same size and shape as a chicken but he is not a chicken. He is an impostor in death's clothing. I don't speak his language either. I am also not yet quite ripe enough. But he is extremely patient. Perhaps some day I will master his language. Hopefully, not too soon.

HOW TO GROW A PINEAPPLE

My granny decided to grow a plant 

from a pineapple top.
We said it would never root.
Well, it rooted.
Then we said it would never flower.
It flowered, not once, but twice.
We said it would never fruit.
Well, it fruited. Twice. For spite.
No idea what pollinated it.
We said the mini pineapplet would never mature.
It didn't. It withered on the vine.

Turned into a mummified pineapple.
But by then it was a standing family joke.

Seeking Robert Bruce Hamilton (again)

In the process of trying to track down my first true love, Robert Bruce Hamilton, wondering if he's even on this earth, I can't find a thing on the internet. It's strange in this day and age, not to have some sort of an internet presence. We've been hunting for Sweet Old Bob for seven long years now. Dulcie, was his first girlfriend, both before, during, and after—me (yes, you read that right—I met him after they broke up, then he left me, for her). At least we think he was a serial monogamist. What can I say, it was Marin, during the 1970s. We have been shaking down any leads we can find. No luck. Trying to track Robert Bruce Hamilton or Bob Hamilton is impossible, as it's such a common name.

I never expected to become friends with Dulcie, but she found me via the internet, in August, 2012, from a blog post I wrote on SoB, and she felt compelled to tell me her side of the story. Kindred soul. Our correspondence fell away after a few months, but we finally met at the end of 2016. Since then, our friendship has evolved in other directions—other than Bob, that is. Then the question inevitably arises: is he still alive?

Taking stock, old inventories of the past, blog list

It took a couple of years to get the bulk of my poems posted online, a lengthy process I began in 2015 (Updating Old Poems) when I thought I had lost almost all my work due to a computer glitch—outdated software turned my files into UNIX bricks. I was able to salvage most of my work but it was a process done in fits and spurts.

Then in 2017, I found several handwritten journal entries, and revised first drafts. I scanned and posted those below the poems, so it's been a poetic archaeology hunt. The early poems were not in electronic format, so transmuting them to text from a jpg became another huge project I took on last year when I got some OCR software.

Salvaging the past seems to be an annual summer project. Taking old inventories as it were. I still hold out a dim hope that I'll find more work for the weak years: 2006 (19) 2005 (18) 1999 (21) 1978 (22). (Numbers have gone up by 1-3, not much, 2022). Only way to salvage those years is to find long lost notebooks. But we've come a long way, indeed.

Lately I'm collecting what little artwork I have left, and I've created a separate blog for that. The blog has a long way to go and is riddled with gaping holes. Sadly, my early drawing portfolios were turned into pulp during the winter of 2015. And few photos of my ceramics have emerged, I think that chapter of my life is forever gone—except for a few stray pieces that survived the odds. Makes me sad as I had taken slides for a portfolio. I've already scanned all my old slides, so unless I misplaced the ceramics slides in Forestville, it's a lost cause.

Maureen Hurley Art

Then there's my photography. Most of my people photos are posted on Google Photos, and I've sent links out to the pertinent people. But I'm woefully behind on uploading my landscapes. I probably should make another blog of a few of my best photos, but I want to find a different format for them (and my art) than Blogger. Right now they're just placeholders. I did this then—sort of thing. Google Photos is merely a storage locker, as no one can see them, sans link. So that's not particularly useful for simple sharing. I miss Picasa. So much easier to share things.

Right now, I'm beginning to scan my B&W negatives from the 1980s and 1990s. No idea where I'll post them as I haven't found the right venue, other than Google Photos. Suggestions? I’ve created another blog for them.

Maureen Hurley photos (added 2022)

The photos from the Russian River Writers' Guild, I'll eventually post photos on the blog I made last year. Lots of famous poets! We are missing most Open Hug flyers for 1985, and we are missing flyers from 1987 onward to the last reading. It still needs the final years of Obligatory Hug when we moved to Johnny Otis's cafe. I don't have copies. Wonder who does?

Russian River Writers' Guild

I can't even get into the blog I made for Marianne Ware in 2010, which is maddening, as I now have new photos to share on that blog.

Marianne Ware Memorial Page

St. Vincent’s School for Boys

Don Timeteo Murphy, from Wexford, Ireland, while on his deathbed with appendicitis, bequeathed 317 acres to the first archbishop of San Francisco—on a dare, to build an orphanage for boys who lost their family from cholera (it was called an orphan asylum), and the stipulation was to have it up and running within two years—or forfeit the land. So Alemany called in the nuns— namely Sister Frances McEnnis. Fellow Wexfordian, James Miller helped to build it. Miller was also a benefactor of St.Vincent's School, lending the school his labor, timber resources, and financial support in its earliest years.

St. Vincent's RC, 1855 - 1924, Orphan Asylum

"The lumber and supplies were hauled by ox team and Mr. Miller and a Mr. Kirk built the building. The school was completed and named St.Vincent’s Seminary, the name of the patron saint of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul." —Dixie Schoolhouse (dead link)

On January 7, 1855, St. Vincent's School for boys opened its doors—“to aid in the establishment of a seminary or institution of learning.”

"On his deathbed, San Rafael land grantee Timothy Murphy promised 317 acres of land to Joseph Alemany, the first Archbishop of San Francisco. But as with any good Irishman, there was a catch to Murphy’s offer: the acreage would revert back to Murphy’s heirs unless a school was operating on the premises within two years. And as often happens, the best man for the job was . . . a woman. At the time, however, Sister Frances McEnnis was living with the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

According to A Mission That Endures: A History of St. Vincent’s School for Boys by Peter Rudy, when notified by Archbishop Alemany that the Sisters of Charity were needed to care for children orphaned by a recent cholera plague, Sister McEnnis and a small band of nuns agreed to make the hazardous trip and immediately headed west. After a grueling cross-country journey, they raised the necessary funds and made sure the school was open for students on January 1, 1855—beating Murphy’s deadline by ten days. As for naming the school, Sister McEnnis reached back to her roots: it would be called St. Vincent’s.

THE LONG RACE

THE LONG RACE

My childhood heroes were full of horses,
Tonka Toy horses, not Barbie dolls or action figures.
I was crazy about horses,
especially Secretariat and Seabiscuit.
I grew up with a lithograph
of the Irish horse, Arkle, on the wall.

When my grandmother wasn’t looking, 

I’d trace around the edges of his nostrils
with a red pencil, as if to breathe life into his portrait.
He glowed like the fairy horses of the Otherworld.

My grandmother noticed, but never said a thing.
I could recite a litany of pedigrees,
bloodlines, jockeys, and stables. Willie Shoemaker.
Whose lineage traced back to Native Dancer,
War Admiral, Three Bars, Man O War—

right on back to the founding sires, 

those hot-blooded desert horses with English names, 

the Godolphin, the Darley, the Byerley Turk.
But I couldn’t keep up in school, always the last to finish,
with heart pounding as if it were about to burst.
That moveable feast, the finish line, was ever out of reach.
I was unbelievably fast, a sprinter, no one could catch me,
I was Of the Cloak, that foundation mare of the desert winds,
running from fear, running from life, until there was nowhere left to go.

But I was given a plug mare who taught me perseverance, 

when she died, I was given a red Three Bars mare, a sprinter,
the fastest horse in the valley. It was like riding a barrel
on a stormy sea when she leapt into the void.
Those horses were my teachers. When the gates opened,
I found I could stay the distance, eight furlongs,
head to head, then twelve, neck to neck.

The invisible crowd cheering as I crossed the finish line.

And then there were roses bleeding on the ground.

7/12/19

For you, John, I wrote this poem today 

in a Petaluma parking lot 

while the wildfires ravaged the sky 

until it was the color of imprisoned amber.

The sun was an angry baleful eye

and we sipped the air carefully through masks

wondering if the world would end in ashes.

Where are you these days, John? Geoffrey Davis mentions you from time to time. (I have no idea who I was writing to. Not Rambling Jack Elliott. Probably to John Watts, whose thoroughbred racehorse, Ceres, I used to sometimes ride—with his sister, Joan. With whom he isn't speaking.)

Do not paint down historic WPA mural. This is not 1930s Germany or 1917 Russia.

Do not paint down historic WPA mural at George Washington High School. This is not 1930s Germany or 1917 Russia. This is censorship. Golda Meir once said, “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” In a toxic move to be politically correct, it seems we’re doing just that. Erasing inconvenient truths in order to feel good.

In an alarming trend to be "politically correct", school boards are whitewashing the past. Last month a Marin Co. school board expunged the name of historic Dixie School, though its founders did not support the Confederacy during the Civil War. 

The latest attempt to change California's past is to remove an historic WPA mural at George Washington High School in San Francisco—for depicting an historic truth. What's next? Grace Cathedral and Coit Tower WPA murals?

And the censorship continues an alarming trend. Why destroy the historic mural? Why not put panels over it? 600k to paint it over? really?

SFUSD thinks it will cost more than that—and they don't care. I guess house painters are very expensive these days. More expensive than hiring a fantastic muralista, say, Juana Alicia, to paint an alternative mural that would create a dialogue with Dewey Crumpler's rebuttal mural, on whiteboard, to protect Victor Arnautoff's original WPA-era mural.

The problem is that we are artistically illiterate, unable to understand allegory, or symbolism. The role of art is to instruct, to teach, not lull us into complacency. We take everything at face value. We don't want to actually think, or have to decode the message embedded within the art. That's why the inane decorative plastic arts that plague us everywhere, is mistaken for art. Students can't see that the mural is highly critical of our sappy rendition of our history, and of George Washington, who, apparently owned slaves. I didn't know that, did you?

Zana Darrow brilliantly noted that the monochromatically painted frontiersmen were depicted as soulless. And they were ruthless—especially the Mountain Men, Kit Carson and John C. Frémont—who mercilessly killed natives as they journeyed to California. That depiction is correct. So we want to hide this ugly chapter of history?

"The artwork on the walls of George Washington High School in San Francisco painted by a WPA artist Victor Arnautoff, exposed the hypocrisy of American History and that is not being seen or understood by those trying to remove and paint over the past.

“The murals represent social history. They provide an inclusive and truthful history… Removing them represents censorship as well as a reactionary moment in time,” an unidentified commenter said. “What I do recommend is that the school board establishes a multimedia display... that indicates the complexity and contradictions of George Washington [and] the extraordinary history of Victor Arnautoff.”

The mural depicts a historic, if harsh truth, Anglos treated the natives and Latinos badly. we should whitewash that out of history? —Change.org

Of course art is political. And people no longer know how to read art or understand the juxtaposition of symbolism. They’re artistically illiterate and don’t want to take the time to actually see what’s going on. They don’t want to actually have to think. They say, oh, it’s pretty, it’s decorative, I like it. Oh, it’s negative, I hate it. A fallout of our consumerist society where we call the decorative arts art, and I don’t mean art for art’s sake.

Post Truck Stress Disorder

Interesting, any abrupt noise, like the motel maid’s cart banging on the wall next door has me hanging ten from the ceiling. Reptile brain in action. Yes. I’m feeling very depressed today... palpable, visceral. Someone says that I have Post Truck Stress Disorder. I hope my PTSD lessens, I was in the room directly above the truck's hood. It slammed the house at about 70MPH, the bed absorbed most of the shock, but I was launched out of bed. Just glad there were no flying projectiles. I could've been a shiskabob.

I drove north to take care of my friend's plants, housesitting, and conked out. I never nap. Some 4th of July fireworks! I’ve another place I can stay in Sebastopol with a friend but I need a Forest Knolls couch too...Barbara Scott said I could stay with her a few nights.

Spent the first two days sorting and tossing splintered beams, and yesterday picking up wood fragments and glass. The wood was pulverized in some cases. I actually managed to sort the three woodpiles and toss the splintered wood. I filled five large trashcans. Still a lot of small wood fragments and glass to pick up. it will be months...the wiring has been severed for half the house.

Eating actual meals has been an iffy concept. It’s been mostly shove something in the piehole, on the run. First meal since the 4th, French toast. Almost pie. We’re holed up in a motel. I am really tired today. Wow. First downtime. Just a little adrenaline? Yesterday I was as turfy as Rocky Grazziano!

4th of July party crasher

Eating actual meals has been an iffy concept. Its been mostly shove something in the piehole, on the run. First meal since the 4th, French toast. Almost pie. But my digestive skydives give system is on lockdown.

I haven’t talked about the elephant in the living room. Namely, how a Petaluma man named James Reisenhoover, who, apparently was having a little private party of his own while driving back from the Graton Casino, then missed the Petaluma turn-off, and managed to drive  all the way to Nicasio, to ram a brand new Titan truck through my cousins’ living room at 4:56 AM on the 4th of July. We’re still in fight-flight syndrome. Unfortunately, writing this is like reconstructive surgery. So I’ll lift comments from my Facebook posts and see what happens.

Nothing quite like waking up to an explosion beneath the bed and. an  engine revving in the living room.  That was some AM wake up call. Replete with a bed ejector button. Dude should've just knocked at the door, instead of almost knocking the fucking house down. I guess he didn’t like all my cousin’s potted flowers and tchotchkes on the front steps. WTF, why is he on his phone? Who you gonna call at 5 AM? Perhaps a 911 call would’ve been more appropriate? at least the Marin County fire department was on it.

The little cat is still so freaked out. We think he was on the couch that the truck hit, that launched across the crowded room, which also  launched small items about 6 to 8 feet forward...like Sinead’s wine glass! Monster is still so skittish. Definitely has PTSD. will hardly even eat, and he’s a chow hound. Gives me tiny wrist kisses. Sinead’s scitzy cat  Ceilidh, on the other hand, who normally can’t tolerate humans, and this thing they do called petting, wants pets and reassurance from the firemen. Go figure.

It was a four fire department event, Nicasio, Woodacre, Hick’s Valley, and Novato all turned up, plus lots of first responders, three CHPS, two sheriffs. A real block party. Shout out to the Marin County Fire Department and First Responders who went well above and beyond the call of duty, and came back and shored up my cousins’ house. Jeremy from Nicasio FD, Matt from Hick's Valley FD, and John from Woodacre FD. And to all the handsome young firefighters who are the next generation of firefighters. And to the CHP, and the Marin County Sheriffs... you all rock. And to Stephen Sproul ❤



I keep thinking What if. The live electrical wires had touched the truck—as the water was geysering. So glad I put my rubber-soul shoes on. Angels in the outfield.

More cleanup is ahead. Soothing the cats, telling them it’s OK, is also on the list My fingertips are raw and sliced from picking up so much splintered wood and glass. Picked up more glass and exploded wood fragments yesterday, cleaned and culled three woodpiles on the 4th and 5th. Filled five trash cans with tightly packed beams and fragments, so much more glass to go.... pruned and propped up the remaining 75 year old heritage rose. Tried to salvage the other one ripped out of the ground.. You really can’t pick up glass fragments in garden gloves.

Angels in the outfield

 

PTSD

 

Earthquakes in the Mojave desert flush out the Facebook Bible belters

CNN posted a story about the Searles Lake/Ridgecrest earthquakes. Ok, so 7.1 is definitely big, but not unheard of. What gets me is the collective hatred in biblical proportions unleashed towards California that manifests in the Facebook comments.

Yeah, makes me wonder why don’t all these so-called Christians actually do something useful, like donate to a disaster charity?

#science fergawdsakes. The sheer collective ignorance unveiled on that thread is astounding. Didn’t they learn anything about geography or geology or plate tectonics in school? How do they think mountain ranges are created? By plate tectonics. Ostriches are smarter, they don’t actually bury their heads in the sand.

Christ didn’t sit back in an easy chair with his beer and remote control in hand, and pray for those sinners during the 6 O’clock news. He was all about action. Boots on the ground. Action. He didn’t go around posting passive aggressive snide comments about repentance, sin and prayer on Facebook. Prayer should be a private contemplation. Not something broadcast like a commodity. It’s not a celestial stock market.

What’s with all these so-called Christians claiming an odd petty moral superiority via prayer, saying California deserves earthquakes and natural disasters because we Californians are somehow less deserving of life than they are? So many tiny minds at work, it’s frightening. That’s the real antichrist in action. Right there. No matter that California has been experiencing earthquakes for millions of years. Gawd forbid, don’t let logic in.

Long before the so-called Christians invaded these shores, the Ohlone Indians had a saying, that California was dancing on the brink of the world. They were referring to earthquakes. Earthquakes are how the extraordinary landscapes are formed. Tectonic plates subducting and shoving up mountain ranges, creating magma zones are all part of the process.

#science matters.

Happy 4th of July like no other

Well, now, the 4th had some seriously heavy duty plans for us, kicking us out of bed at 5 AM, when a  brand new Nissan Titan truck drove through the front door of my cousin’s historic house and took out the 150 year old picture window.

Firemen from Nicasio, Novato, Hick's Valley, and Woodacre Fire Departments responded blocking of the road on both sides, then, after the truck was pulled from the door frame, they came back and shored up the porch and support beams, and foundation. Foundation and the main corner support beams holding up the house are compromised.

The house is 150 years old so everything is hand-milled, non standard sized wood. Hand-made nails. Redwood older than the concept of Christ. But the firemen are adapting, going over to the firehouse by the Rancho Nicasio and raiding their woodpiles to find big enough struts to make this so.

Meanwhile, Ceilidh, the crazy cat, who normally won't let anyone near her on a good day, is asking for pets from the firemen. We found little Monster, a rescue cat, holed in Sinead's closet, scared out of his mind, he's still a baby kitty in an almost grown-up cat's body. Every little movement or noises sends him back into the linen closet. I think he was on the couch sleeping when the truck launched it across the room. How do you even begin to explain PTSD to a cat?

Front of the house is wide open (talk about open house!) and cats are not interested in escaping....LOL. Usually they're making a beeline for the front door. But all the tourists, seeing the fence down, and all the activity, think it’s a store and want to know what it is we’re selling. I’m rather cross with all the looky-loos and tell them to contact the county to at least put a caution sign and rumble strips up. Fix the road. What will it take, one of us getting killed?

Marin County Fire Department totally rocks! ❤ May the 4th be with you.

Stomach bug flattened me so I scanned photos instead

Advil. Check. Headache gone. Check. Tea. Breakfast. Check. I can do this. Check. What a difference a "down" week makes. Even if I was sick the entire week, I still got some good scanning time in.

Some Facebook collections of my newly scanned photos include:
Chris Caswell
Utah Phillips and Doc Watson, Rosalee Sorrells
Jack Mueller, national poetry week
Boschka Layton, SSU reading
Paul Mariah
Glenn Ingersoll
Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Herron
Michael Daley
Poetry Flash event QR Hand, Sharon Doubiago
CPITS retreat Noyo River 1985
Edwin Drummond
Peter Capp
Cal Davis
Brownie Mary, Tony Serra
My family, Feather River 
Kitty Ward funeral 
Wake
My 30th birthday
My grandmother

Political Pendulum

Sodden thought—in Lincoln's era, I would've voted Republican because of civil rights—they were considered radical liberals and believed in social welfare for all. But the Democrats were still firmly stuck in the antibellum era. Mostly Southern slave owners. Filibusters, and 3/5 vote for African Americans. But women didn't have the vote until June 4,1919. Happy centennial anniversary for the passing of the19th Amendment. Now the Democrats are perceived as the liberals promoting too much social welfare. How far the pendulum has swung.

VIRAL HAIKU

Ice cream is what's for dinner.
Fever finally broke but walking
is a surreal experience.

Slept all afternoon.
Yesterday I was so tired
I dozed off in the car.

Isn't it lovely to contemplate
ice cream for dinner and have no guilt?
Remorse, maybe later.

Maybe that wasn't such a bright idea.
Ice cream is hitting my lower gut
with a renewed vengeance.

Historic Dixie School District to lose its name

In a reference to Nazi Germany, novelist George Orwell wrote, in his science fiction novel, 1984: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. In an alarming trend to be "politically correct" replete with an Orwellian twist, school boards are intent on whitewashing the past. In June, a Marin County school board voted to expunge the name of a school, the school district, which includes the historic one-room Dixie School building, now a museum, though its founder, pioneer James Miller, did not support the Confederacy during the Civil War. It's an odd case of guilt by association.

The man who founded the school ca. 1862, rancho owner, Irishman, James Miller had a right-hand foreman who was a Coast Miwok named Dixie, whose wife was Mary Dixie. Miller, who had also adopted two Coast Miwok children, XXXX named the school after her, Hence the name Dixie School, or so one story goes.

Wilfred A. Lang, painter (1915-1994)

in progress....

from the  The Wilfred A. Lang Gallery 

My growing collection of Wilfred A. Lang notes from my previous post, suggests another post entry is needed. So little information on him on the internet. Where to even begin, when my imperfect memories gathered in youth, imperfectly recollected and transposed now that I'm older that dirt, makes this more of an act of fiction than anything else.

A defunct Angelfire site was the only decent reference I could find on Wilfred. (No I'm not referring to the Shanghai artist, born in 1954, who cranks out dreadful urban landscapes and sailboats with a palate knife and a fan brush.) Wilfred A. Lang was a complex artist, a student of Robert Stackpole, who worked in complex layers, his imagery embellishing a mythos to ordinary subjects.

I knew Wilfred’s first wife Betty—who was like a second mother to me, and four of his children, and the infamous Sausalito Hoffmans.

Wilfred was always larger than life. As kids, we were terribly excited whenever he came to visit Pat & Betty Wall. I remember him, grizzled, and laden with massive turquoise and silver jewelry, and his haughty second wife, Marcia, in her long flowing skirts, and aquiline nose, who walked like a goddess. She very much resembled her portrait that hung above the daybed in the living room.

That colorful full-length abstract portrait that Wilfred gave to Betty mesmerized me. I always thought it odd that he gave Betty a painting of his next wife, who left him soon after. But the full-length portrait was gorgeous. As a child, I stared at it for hours on end, following the intricate ghost calligraphy embroidered on the painting.

I didn't know of Wilfred's Sonoma County presence until I began this post. I'm sitting here writing this blog post a stone's throw from where he built a house in Mays Canyon. Wilfred was friends with Bernard Zachaim, and also stayed at Marguerute Wiildenhain's Pond Farm, in Guerneville. So he also had Bauhaus connections as Walter Gropius was a frequent visitor to Pond Farm as well.

Sonoma County supported a thriving artist colony. After McCarthyism raised its ugly head, many artists, writers, and especially the Jewish movie industry folks fled the urban jungles for a country life, raising chickens. When the bottom of chicken nest fell out, and chicken farming couldn't compete with agribusiness, the fallow chickensheds morphed into artist studios. It was odd to see a portion of a movie backdrop incorporated into a chickenshed. 

Polish-born deep Leftist, Bernard Zacheim (1896-1985), a student of Diego Rivera, painted the Coit Tower murals in San Francisco. He co-founded the San Francisco Artists and Writers Union, which supported artists viafederally funded arts program during the Great Depression. The Public Works of Art Project, funded Zakheim's work on Coit Tower. Zacheim moved to Sonoma County, first to Mayes Canyon, a pocket canyon near Guerneville, and later, to a Sebastopol apple orchard. 

Several artists fleeing the confines city, joined him, Wilfred Lang, among them. I would love to know more about that era, Zacheim was always a presence at art openings, but both he and his daughter Masha, who documented the WPA mural movement are both gone now. Perhaps his son, Nathan, a mural restorer, might have some oral history of that era to share. Wilfred’s eldest son Pete, wrote a comprehensive biography, which I’ve posted below in the notes. At one point, I will weave them in with my notes.

NOT DONE

Giving back old photos

Scanning old photos and trying to date them always conjured up the most unlikely of memories. Like the photos I took of Pete Lang in Park City, near Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island in 1981. I never expected to find his daughters on Facebook when I posted some old photos on my friend Micaela Wall's page. It was such a magical time for me hanging out with Pete's family. I always adored Pete, I knew him since I was a child. Almost as long as I've known Micaela. She was called Miranda in those days. Pete was her step-brother. He mooned after her while she mooned after his handsome younger brother, Stan—a wild one with hair slicked back like James Dean. Those New Mexico boys by way of Sausalito, with their tall boots and tooled leather belts, seeking distant horizons, got under the skin like fine desert sand. I was always the one left out of the moon's capricious equations. Pete saw me as the little kid down the road. Sometimes he'd drop by to visit my granny and me in Forest Knolls after Micaela's dad, Pat Wall, sold the house moved north to Fort Bragg. Pete was living in a trailer on the headlands by the botanical garden. Paradise on earth. I've an early memory of Pete leaning against our sawhorse, by the woodpile, playing his Martin guitar. He left town, became a spy, joined the CIA, or was it the FBI? The Lang brothers went the way of lost cowboys in search of a one-horse townor a horizon that just wouldn't settle. Maybe it was the high desert winds spurring them on. But they couldn't stay still in any one place for long. We ran into each other in BC, by then Pete was married, with two daughters, but the wife was stepping out with the mayor on the side. It broke my heart. We lost touch. They moved to Florida where he built wooden boats, got divorced. Last I heard, he was in Galveston, Texas, working as a private eye, probably to be closer to his father, the Bohemian sculptor / painter Wilfred. Stan sailed off to the Virgin Islands became a carpenter, and met death by bottle on the old plank road. I eventually got a Martin guitar too, but I could never play it like that. Pete gave me some folk songbooks too—which I still have. Back copies of Sing Out!, a little Woody Guthrie, some Baez, but no Dylan. But I never could play those songs without remembering Pete bending over his guitar, head canted as if he were ciphering a story from those whispering guitar strings.

JUNE GLOOM

Winter blankets back on the bed.
Eyeing my folded flannel sheets
will not warm my feet.

Revising old Facebook posts: Ebbe Borregaard, Stephen Torre & John Haines

An old Facebook fragment also written on a dreary Saturday, in 2013, evolved into a memoir piece of sorts, Woodbutchers and carpenter poets: Remembering John Haines, Stephen Torre, and Ebbe Borregaard. Six years later, I still haven't found out much about those poets. They seem to predate the internet, as it were, and were obscure enough poets, that no one has taken up the torch to post their work online, or to mention them on blog pages. They were my teachers. And here I am, still wondering about those poets on this grey misty morning, mid June. I sometimes revisit my FB memory lane pages to see if there's a fragment of writing I might have missed or that that I might want to add to my blog. Mostly dross. But every so often, I find a fragment that's still compelling. I had already added my knee comments and fashioned them into a blog post, but not this first bit on Ebbe. Like Death, I stopped to fix a typo, and an hour later, I'm still revising it, hammering the nails into the memory coffin. Ya never know what will spark another bit of writing. I'm certainly the last to know. Typical. So, the question begs: is it a piece from 2013, or a new piece if it's extensively revised? Too OCD for my own good.

SHEET SWAP

Whenever I swap my flannel sheets 

for crisp summer ones, the weather changes—
damn near froze most of the night.

6/14/19

Flannel nights

Hot June nights. Time for the ritual to swap out my winter flannel sheets. Now watch, as soon as I do that, the weather will take a turn for the worse. Never fails. Whenever I swap out my flannel sheets for summer ones, the weather changes—damn near froze most of the night. Why do I always forget about June Gloom? This is as close as we get to rain these days. Fizzle drizzle. I managed to wear my summer nightie all of  3 times. Now it’s back to my flannels. I've been cold all day, I'm hopelessly dressed for summer, a sleeveless top and shorts, but my frozen feet are realists. We may be moving toward the Summer Solstice, but encouraged by an outbreak of Karl the Fog, the coast has its own ideas. I found some really nice extra roomy flannel nightgowns at the local Goodwill. I won’t be able to wear them for months but I’m very excited by the prospect. 

Feeling blue

Feeling a bit blue today—as if the light
at the end of the tunnel was closed
due to unforseen circumstances
& I'm left without a torch.

This sadness is palpable. I know it will pass, but when? One foot in front of the other. Trying to stay absolutely in the present tense, knowing this too shall pass, which helps. Sometimes I think it help to admit it, and then it's easier to let it go. I feel better now, more empowered, thanks to a core of Facebook friends. Better. Emerging. Slowly. Thank you. My litmus ones. My heart's core.

I edited some Tomales Bay pix, etc., and it got me out of my head for a few moments. Hanging out in bed today....much better today. So far. Absolutely hate it when this happens. So crippling. When I was a child I'd curl up somewhere and hide. Reading was my escape, or my horses. When it happens, I can barely do anything at all. Doesn't happen often, TG. A few times a year. A reading jag usually works. I understand it's all part of the process. The ups and downs. It's just so debilitating when it happens.

Form a Facebook post

Indus Arthur, Renaissance Pleasure Faire, photo, 1984

I posted some photos of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire on Facebook’s Lost Marin site. My post was wildly popular and soon I had hundreds of hits—and so many wonderful comments emerged as people began identifying each other, and sharing the post. I wanted to capture a slice of oral history so I asked people for their stories. One viewer took umbrage because I had asked people to tag themselves, or their friends on my posts. I asked, so that I could credit the Ren Faire actors, and also so they could have a copy of the photos for their own archives. Her rage—it toppled my house of cards. She started maligning me, calling me a stalker because I wanted people to share their stories.

In frustration, and dismay, I took the entire post down rather than leave the negativity up. Katelin Stuart said don’t rent space to them in your head. But it was too late. The reason why it was so distressing was that because for 35 long years those slides were locked away behind cellulose, never before seen by the world, and I was so excited to finally have a scanner that could scan those slides and negatives, and I thought Lost Marin would be the perfect venue to do a wild release of those photos... But Carrie Smith wanted to equally share my photos—while berating me, the photographer, for wanting to know performers' names, and of their Ren Faire stories... Kill the messenger.

Indus Arthur, Renaissance Pleasure Faire, Agoura, CA, 1984

The photo that set off the imbroglio was of Indus Arthur, a beautiful harpist, which ignited a FB war in the Lost Marin group. The reason was completely lost on me. It was like a bully scene right out of Animal Farm. Sadly, Indus died in December, of 1984, a few months after my photo was taken. Complications of skin cancer, and a brain tumor.

This may be among the last photos ever taken of the stage and screen actor, Indus, who, like her grandmother, was named after a river in Tibet. I remember that we talked about our grandmothers. I had no idea that Indus was a popular TV star—none of that mattered, we were in a time out of place, in a backlot of Paramount Ranch, in Agoura.

The photo was a moving tribute, or so I thought. I had spent the afternoon talking with her, a lovely soul, both ephemeral, and fey. Did she know she was dying? That this was her last gift to the world, this harp music? She died so young, she was only 43. She is buried somewhere in a secret location in Los Angeles.

But Carrie Smith wouldn’t let it go, she objected to my asking people to tag themselves, or my even knowing who Indus was. Then Carrie waged war on me, she began tagging her equally obnoxious friends, dragging them into the fracas. Where did all this anger and rage come from, over an old photo? Clearly Carrie (aka Mrs. Owens, Dickens’ cook for the Dickens Faire) had some deep-seated anger management issues, but for some reason, she came unhinged when I asked for people to tag themselves. It was the last straw, too many other negative things going on in my life. I saved the vitriolic conversations thinking I might someday use it, but it’s so depressing. And I so wanted to honor those actors who brought us such delight during the heyday of the RPF.

Apparently Carrie, thought I was a stalker, or worse, because I was asking people to tag themselves in the photos of themselves. But it’s not my job to explain her aberrant behavior. Get out of my head. I had merely asked people to tag themselves so that THEY could keep my photos—and/or share stories from the Ren Faire days among themselves. After all, that was the whole point of the Lost Marin Group. Here I thought that it generous gift from the past. No strings attached. The cadre of Ren folk even objected to my use of the word Ren Faire, took umbrage to the term Ren Faire, and to the rather endearing term, Ren folk... All of this tempestuousness is so ironic as the Renaissance Pleasure Faire’s actual web address is renfaire.com

Suffice to say, it was a total bloodbath. So, rather than leave the negativity up, I deleted all 36 photos. Most folks were thrilled to see the photos, one woman even tagged the Patterson sons... but I didn't want to leave an album of my photos up, as a chronicle their bad behavior.

From a Facebook post

Phyllis Patterson RIP – She changed my life! JoshWillTravel blog, a good inside peek into the Faire.

Rainbow at the end of the tunnel (photo)

This visage certainly stopped me in my tracks. I thought I was seeing things. Turns out, I was. I was also at the right place at the perfect, if odd time—the right angle of the sun, and right time of day, as the light rapidly changed. I was thinking about what photographer Jerry Downs had said about seeing ordinary, or mundane things "different" when I climbed the rise. And gasped. The old adage rang true—tho  best camera was the one in my hand, tho it be on its last legs. I wasn't expecting to find a rainbow in a culvert at the end of a fireroad. Or a magic portal to another world in a dam runoff overflow culvert.

Upon closer inspection, it looked like an entrance to the Otherworld. At first I thought I was having some sort of flashback, or heatstroke vs. brainfreeze. The side view was equally astonishing. By then I was singing Somewhere Under the Rainbow.....

Added bonus, it was a huge swamp cooler. I stood in front of the colorful culvert to chill out on this hottest day of the year. No rainbows were harmed in the process. Synchronicity at Soulajoule Dam, Walker Creek Road, West Marin. The synchronous moment was right before I got out of my hot car, I was using a little battery-operated spray fan, wishing it was way bigger. I think I got my wish, and then some.

Truth be known, I was feeling a bit despondent, and in need of a lift. From a rainbow, apparently. It was hot, I took the weird way home, planning to stop at the Elephant Rocks. See, 22 years ago, I was in a horrific car accident on Walker Creek Road, something that changed my life completely.

Today, I was making amends with the road. I forgave it, and the person who drove us off the road. This was merely a madcap pitstop, a girding of the loins segue enroute to the spot where my life irrevocably changed. I think it also means after 22 years, I get my old life back. Trying hard not to think of those years as wasted years. But, in retrospect, it was a life-sentence of sorts.

The mystery rainbow revealed—a dam overflow runoff valve with so much pressure, it's ricochetting off the culvert creating a fine mist. The culvert, acting like a hood contained the rainbow.

This version was shared in Digital Photo Academy Community

Brownie Mary photo scan

Well, that's done. Spent three intense days cleaning up a 27-year-old photo of Brownie Mary Rathbun for a traveling show. On its way to the Weedmaps Weed Museum where it will tour for three years. I scanned it in 24-bit color at 800dpi, so I could capture all the greyscale range, and to properly clone out the artifacts....all those slubs on her sweater had what looked like lint, OMG!

And I was aghast by all the embedded artifacts and surface scratches. I don't like DigitalIce, it softens the image. Ah, the joys of Tri-X, pushed. My trusty old Pentax K1000 with a Vivitar zoom lens. Good glass. Not that I know much about PS, but after I cleaned it up, I did a sharpen layer, for her face, then a Gaussian blur layer, sans her face, to soften the clone clean up (even tho the print looked fine, it was a mess!) I also scanned the negatives later. They came out better than expected.

We met Brownie Mary at SF General Hospital's AIDS ward, as she was making her volunteer nurse rounds delivering respite to her AIDS patients. Her boys,, she said. I first met her at the Sonoma County Jail where she was arrested for buying pot in Cazadero. I covered the story for The Paper. Tony Serra took on the feds and won. I coordinated a photography expedition for Dutch photographer Jan Bogaaerts who was doing a story on the AIDS crisis for Granta Magazine. It was a heart-wrenching time. The frailness of mortality.

FWIW, I ate some of those brownies, but I may, or may not have swallowed. Mary and I had an Irish heart connection that went deep. In the process of working on the photo, I just found out my aunt Jane used to make travel arrangements for Mary at Valley Travel. Small world. Of course, she never knew... Special thanks to Jerry Downs for contract advice.

Museum of Weed coming to Los Angeles in early 2019

Que Sera, Serra: Remembering Tony Serra
Brownie Mary

Godspeed, Edwin Drummond

For Edwin Drummond, who reached for the clouds. And got a handhold. May the mountain gods pull him up to safety to the sky and beyond. The only regret Edwin had was not climbing Everest. The gods quashed it. May he find a new toehold in that unscaled escarpment. Alas, my love, godspeed. So honored to say that I knew you when.

May 14, 1945 - April 23, 2019

I was supposed to be the second wife between Grace and Lia, but I said No, and ran the other way. He never quite forgave me. Last time I saw him was after he divorced Lia. We reconnected but the same old ghosts were still hiding in the closets of time. Lately Edwin has been on my mind. Haunting me. Almost an obsession, really. I guess I was sensing the end was near when I began to search for him on the internet in January, but I never found him. It was so ironic that he was so close, yet so far, in Oakland, right down the street from where I used to live. And we never reconnected. Weird that he died a year after John Oliver Simon. I'm losing the significant men in my life. Is there a memorial service?

Edwin Drummond shaving, Forestville, ca. 1980. These negatives were mixed in with the photos of Boschka Layton I had taken for her book jacket.

Sutro Baths (photo)

If my grandmother hadn’t met my grandfather at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco, I wouldn’t exist. She didn’t even know how to swim... but somehow she swam right into his arms. Lol, FB autocorrected Sutro into sutras. Ken Larsen said: “I love your typo (maybe intentional?) conjuring images of bathing in sutras. I’m too young to remember the baths but fond are the memories of skating there. Be sure to check out Sutro Bath giant water slide movies on YouTube—perhaps your grand parents slid into each other’s arms???” And Ken Bullock asked: “And if you never existed, who would've started the fire?“ Amergin’s fire in the head.

From a FB post

Free Morning off

Good grief, I have a rare morning off and I hardly know what to do with myself. That feeling of guilt, I must be forgetting something. Right? Believe it or not, the hardest part when I'm doing these poetry residencies, is eating. If it wasn't for Peggy Maddock, my host, feeding me, I wouldn't eat at all! I get that keyed up. Gonna take a much-needed shower, stop by school to do evaluations, then a drive up to Pine Flat, and Modini Preserve to take pix, then back to AVS to do kid reading this evening... Evaluations, student poetry release forms, and poetic licenses have been passed out. One class turned them in early. I’ll collect the rest tonight, and send them into CPITS, and then I’m done. These last fiddlybits can consume a lot of time. Eh. it's a Catholic guilt hangover...You know, never done? I'm off, then, into the wind.

Soda Rock Lane (photo)

Yesterday we had sunshine and blue skies. Not so much today. Massive stormfront, and rain. Maybe even snow. I teach poetry to Alexander Valley School kids every May, and I stay with a former teacher. I  ran off 100 copies of a  kid poetry anthology on a cranky copy machine that needed constant reassurance every time it overheated. This is a view from Soda Rock Lane very near artist Richard DIebenkorn's place. The studio barn has been quiet and shuttered for a long time, but the northern light waits at the ready for the artist to resume, and the wild birds still come and sit on the fence as if in waiting.

Deluge, teaching journal, Alexander Valley School

Unbelievable buckets of rain, it’s a freakin’ deluge in Alexander Valley & I only have summer duds with me. Ides of May? A couple more deluges this morning. Sheets of rain in Healdsburg and in west Marin. A half an inch of rain in Santa Rosa, my ass! Somebody needs to clean out the rain gauges.

Of course I only brought summer clothes to teach in..... I am freezing.

The internet is slower than molasses, I'm trying to save time by dictating kid poems for the poetry book (final edit, 2 classes done, 2 more to go), and I'm thinking of calling it quits, and crawling off to bed. This gig is pretty labor intensive. I’m so tired I can’t rest.....

Four classes a day, three days a week, is a challenge. I actually was so tired I crawled into bed at 8:30, just to get some down time. I taught MTW, then work for Sam in Forest Knolls tomorrow, I’m off Fri &  Sat. Work again in Forest Knolls on Sun, drive back to Healdsburg on Monday to produce a kid book. Monday is art, Tuesday is pasteup and runoff, then the big Open House readings for four classes, then we celebrate. Then fun may commence with Alexander Valley wine.

The real family photo of Mother’s Day

Normal? what is "normal?" This is the real whackjob family photo after we were done posing as normal people. Grandma is sucking down another Manhattan, between takes, Guy is way cool and aloof, thinking of the next video game, better than his early B&E phase, I'm spaced out, trying to reconcile how I'm related to all these people, how I can escape the madness, meanwhile, my mother the artist, is seriously chuffed, the only one totally present, lord knows what she was on at the time, she was den mother to the punkrocker in the Hamm's Vats, so anything was possible. Sean is off in his own world, jonesying for an escape route which will lead to a stint at Pelican Bay. Billy, who has CP, is the only one MIA, but he's been gone most of our lives, thanks to the State of California CPS stealing him from his crib as he slept, leaving no note. That's what sent my mom over the edge. She never recovered. All the miscarriages didn't help either. It's probably also my birthday to boot. Thanksgiving, 1981. You want story? We got story. And then some. Move over, Faulkner. Happy Mothers' Day to you all! <3 p="">

San Geronimo Valley Community Center Spring Art Show

A moment of synchronicity

Lately I've been scanning old slides, one was of a collaborative poet-artist art show I was in at the Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael in 1984. My artist-collaborator was Anne Faught. Of course, as I scanned slides of Carl Dern, Bill Wiley, and curator Bill Witherup, I wondered who was still alive—including my artist-collaborator, Anne Faught. And danged if an email didn't arrive from her tonight out of the blue—nearly 35 yeas later. See, she saw a pastel landscape series I had submitted to an upcoming group show next week—and she invited me to submit two pieces to an upcoming group show in October. She was surprised to discover I was also the same Maureen Hurley the writer...and confessed that she didn't remember the piece she submitted to the Magabark exhibit. So naturally I sent her a scan of the slide. What are the chances? Never would've happened if I hadn't taped my biz card to the back of my piece. Synchronicity werks in mysterious ways.

Ann Faught's Magabark piece

Dear Maureen~

I got your email off the back of your lovely painting at the SGVCC as I was checking in work this morning for their group show. I am curating a show there in October called Where We Call Home. I would love for you to be a part of the exhibit. Below are the two letters I have sent out thus far. I will send another letter/submission form in August. Please read both letters below and consider if you would like to be a part of this show and do let me know if you will. I hope to meet you this Friday night at the group show opening.

Thank you, Anne Faught

So you are the same Maureen Hurley! I wondered as I do remember you as a writer. I am sorry to say I do not remember what I submitted for that exhibit or your piece! Yes, Carl is gone and Wiley has Parkinson’s and has moved to north Marin. Still getting around but not well. I am so glad you will be in the show!

One of the pastels I had submitted.

Upcoming art show.

DESCENT OF THE HEART

DESCENT OF THE HEART

My heart is like rusty springs in an old car,
abandoned by the railroad track
seats stuffed with cotton and jute
where generations of mice
have raised countless families.
My heart changes colors like a mood ring
whenever it encounters strange things,
ideas attached to wings or musical notes.
Sometimes I catch it sobbing in the dark
like a small child, other times, it runs off,
cutting school like a truant—
especially when chocolate is involved.
My heart can’t tell time well.
It always wants to play in the now,
futures are always distant,
but it likes to daydream
or procrastinate whenever a deadline
approaches at the speed of light.
My heart squeezes me,
and sobs over dumb things like movies,
or dead pets, but not for the man 

I lived with for 20 years.

I guess it figures that it already gave 

at the office.

It’s a sentimental fool
for memory and angst,
but it also giggles in the dark
like a maniacal monster
waiting for the time where darkness
descends like bat wings.

5/6/19
Alexander Valley School

JACK THE CAT

JACK THE CAT

I didn’t know I loved the way Jack the cat
would sit patiently for hours
then make a beeline for our wine glasses
every time we sat on the couch.
Wild water was so much better
than ordinary water out of the bowl.
Or the way he would sit so politely
and silently beg whenever we had meat for dinner,
but with the wine glasses all bets were off.
Everyone’s glass was fair game.
He’d make the rounds like a veteran,
work the room like a comedian
in the borscht belt
until all glasses were scrubbed
scrupulously clean by his small pink tongue.
No matter that you wanted to take a drink
from your wine glass,
he’d follow it right up to your face,
licking all the while,
with a glazed look in his eye
as he were dreaming of distant futures
where water was like a dream.
I didn’t know that Jack the cat was diabetic
and was dying, I didn’t know
that this would be the last time,

the very last time.

May there always be frosted wine glasses 

to greet you wherever you are,

Jack.

5/6/19
Alexander Valley School