2023 CAC Artist Fellowship application

Of course I didn’t get a fellowship. I didn’t recognize any names on any of the three categories.

The CAC Fellowship will support my ongoing creative art practice by giving me time to develop more writing and to publish a backlog of work. I have several book-length poetry manuscripts, and material from ongoing projects including travel journals and memoir—including meeting with poets and artists in the USSR, and Latin America when I traveled with mentor poet/translator, John Oliver Simon. 

I am also a photographer with a large archive of photos of notable poets and writers that spans 40 years. I’m in the process of scanning thousands of negatives that I plan to make available with my writing via print and web before I die. I‘m 71. COVID taught me that time is finite. Some of my B&W photography is online here My historic photos of poets and notable people have recently appeared in The Weed Museum traveling exhibit, and the soon-to-be-released Julia Vinograd documentary, Between Spirit & Stone.
During COVID isolation, I joined several Zoom writing groups which led my writing in new directions. One writing group I belong to has generated enough new material for several full length books, one of which I've submitted to Gunpowder Press. 

In the previous narrative boxes, I've discussed my teaching career—and about passing on the baton. I discovered it's important to train other artists in order to facilitate change through the poetic process. Then there is the next generation of students to carry on the tradition. Teaching has been at the epicenter of my creative process, and inspiring others also informs my own work. I discovered I do not work in a vacuum, I need interaction with community, whether it's protesting against the government or social injustice, or reflecting upon the environment. But now it's time to pull back, and make my own work available to larger audiences.

JUMPSTARTING THE HEART

Nels and Seretta talked of that moment 

when their hearts stopped beating,

that moment when they were technically dead.

A-fib, D-fib—when the machines took over, 

delivering another chance at life.

When her heart was restarted, Seretta said

you cannot go back to who you were. 

You get another chance, like a cat with nine lives,

growing wings of made of sunlight and breath.

But you have to reinhabit your life.

In spring, Jay visits the parents of his donor heart, 

in this way they celebrate the life of their dead son.

They place their hands upon his chest 

to feel the miracle of the beating heart, 

still alive in its new cage of sinew and bone.

I want to ask: Do they fall love again anew

with all that passion of the first flush of love.

Or does the heart pick up where it left off, 

perhaps indifferent to the vagaries of love 

that settles into the ventricles over time?

9/27/23 Write On! with Susie Terence

California condors return to the Bay Area

Today, in the news headlines, rare photos of six California condors circling the updrafts of Mount Diablo for the first time in over 100 years. It seems these condors drifted north from the Pinnacles National Monument. Slowly they have been re-populating California. They haven’t quite hit the 500-bird mark but it’s a miracle compared to the last statistic, which was the virtual death knell for the species, when the last 22 free wild condors captured in the 1980s in order to save the species from extinction.

In the 1950s, the ranchers were hellbent on exterminating all the bobcats and cougars, foxes and coyotes, the golden, and the bald eagles, and all the hawks from the landscape—it was considered a necessity for taking care of the livestock. I remember their stories of eagles dropping lambs and calves on rock outcrops to kill them. I watched these wild creatures disappear from my childhood landscape. Their presence was noted by their absence. But I had a vast memory bank.

When the ranchers ran out of eagles and redtail hawks to shoot down, it seems they began in on the bluejays and vultures, perhaps for an excuse for something to shoot at, leaving behind a plethora of lead bullets in the landscape. Ten years ago, California was the first state in the nation to successfully ban lead bullets and lead sinkers for good, the wildlife has been making a slow comeback.

The native bluejays were replaced by Stellar’s jays who moved in en masse to fill the empty niche. And no, they were not drab scrub jays that you see today, these bluejays had black striped blue and white wing and tail feathers that I loved to collect.  I remember the first time I saw a Stellar’s jay hopping up Barranca Road by the Bianchi‘s field. Dark head and a crest. I had never seen one like it before, so I stored it away in my memory banks. 

A frumpy bluebird shoved out of the nest too soon so I put him back.

By this time, the western bluebirds had also disappeared from the landscape, because of DDT poisoning. This was about the time Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out. I used to think that bluebirds were male robins because they were blue and orange. You know, blue for boys? I was a strange child of the outdoors and was constantly making mental connections between things. Call it similitude if you must. 

The redtail hawks never returned to their home range, but were replaced with striped red-shouldered hawks from Sonoma County. I can’t stand their piercing cry. I prefer the song of the red tail hawk any day. I used to practice saying Tcheer! And they’d answer back. Collecting their red tail feathers was considered a big coup.

I once took care of a friend, Christian Djorziak’s injured redtail hawk. When I tossed her a chicken neck, she would lean back on her massive wings as if they were elbows and grab it with her feet. I marveled at her beauty, how big she was up close. Those sharp eyes, those talons, that beak. Respect and awe.

A dark morph redtail hawk checks out free range chickens, LaFranchi Ranch, Nicasio.

In the late 1950s we sometimes saw condors in West Marin, but it was very rare. Compared to turkey vultures they were massive in the sky—much bigger than vultures or eagles. I only saw one, never a flock. The condors had large white patches on their underwings—one reason why it stuck out in my mind. It was a placeholder for the future, a time for when I could properly identify them. But by then, they were long gone from the wild. Facing mass extinction from DDT and lead bullets, like the peregrine falcon.

In the early 1970s we used to drive up a steep fire road out to the Big Sur garbage dump just to see the last of the wild California condors circling in the updrafts over the desolate valleys and ridges. And you could definitely see their distinctive white underwing patches, or chevrons pointing the way out.

And outside of Cusco, Peru, I watched massive Andean vultures circling over the ruins of Sacsayhuamán. They too had white patches on their underwings. And elegantly dressed in fluffy white neck ruffs, like Elizabethan courtiers, or cartoon vultures.

A friend writes how she once saw black vultures with their distinctive white under wing patches, near Wildcat Beach on the coast in the 1990s—their range does not typically overlap with our CA redheaded turkey vultures—the black-headed vultures’ westernmost winter range includes AZ, and the southern states. But I guess one could’ve been blown a bit off course. Or maybe he was slumming it in CA. Admit it, we have way better beaches and way better carcasses too.

The other day I saw a massive turkey vulture flock funneling in an updraft over the pastures west of Petaluma. Always love seeing them swirling like WB Yeats’ Pern in a Gyre during the fall migration. It’s more like a congregation or perhaps a reunion as they don’t ever leave the Northbay. We used to lie down in the middle of the field and play dead to see if they would come closer. They never did, even if we didn’t bathe for a couple of weeks, we just weren’t stinky enough.

For the the record, our red-headed turkey vultures will also eat live meat. They are opportunists, not pacifist garbage-men. I once witnessed them descend upon a wounded fawn that some asshole hit with his fancyass Porsche right in front of Rancho Nicasio—and he drove off without a backward glance. Vultures have way better table manners than he did—even if they did tear out the fawn’s still beating heart. He was a goner, and we all knew it. I sure didn’t want to do the coup de grace.

A little known fact, baby red-headed turkey vultures have dark colored heads. Check out my photo of Junior perched between both his parents munching on a carcass in San Antonio Creek. Very different than black vultures. Sleeker heads and necks. They are very loving and doting parents. You can see from the photo that our turkey vultures are not really black. I love the blue black iridescent breast and neck feathers juxtaposed against the two-tone brown wing feathers.

Black vultures are definitely smaller and strange looking with their wrinkled cowls like Anubis escaped from the underworld. Check out this link for their range, and also how they look so different in the sky. I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly seen a black-headed vulture. Apparently they will hang out with turkey vultures, because turkey vultures have an acute sense of smell. Better than theirs. So I guess they’re carrion opportunists.

Check out this photo of the white underwing of the condor I was mentioning earlier. And this is why they significantly stood out in my childish memory banks. They were so unlike turkey vultures, and they were massive in the sky. You could actually hear them soaring in the wind.

A turkey vulture with a massive wingspan.

AN OCCASIONAL POEM FOR JACK

Dear Jack, on the day of your birth, 

your book arrived in the post. 

Last night, the edges of rain graced this valley, 

and cleared the air of all that wildfire smoke 

from the Klamath River Basin.

Today is the first day in weeks

we can see the outline of the coastal hills.

Mt. St. Helena, a dark sentinel.

The air is like a knife’s edge on the horizon.

As I read your poems, I asked myself

what did you hope to find 

before you were born? 

There is an old Irish saying, 

what was the color of the wind 

on the day of your birth?

Spirit birds, perhaps yellow 

with a touch of grey.

9/26/23

I AM OF CALIFORNIA

I am of Ireland, the holy land of Ireland, 

the green land of myth and mystery. 

I have seen my grandfather bent over his books, 

as if they could restore the myriad atrocities 

dealt by the hands of the enemy. 

I did not know why he left his homeland 

to continue insurrection from this land of the free. 

So I sat on his lap and blew out wooden matches 

as he sucked on another stogie, 

that would eventually kill him 

as surely as those British bullets. 

Rubber ones hadn't yet been invented. 

That particular atrocity would come later.

I am of Ireland, that fabled land 

of verdant song & story. 

I watched my grandmother as she pinched pennies,

and hunkered down over potato beds in the garden,

raking & weeding, cajoling them into the stewpot 

where cabbage sang arias to bacon & ham hocks 

or tongue when we were lucky enough to get them. 

I never knew the poverty belt was cinched tight 

around our necks until I left home, 

the idea of perspective was always trapped 

in the green depths of the rearview mirror.

I am of California, the golden rolling hills 

where hawks argue over turf in a blue vaulted sky.

I need to quit using the word vaulted. 

It's just that the sky is a cathedral, 

a star of the sea shining in the distance 

where I was once baptized in pickled brine. 

But I gave it up, not for God, nor the vigilant nuns,

but when the women were ordered to give up 

their bodies, to spread their legs wide & cowp, 

then bend a supplicant's knee at the altar of prosperity. 

There was no melting pot, we were condemned 

by the fabric of our customs & names & religion.

The hidden wealth of the immigrant pushed aside 

made superfluous by insidious inquality 

of this WASPish nation wanting to break us all.

9/20/23 Write On! with Susie Terence

Hurricane Charley, Mile Zero, Highway One (photos)

Take One.

We moved inter-island weaving down the chain of atolls and sandbars, following the signs to the end of the Highway One, to the striped cement buoy marking the southernmost point of the United States, painted yellow and black, like a hornet, with red for danger, or for communism. The howling wind whipped the sea into a froth as the tentacles of the hurricane approached land, having already hit landfall somewhere in Cuba. We could almost stand into the wind at 75° angles, as we defied gravity. I was oblivious to the danger, my first hurricane. Palm fronds, sharp as glass, like weapons flying through the air as if thrown by a carnival knife thrower with the scantily clad lady rotating on the roulette wheel. Always a gamble. The wind eddied and curled as if to strip us down to the bone. A green coconut landed at my feet, I scooped it up and gleefully thought of how I would use it at. At the end of Whitehead St., the liquor store was still open for business, so we bought some rum and made coconut water drinks and wended our way back to our Key West hotel room fighting the gale force winds. I fixed salmon with jellied coconut, not quite formed into nut meat, and I drained off the water for drinks. It was brackish, a bit disappointing, tasting of sea, brine and vaguely perfumed. More like drinking a musty dog. The rum helped hide the disappointment. Though we were still far from the epicenter, the wind howled like a banshee and passed us by. Morning broke with clear skies, and you could see almost all the way to Cuba, the hurricane having devastated Havana yet again. No refugees on the horizon. Businesses reopened hoping to catch a stray tourist or two in their nets. I bought a damaged Mile Zero T-shirt and cut off the sleeves, like a black muscle shirt with a big green Zero on it. Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville was doing a brisk trade on Duval Street, the bar was lined three deep, even though the sun was barely up. Living on the edge of the continent, exposed to the vagaries of weather, you live in the moment, the calm before the storm drove home the temporal quality of life as we imagined it. 

MILE ZERO

In the distance, a small open boat 

struggles to stay afloat in the following sea—

hopefully not a raft of refugees, not in this storm. 

On the edge of the continent, 

we are small specks of coral sand juxtaposed 

between the Gulf Stream and the Florida Straits.

Lightning lashes out, strikes with a vengeance. 

The cement buoy marking the edge of the US, 

says 90 miles to Cuba. It’s 94 miles, but it’s less poetic.

The line of sight is 3 miles to the meniscus of the ocean.

We are connected by distance and allegiance. 

A sign says Begin Highway One North at Mile Zero. 

The alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, 

freedom and communism trading places 

where the Atlantic meets the Gulf of Mexico. 

A memorial to the thousands of Cubans

who lost their lives at sea, seeking freedom 

and asylum from the storm.

9/13/23 Write On! with Susie Terence (this is from a collage—see below).

We are caught between the juxtaposition of empty space and the edge of the sea, as lightning lashed the surface of the water with a vengeance. In the distance, a small open boat struggled to stay afloat—hopefully not a raft of refugees in this storm. Each of us is connected by distance and allegiance. The rippling sea as it stretches from island to island, is a molten cloak. We stood on the edge of the continent, so small in our insignificance. The street corner, bisecting Whitehead and South Street, where the cement buoy that marks the edge of the continent informs us that it’s 70 miles to Cuba. Begin Highway One N. at Mile Zero. The alpha and the omega, the beginning, and the end, freedom and communism trading places where the Atlantic meets the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a memorial to the thousands of Cubans, who lost their lives at sea, seeking freedom from the storm.

Old Florida blogposts.

• Hurricane Charley, Mile Zero, Highway One (photos)
• Confessions of an iPod Roadie
• Letter from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal
• Missive from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal

Ziggy Stardust, cat chronicles

Newsweek ran an article on documenting kitty love. Or rather trying to prove that our aloof cats really do love us after all. They’re not just assholes, and we are not their servant-savants. Now, most quasi-scientific articles on cat behavior are beyond ridiculous—especially the ones that try to (dis)prove the cognitive abilities of cats. Markers of feline affection are even harder to map. Especially if you are prone to  use the behavior of sycophantic dogs as a reference point.

I was always interested in cat behavior, having had cats all my life. Our first cat was a Siamese, who decided that I need a protection and slept with me in the crib. My father was convinced she would smother me, my mother said no, leave her alone. She’s protecting the baby. And so she did. Much later, I also wanted to become a veterinarian, so I was always observing animal behavior. 

When it came to choosing my own kitten from my friend’s litter, this time I let the kitten choose me, not the other way around. The previous kitten I chose on looks alone. Luckily Frosty, a seal-point Saimese with white markings was a good cat. I was sold on Siamese-alley cat mix. You got the best of both worlds, blue-eyed beauty and street-smarts. And hopefully you didn’t get a crossbreed that sang the song of the Siamese cat’s tribe.

There were at least five kittens to choose from the clowder as the purebred Siamese mother proudly surveyed her mongrel litter. Luckily they mostly took after her with Siamese markings and tabby stripes. It was a hard decision, I wanted them all. 

My friend’s stepmother would not let us take our chosen kittens right away, she said they were too young at six weeks, so we interacted with them for two weeks when they came of age to leave the nest. Wise decision. Less trauma for them. My kitten was one well-adjusted cat. He was both adventuresome and trusting.

Most people choose their cats based on quirks and vagaries of beauty, not realizing that the cat too would like to make a choice as to whom he trusts and wants to interact with. Though it took me a while to find his name, Ziggy Stardust chose me. He fell asleep in my lap on his back with paws splayed. My heart melted.

At College of Marin I did a social experiment with my Siamese-tabby mix kitten for a psychology class, we were studying animal behavior. Konrad Lorenz’s imprinted ducklings was my inspiration.

I taught my beautiful blue-eyed kitten to come when I whistled, to lay down, roll over, and to fetch a piece of crumpled paper and return it to me. He performed brilliantly for the class and was unafraid of strangers. We all sat in a circle on the carpet,, and he wended his way in an out of all of us, curious to the end. It was interesting to watch him work the crowd and you could see my fellow students falling in love.

When I brought Ziggy back to school a few months later, he was terrified, and would not do anything at all, except for to hide and yowl. It was a long  miserable day at school for both of us. This was in the days before cat carriers were invented, so I carried him on the bus to and from school. No leash. No harness. He stuck to me like glue. I was his only hope. We were a bonded pair. I never put them in a stressful position like that again.

I trained that cat to do many other things as well. Perhaps the most unusual feat was to convince him to hop into a picnic basket so that I could lower him from the second story window to the ground so he could go potty. Then, after he did his duty, he would hop back inside the basket and ride the elevator back up to my window for his morning snuggle. 

Figby & Ziggy adored my grandmother, much to her chagrin, & she let them inside.

• See Figby & Pishkin a story about two brother cats, and a good example of nature versus nurture.

Letter to Robert Reich

Dear Robert Reich,

Since we’re near neighbors, may I call you Uncle Bob? Maybe not. Bob was the name of my first boyfriend whom I’m still trying to forget some 50 years later. However, if one is to discuss one’s bowel function with relative strangers, we should at least be on first name, if not a nickname basis. My nickname was Baba, which means baby in Irish, and then it was changed to Mo—as in the mighty Mo. 

Besides, that would give me a chance to say Bob’s your uncle— which is infinitely better than Sweet Old Bob, an acronym my Irish grandmother was inordinately fond of when it came to cursing Oliver Cromwell and American politicians—I had to wait until I was an adult before I discovered Cromwell was 400 years dead. Imagine my surprise. Some of our sitting (no, not shitting) congressman have seemingly joined ranks with Cromwell.

However, your latest missive on aging is a keeper. And it had me giggling in fits and spurts. Thank God no leakage was implicated. Nor were any Pampers harmed in the process. And my back is fine, thank you very much for asking. As are my kidneys and bowels. However, my left leg is not doing so well, my having sprained it two months ago. So I have to stick it up in the air at every opportune moment that comes up. Even while driving. And I drive a clutch.

The incredible shrinking height aspect and aging has me worried as I almost hit 5 foot 3” in my 20s, no, make that my 30s—that is, after extensive chiropractics. I am afraid that at age 70 moseying on up to 71, I have probably lost more than an inch and I am no longer even 5 foot 2.” Chiropractics will not yield me any more attenuated height. Like you, I was mercilessly teased for being skinny and for my short stature, but girls were not expected to be taller than boys. I made up for it with bravado, a profound sense of justice and a feisty ability to use my words in order to sway people.

As for flipping people off while driving down the road, that’s a tough one. I still do it, even though I know I should not. Especially those weekend idiots driving through Nicasio and on the Point Reyes-Red Hill Road. Don’t even get me started on the spandex bicycle warriors, riding in clots two and three abreast on country roads they have no business riding bicycles on.

With that, I too worry about the relative age of our political leaders. Personally, I think the 80s should be the cut off date for Congress. Let’s face it, Di Fi is definitely doddering, and if she is somewhat incapacitated by age, that makes McConnell mouldering away with one foot practically in the grave. 

Speaking of bowels, I am reminded that the word senator is related to the word senex, which basically means senile old farts vs. the wet-behind-the-ears puer aeternus. The medieval Irish Agallamh Na Seanórach explores the dichotomy of mindsets. The old and the new. We have a minimum age for politicians, why not an age-cap as a well? It should be included for all members of public office, including judges.

At least Barbara Boxer, whom I worked for when she was running for Marin County supervisor in the way back days, had the good sense to retire while she was ahead. I wish Nancy Pelosi would take notice of that. Of course, this particular line of reasoning would be considered ageist. We won’t mention the politicians nobody wants at the helm—Kevin McCarthy who ran for Speaker of the House and it took 15 attempts to get enough votes to vote him in? And now he’s trying to impeach Biden? That’s rich, considering our last president was brain dead.

Maybe a saner approach that one should not run for political office, that is, Congress, for more than two or three terms. Capping term limits would help enormously and eliminating those long-in-tooth career politicians caught sleeping on the job—but not with the presidency. For that there is no fix.

And by the way, speaking of the trickle down theory and going out on those sonorous high notes, you forgot to mention the greatest napper of all, that erstwhile actor-President Ronald Reagan, who unfortunately should’ve quit politics when he was Governor of  California. He created homelessness on a grand scale when he closed all the mental institutions, my mother among them.

Bob’s your uncle,
Maureen Hurley,
Forest Knolls

THE WAY BACK

Finding the way back is never easy. 

Those undefined obstacles

the divide of the self from the other, 

becoming monologue, or is it soliloquy? 

All those things we’ve left unsaid, 

when you wake up in the middle of the night, 

and wished you had phrased it better. 

Those waves tucking into the shore of sleep, 

are packed with remorse and regret. 

Inexplicably at 3 AM, you remember 

how you tortured the poor sensitive plant 

until it died of exhaustion, 

watching its leaves rise and fall. 

And what about the kitten’s whiskers?

So what if you were six, you knew better.

There were were other transgressions.

The moon caught in the web of powerlines, 

is a full note held on a celestial scale. 

An old worry, like those lost trailheads of memory,

a tarantella of dead leaves, small layers of the past. 

Whatever we cannot fix comes back to haunt us.

SCION CALL

I am not a footlocker for odd clothes, cookies, and drinks. 

I am not a go-bag even though evacuation came in threes. 

I’m no knight in shining armor, recusing you from yourself,

though you’ve slept on the backseat, took cramped refuge

when there was nowhere else left to go. No late-night couches.

I am most certainly not not your pet cage—

that little deermouse who came in from the cold 

who built nests in my wiring, plumbed my secret places. 

Someday there will be hell to pay it, but not just yet. 

Remember how you drenched air filters with peppermint oil 

to discourage the wayward beast, but the volatile oils 

burned your eyes, so you couldn’t see where you were going, 

it was midwinter, an exceptionally cold one at that. 

Remember how we drove around with all the windows open. 

The wind finally stung those repressed tears from your eyes.

My floor was generous, the mouse could’ve dined for months. 

We couldn’t go on like this. Something had to be done, but what? 

And when snap traps caught only fingers, you resorted to glue traps 

with little almond eyes, they caught flack, but no wayward mouse. 

Finally someone took pity, gave you a rat-sized glue board 

that finally did the trick, but the interior smelled grassy and pissy, 

there was no easy fix. The mouse lived on, but it was doomed, 

so when it was caught, it was end of an odd migration story. 

No time for remorse. All that tasty rubber made with soy, 

a siren call for small woodland creatures with no travel guides.

It’s a good thing the packrats didn’t squeeze through the ducts. 

That would’ve been a three-ring circus. They ate their way 

through my landlady’s semi-new Camry, right down to the bone. 

The damage was more than the value of the car.

And then, they moved onto my flat mate’s snazzy sports car. 

The spark plug caps and firewall was tastier than acorns.

The packrats circled my old Scion, saved by the manufacture date.

See, all the newer cars are made with soy-based rubber. 

Rodents are flocking to this new Japanese food source.

But packrats also like to do a brisque trade with trinkets.

All those shiny treasures snoozing on the dashboard.

Like so much money in the bank.

9/6/23 Write On! with Susie Terence

Pathetic fallacies

When I was taking Celtic studies at UC Berkeley, my Celtic studies and rhetoric professor, Dan Millia introduced us to this list. Once applied to presentism, looking back at how we so erroneously interpret the middle ages with 21st century lens—this was a brilliant tool. When he introduced the idea, I thought I had gone to heaven, I was so enamored. Suddenly, all kinds of ideas fell neatly into place, things that I didn’t have words or categories for previously. I suddenly realized that the basis, and the urge for my poetry writing was definitely tied up with defining and arguing with those pathetic fallacies. (No, not pathetic phalluses, but there’s room for argument there too.) See, I was born ready to argue under the yabbut sign (yes, but…), never taking anything at face value. Then there’s gaslighting, a whole ‘nother ball of worms.

TRUE CHANTERELLES in Medicine for Minds & Hearts anthology

TRUE CHANTERELLES (2013) was (re)published in Medicine for Minds & Hearts, an anthology of mushroom poems from Fungi Press, 2023. It originally appeared in Fungi Magazine in 2020. I had sent the poem to Art Goodtimes soon after it was written, but it languished in email format, then we dusted it off for publication, and he asked me to go ahead and load it up with scientific terms, which I did, and then, eventually it was published, but it was a long birth! A decade later!

• 

AT THE POETRY READING

He leaned forward in his seat as if to catch 

every word, every line she said. Her breath.

He was a speckled trout in a deep pool at dusk, 

the mayflies occluding the smooth surface, 

like rain on a window after the storm. 

How the poems moved him, you could see it 

in his glistening eyes, as if backed by starlight, 

the words holding up a deeper promise. 

She should’ve seen the warning signs. 

Or maybe she did, and ignored them—

 

the way uncomfortable truths, disguised as hope, 

led us astray, and so we believed what we wanted, 

and fell into that convenient offering,

because the bed is a prop, the backdrop to a story, 

but the actors have already left the stage.

And so we fell into tangled sheets, playing at love. 

The heart takes solace where it finds refuge. 

And the river always whispers of darker shores.

At the reading, there was that same glow in his eyes, 

as a poet read the hard terrain of her poems. 

I think of how we confuse the poem with the reader 

instead of the mouthpiece of a larger truth. 

I let him go like the fading stars at dawn

drifting off, setting sail for another shore.

8/23/23 Write On! with Susie Terence

Billy Collins’ The Night People, the Cool People 3-year Zoom celebration

I grabbed up some books collected during the plague, in case we were sharing. I came to the Poetry Broadcast series in June 2021, after I had taken a writing workshop with Billy Collins via Zoom at Book Passages, and then soon afterwards, Gwyndolen Soper, the founder of TNPTCP, noticed I was commenting on the thread during Billy’s Poetry Broadcast, and kindly asked me to join the group. I had no idea of its existence. I am so glad she found me. And I’ve been here ever since. Someone said we are family. Yes, we are family.

One of my Covid activities was hunting for used Billy Collins books on eBay, and giving them a new home. I looked for bookseller specials where you could by three books and get one free, it took a lot of juggling and maneuvering to get the titlesI wanted. But I was patient as I had nothing but time. I have an armload of them now. Not quite every book he’s ever published, but pretty close.

Mr. Nunes’ bison bull calf, Lagunitas, ca. 1982 (photos)

While scanning my tear sheet archives, I stumbled across some poor scans of old photos…. If I ever find the negatives….Mr. Nunes feeding Nickel, the bull calf bison while a scandalized Hereford heifer looks on incredulously as he feeds her hay to the stranger. Lagunitas, ca 1982.

I wonder what the heifer thought of the bison? It looks like the only romance going on was with the hay. Old Man Nunes was so proud of his little bison calf. What was he thinking? (Besides the price of beefalo.) Bison are completely unpredictable and are bulldozers when it comes to fences.

There's a backstory, bison are part of the fabric of my childhood. When I was a kid, there was another bison—yes, we called them buffalo—in Nicasio right by the church. The only reason why Belle the Buffalo stayed put in the church pasture was because she liked the other cows. I used to save my buffalo head nickels and named them all Belle. 

Tuesday was bank day at school. I was in second grade. We had a little manila envelopes with rope ties and we were encouraged to save a nickel or a dime a week so I put all my most treasured coins, Indian head pennies, buffalo nickels, and liberty dimes in those little envelopes thinking that I would get the same ones back again later from Bank of America, in the old brick Grandi Hotel in Point Reyes.

Then one hopped up Saturday night some hoodlums came out and shot the poor buffalo for no reason at all. Or, so the story goes. We were all devastated. Or so I thought, you know how gossip misdirects itself.  As it turns out, she up and died for no real reason. That’s the official story. Maybe it was natural causes like age, or disease. But I suspect some guys did shoot at her. It was that kind of an era with loaded gun racks across back windows of pickup trucks.

So, when Nickel showed up, we were all insane with joy. I used to take my grandmother up to the ranch for a visit (today would’ve been her 130th birthday). It was a case of Meet the new family pet, Nickel. I wonder what happened to the little bison when Old Man Nunes died. He was fence-resistant as I recall. The bison, not Mr. Nunes. 

Now there are fancyass palaces on Portola Road (the fire road to the Lookout) once my own private Eden, and I can't imagine they'd tolerate a wayward bison.

Both Tony Senior and Tony Junior have crossed the rainbow bridge, and Nickel, too, I presume. I always meant to collect Tony Junior’s folklore. Too late. I heard that the youngest brother, Mel Nunes, who was a few years ahead of me in school, became a volunteer fireman for the Woodacre Fire Department—still lives at the ranch. Maybe I’d better pay him a visit before it’s too late.

UNSEASONABLE RAIN

The pale summer sky is cloaked 

with an unseasonable beauty of thunderclouds, 

ladened with promises of lightning and wildfire.

We hold our breath, pack our go-bags, and hope for rain.

The Perseids whisper of distant light in the northern quadrant. 

I imagine angels imposed on the levity of the sky, 

and think of the inevitable promise of the grave, 

how the pretenders and believers alike 

eventually succumb to that final darkness.

Don’t they know the story is a run-on life sentence?

8/16/23

STINGING NETTLES

Pretend that the world is an oyster 

sleeping on the clouded bottom of the bay. 

A cliché, I know. Pretend that it dreams 

of the luster of pearls it will never make.

Pretend the grit beneath your skin isn’t an irritant, 

or the slender blackberry sticker in your finger 

that you worry with your teeth, hoping to dislodge it,

does not bother you. It swells up anyway.

It’s embedded in your skin like an old memory.

Pretend that those stinging nettles 

growing in a boggy patch down by the creek 

will not sting you. Not this time. You get a free pass.

Do you remember how your grandmother 

donned leather gloves to gather nettles for potherbs? 

They tasted of dank secrets of the creek, midsummer. 

Was it because she had no money for dinner greens?

You probably shouldn’t have told those city kids 

to grab them like that. Such childish meanness. 

They were not the enemy. You were too young to know 

that change is inevitable, but you fought it anyway.

Soon it will be time to return to school. 

That new dress she made is a song of the future.

But you couldn’t let go of summer’s hard promise, 

the tawny hills, the dark oaks whispering secrets 

you couldn’t quite translate in the breeze, 

no matter how hard you listened. Meanwhile, 

the last wasps droned on, deer desperately browsed, 

looking for anything green—even the bitter ivy.  

Pretend the golden bay leaves 

clattering like hooves on the tin roof

are not small coffin nails 

hammering home the end of the season.

8/16/23 Write On! with Terri Glass

BRÓN TROGAIN, SUMMER’S END

Fading August light, 

the clattering of bay leaves. 

A sharpness in the air.

These are the seeds of memory, 

the mountains painted blue,

the hayfields of stored sunlight.

The waning moon sings of despair, 

and the wild iris by the side of the road

slumbers toward winter darkness.

The sky shrugs its shoulders,

covered in a shawl of clouds.

The thunder answers

with an empty promise 

of late summer rain.

8/9/23

HUNTING STONES ON GRIZZLY PEAK

The odor of eucalyptus after first rain dazzles 

the senses with the memory of thirsty rocks,
small pieces quartz resurface on the fire road
like blind hail after the deluge, quiet stars 
dozing in red Franciscan mud.

I gather them up, not random shards of upheaval,
but the remains of fossils filled with quartz,
the unkempt story of seed clams and shells
still crawling out of the sea.

As I glimpse the bay from a limestone reef,  

I hold a hard beauty in my pockets.
There are more treasures to be found,
dark obsidian flakes also swim in my pockets.

Someone’s attempt at resurrecting the art 

of flint napping, a dark tide at my feet.

All this immeasurable bounty of the past 

teases me away from the 21st-century.

The spine of the drought is broken. 

The coinage in my pockets pulls me down. 

My pants are in danger of slipping off 

with the combined weight of rocks. 

I return those stones back to the earth, 

taste the pungent air, breathe in the mist 
with a sense of finally belonging 

to this landscape not of my own choosing.

8/9/23 Write On! Workshop with Terri Glass

REST IN POWER, DAVID LAFLAMME

Rest in Power, David LaFlamme, 

it’s a beautiful day in the West..

The white bird is flying free

to the edges of all the small circles 

in the universe, uncaged,

while the aspen leaves fall 

and the violin gently weeps. 

It is all part of the pantomime.

8/8/23

PD obit

Apparently, the New York Times of it was a little more in depth. Judith Gips reported.: “ Piquant family and early history from the NYT obituary for David LaFlamme:  I somehow like his father being a stunt performer who became a copper miner. "...born on May 4, 1941, in New Britain, Conn., the first of six children of Adelard and Norma (Winther) LaFlamme. He spent his early years in Los Angeles, where his father was a Hollywood stunt double, before settling in Salt Lake City, where his father became a copper miner."

David was about 5 when he got his first violin, a hand-me-down from an aunt.

“I began fooling around with it on my own and taught myself to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’” he said in a 1998 interview. Formal training followed.”

Who knew Einstein’s desk meme went against Facebook community standards?

I do keep track of these Facebook absurdities on my blog. Why Facebook continues to harass a 70-year-old woman for using metaphor and creative language is beyond me. but re-posting photos that everyone else on Facebook has re-posted, and then being sanctioned, for it is at best egregious.

OMFG, I posted an old meme from Facebook about Einstein’s messy desk on the day he died onto a friend’s comment and got dinged by FB AI bots for “going against community standards.” The desk is not nude, in fact it’s well covered, dressed with lots of papers. And as far as I can tell, there was never any sexual activity on that desk, ever. Unless crunching numbers counts. Facebook AI bots evidentially need glasses. And they have a dirty mind. Censor the Facebook AI bots already. Or bust the people that do actually post censorious material. Leave me alone already. This is flat-out harassment.

And I got yet another ding for actually posting the Einstein meme in my Facebook thread, below. I cannot for the life of me figure out why Facebook thinks there is nudity or sexual activity going on. It’s a desk and a chair, a bookcase and a smudged blackboard.

So if you don’t hear from me, it means I am in Facebook jail again. And every time I’ve been thrown in jail, I have literally not done anything that even remotely goes against community standards. Except use simile and metaphor. I’m too old for this shinola. I am seriously considering parting company with Facebook. This is beyond ridiculous. Last photograph I posted to demonstrate the vagaries of leucism, also went against “community standards” was of a spotted chicken and an appaloosa horse. At least they were mammals in that photo.

Let the record show the offending meme in question. Do you see any nudity or sex in this photograph? Yeah, neither did I. Perhaps I need stronger glasses.

Part two: And now I got yet another Facebook ding for reposting the above meme. I fear I may be headed for Facebook jail once again. And as usual I have done zip zilch nada nothing wrong, and certainly have not gone against community standards. Stupid. Facebook is a bully.

Yep, once you start getting Facebook dings, you’re under surveillance and you cannot edit your own comments for a period of time. Sort of an extra gaslighting punishment. I edited the above comment and it was summarily erased. I hate typos. And clearly Facebook AI bots hate to be outed. Sort of a bonus prize, I guess.

The last time I posted one of Facebook’s dire warnings like this, it dinged me twice for the screenshot of the comment, so I got two consecutive jailbird sentences for the price of one. For hate speech, mind you. And all I was doing was using a poor metaphor. Certainly the metaphor was in poor taste, but if you look at most of the stuff posted on Facebook, Facebook itself survives on downright dicey posts in poor taste. It moves the machine.

“It seems I am always being called out by Facebook for my figurative use of language. Facebook actually gave me 13 window’s-worth of admonishments. And, I’ve been thrown in jail. A red card jail, I tell you! And not even for making a pithy political comment. Since when is wanting to “strangle someone’s voice,”  hate speech or a crime against humanity when the woman’s incessant whining throughout the entire video itself, was a crime against humanity? OK, so it was in poor taste.

There are Facebook sanctions—and I do mean “sanction” in both terms of the word: certain taboo words, of which no one knows the complete list, that cannot be used alone, or, and here’s the clincher—or to modify another word, or idea. OK, fine by me. I’ve been sanctioned for going too fast or for liking posts too fast, I’ve been sanctioned for posting my own links on my own page—marked as spam. And I’ve received multiple yellow card warning sanctions for use the use of unusual figurative language. Only, this time, the card was red. Let the punishment fit the crime. In the klinker for making bad mixed metaphors.“ I’m in Facebook jail again…and again

And I don’t even watch dicy videos. The most exciting things I watch in the Facebook video section at this point, are dog grooming—they get their matted hair shaved off, ergo they’re naked, or naked horse hoof trimming (no shoes), and Kiftness kitties singing. They could be saying anything for all I know. Since they’re screeching at each other, clearly sex or turf is involved.

Barbie-heimer

I must admit that I don’t have an overwhelming desire to see the “blockbuster”movie Barbie. Sure, I had a Barbie doll. But I didn’t relate to her. She was tall, and impossibly thin with a long blonde ponytail. I took a blunt pair of scissors to her ponytail at one point. Her head came off so easily. As did her arms. Pieces easily went on walkabout.

I couldn’t afford to buy Barbie clothes, she came dressed in a zebra striped bathing suit, and nothing else, other than tiny white high heels. So I made clothing for her but eventually I became bored with her and abandoned her for Tonka Toy (Breyer) horses.

I don’t remember who gave me the doll, I think it was a Christmas gift from our next-door neighbor, ca. 1959 or 60. I was short and dark, and had no boobs to speak of, they were a long way off on the grown-up horizon, so I didn’t relate to her all that much. Besides, I hated the color pink. I think she met her demise via a 4th of July firecracker. Her graffitied carapace became housing for a tiny bomb.

I will probably go and see Oppenheimer, because some of my family history is tied up with Los Alamos—my mother’s cousin, who was brilliant in mathematics, was whisked away right out of high school to work on the bomb. 

We only found this out much later after Marie had died of cancer. In 1990, I made a pilgrimage to the Delgado Bridge in Santa Fe where the Rosenberg spies were captured, and also a visit to the Pajarito Plateau, where we visited the petroglyphs of T’sanque/T’sankawi, and Los Alamos where a spare shells of Fat Man and Little Boy still doze in the museum. 

The place names still haunt me. Los Alamos, Alamogordo, Stallion Gate, Trinity, Oak Ridge, Fermi Institute. I am a child born of the Age of Light. Meanwhile, on the rock outcrops, near Los Alamos, the petroglyph of Kokopelli, playing the water sprinkler, abides.

My cousin’s name was Mary—or Marie—Walsh, as we called her. She was the daughter of Wild Bill, the gambler, and grew up on Home Ranch, in the Reese River Valley. I think she was also my grandmother’s goddaughter. 

My grandmother sometimes received postcards from her, addressed from New Mexico, but no PO Box, or return address. I remember there was a letter with words cut out of it, clearly censored. Like little blank eyes. My grandmother hid them in the top drawer of the bureau beneath her handmade Irish lace, and all her sewing scraps.

In the mid-1970s, I worked for “Crappa,” retired politician Roger Kent, whose father was Senator William Kent (who gave Muir Woods to the Department of the Interior) and Roger’s brother “Buffalo” that is Sherman Kent, was head of the CIA, and they both admitted the Manhattan Project was the best kept secret. 

Even the Kents didn’t know about the Manhattan Project until it was declassified. For a government that didn’t keep secrets well, it was the best kept secret of all. And Sherman—if anyone should have known, it was him, after all, he was a CIA. But Sherman was also in the dark.They were surprised to learn that my cousin, who was gifted with numbers, had worked on the bomb at los Alamos.

Sadly, the math gene blithely skipped over me, is, despite having an Olympic gold medal winner try to teach me, but I do remember the bomb drills where we hid our heads under our desks at Lagunitas School. We covered the back of our necks with one arm, and our eyes with the other, and waited for the drill to be over. The day they were detonating atomic bombs over Jackass flats in Nevada, the entire school went outside to the playground to witness the light. 

We were in West Marin, a long way from Jackass Flats. The sky did go white. And it did sound like you could hear a muffled bomb go off in the distance. 

Later, when I tried to look this information up, I was told the detonation was underground. That what we witnessed was impossible. Maybe so, but we did hear and see something that day when the sky was robbed of color. And we were 500 miles away on the northern coast of California. It made the presence of the atomic bomb far too real for me. I was haunted by nightmares for years to come.

As it turns out, the last above ground nuclear test was July 17, 1962, so yes, we could have witnessed an above ground blast. And every year on Labor Day weekend, I can’t help but think of all the artistic hordes intent on radical self expression, gather at Black Rock Playa to ignite a Burning Man— to burn away the corporate sins of the world. (I attended the first burning man at Baker Beach in San Francisco, 1986.) 

Each year, my old college friend, David Best, erects a phantasmagoric wooden temple—just downwind from that radioactive Armageddon of Jackass Flats. prayer flags in the wind. I can’t help but think of all those radical isotopes on the wing. And how we are all glowing from within during this Age of Light.

see my atomic poem list below

Potayto, potato. How about tomapotatl as pomato is already taken?

Do check out Cultivariable, a great site for everything potato, including buying seeds.

The other day I recalled reading an article in July, 2017 that claimed that potatoes also grew in North America, and I thought what was dubbed the Indian potato was merely a simile, something lost in translation, or a case of mistaken identity. There was almost no follow-up information on it. I chalked it up to a mistranslation. Looks like, but is not equal to….and then Covid came along and I forgot about it. 

Yesterday, on Facebook, Discover Magazine reposted an archived article from 2021 on Solanum jamesii, or the Indian potato, now renamed the Four Corners “potato,” which renewed my interest. But the somewhat updated article compared it to domestic potatoes because it produces tubers. I thought to myself: hundreds of others solanum species have tubers too. 

However, the Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is not what we think of as the ubiquitous potato. It's related to, but not the same as the garden potato, Solanum tuberosum, domesticated in the Andes 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. 

I let my fingers do the Googling, and found that what are called Apache and Navajo potatoes were hybrid varieties of the domestic potato. A dead end. Back in the summer of 2017, potato farmer /poet Art Goodtimes piqued my curiosity about Solanum jamesii which led to a spirited discussion about the origin and nomenclature of potatoes. And researching "Indian potatoes" led me to another order of plant altogether, an aquatic species related to taro root, Sagittaria latifolia, or duck potato. If it walks like a duck... What quackery!

Growing up Irish meant I ate potatoes every night for dinner. When I traveled through the Andes, I ate many varieties of strange potatoes, the most bitter was black, and grew on the island of Amantani in Lake Titicaca. My GI tract never forgave me. Apparently I was supposed to also eat the arcilla de chaco, or clay jacket—which absorbs the bitterness. When it comes to eating wild potatoes, bitter is not good, and sour is even worse. Spit it out, I tell you.

Astonishing diversity of Incan potatoes in CIP International Potato Center's seed bank.

There are something like 53 known species, and 4000 types, or varieties (not sub-species) of domestic potatoes in Peru alone. And even more in Bolivia and Chile—not to mention the Amazon. According to CIP, the International Potato Center, a genetic seed bank located in Lima, Peru, there are 151 to 180 species of wild potatoes, worldwide. The actual count is in dramatic flux as we discover new species, lose others due to climate change, and make advances in DNA sequencing. 

In fact, the entire Solanaceae family is undergoing genetic reconstruction. Solanaceae is a huge family, there are over 3000 to 4000 species worldwide. And solanum includes a whopping 1500 genera: potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco, datura, and petunias, to name a few. They’re all members of the nightshade family.

And like most solanum species, the Four Corners “potato,” Solanum jamesii, prefers to grow in disturbed soil—which suggests to ecologist Bruce Pavlik and his wife, Lisbeth Louderback, who is an archaeology curator at the Natural History Museum of Utah, that this wild potato may have been domesticated as early as 11,000 years ago. I'm not so sure about that. It’s not like hybridizing teosinte.

Escalante Valley was once referred to as Potato Valley. Pavlik and Louderback have been genome sequencing the wild potatoes near the pueblos for signs of domestication—they're looking for a genetic bottleneck. Ok, so I have trouble with their advanced reference date, as it predates Andean domestication, and, besides, it was the end of the Ice Age. Potatoes hate frost. (In the 2017 Salt Lake Tribune article, Louderback, in her doctoral thesis, quoted 10,000 to 11,000 years. See also University of Utah News).

Everything about the Four Corners “potato” is toxic—like many members of the nightshade family—unless you boil or eat the immature tubers with gobs of white clay called gleesh’ (think Kaopectate) to counteract the toxins—so it’s different than the domesticated South American potatoes of Bolivia and Peru. It’s more of a dangerous wild potato cousin with a deadly kick.

It also turns out that the Four Corners “potato” toxins are also different than those found in domestic potatoes. The toxin is the same found in tomatoes. So maybe cavalierly calling it a potato just because it has a tiny tuber the size of a grape, is a bit premature. Maybe call it tomapotatl? 

Oddly enough, Santa Rosa, horticulturalist Luther, Burbank, the man who invented the Burbank, or russet potato, aka the Idaho potato, did developed an edible white potato-tomato berry called a pomato. But, unlike the ill-fated Wonderberry, also a nightshade, which resembled a huckleberry, victim of a smear campaign touting its toxicity, the pomato didn’t breed true, so he gave it up. But in 1934, an Australian successfully bred a pomato. Many flowering ornamental solanum produce tubers too, but noshing on them could be a one-way ticket to paradise—no matter how you roll the old snake-eyes.

I realize that it’s a handy linguistic shortcut to call this wild potato cousin a "potato," because it’s so much easier to say potato family instead of saying the nightshade family. Old habits die hard. And then there’s the toxic baggage attached to the word nightshade. Think Atropa Belladonna and deadly atropine. How about an expansionist mindset, with a new name, instead of a reductionist one handcuffed by the tyranny of simile?  

The Diné word for the potato is Nimási. Maybe we should call the Four Corners “potato” that. But then we’d also have to include the Apache, Hopi, Kawaik, Southern Paiute, Tewa, Zia and Zuni names, etc., not to mention the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) names. So maybe calling it the Four Corners “wild potato” is a far better name. Otherwise we’ll have hordes of eco-nuts going afield to nosh on them thinking they’re benign.

For the record, botanists insist that pretty much all wild potato species are not safe to eat, other than in small amounts, due to their high glycoalkaloid content. Also, Solanum jamesii is not native to California, which means it was introduced from somewhere else. But where?

Wiki spells it out: “Solanum jamesii is a species of nightshade. Its range includes the southern United States. All parts of the plant, and especially the fruit, are toxic, containing solanine when it matures. Immature tuber roots are edible.” But they’re the size of grapes, so how do you know if they’re immature? They tell off-color jokes? 

It turns out that Solanum jamesii is not the only “wild potato” in the old pueblo. One or two other southwest wild potato species, depending upon how you count your potatoes, are Solanum stoloniferum aka Solanum fendleri, or Fendler’s horsenettle—genetically speaking, they are variants of one species, the controversy rages on. Horsenettles are generally not called potatoes, BTW. 

Because of the toxicity, they are often considered famine foods. And people sometimes eat the ripe berries, or ground cherries. And since they vary in toxicity, you never know which ones will be real stinkers I’m not willing to be the guinea pig.

Let’s talk toxicity. “The primary glycoalkaloid in this Solanum jamesii species is tomatine, unlike the domesticated potato, in which the primary glycoalkaloids are solanine and chaconine." And there’s also a smidgeon of the nicotine alkaloid too! Tomatine puts this species firmly in the tomato camp—name your poison. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

Wow! Potato blossoms. Cultivariable is a great site for everything potato, and then some.

The question begs, how closely related is the Four Corners “wild potato” to South American potatoes? As James Dinneen in The ancient potato of the future, quipped, DNA-wise, “The Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is related to the common potato in somewhat the same way coyotes are related to dogs.” Both are canines and can interbreed. But the domestic dog is descended from wolves. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think they're siblings.

Why does any of this matter? Because, Dear One, genetic diversity. Wild species carry a wide range of unusual survival traits. Take the Irish potato famine—had there been a way to introduce more resilient genes into the potato monoculture against the potato blight (Phytophthora infestans), then one million people might not have needlessly died. Or immigrated.

The USDA is interested in the Four Corners potato’s astonishing 8-year shelf life, resistance to disease, and to drought. Climate change is affecting domestic monoculture potatoes, which is the world's third largest important food crop. Potatoes need specific heat requirements and 12-hours of daylight in order to reproduce. Not all nightshades reproduce by seed, some spread via tubers, or reroot via creeping stolons.

I plowed through a lengthy list of solanum section of Petota, and found that Solanum commersonii is resistant to root rot and nematodes. Solanum demissum, Solanum pinnatisectum, and Solanum bulbocastanum, an ornamental nightshade, are resistant to the potato blight, and "has been used to genetically engineer resistance into the cultivated varieties of potatoes around the world." —Wiki 

Genetic traits from tough wild potato species can be hybridized into our domestic potatoes. And before you go off the deep end about genetic modification, every plant we consume has been genetically modified—from aubergine to zucchini. Especially corn and broccoli. Besides, the voodoo magic of crossbreeding solanum species is far better than sticking pins into a potato. 

Where is Mr. Potatohead when you need him?

RIPTIDE

Who said to always swim toward the outsider?
I was far from shore, the waves stacked up,
gnawed the coastline, a storm far out to sea,

an offshore trench fed the undertow.

I slid down each trough to meet the next wave.
And so on. A glimpse of the beach, a silver,
as I rode each crest. Was I mammal or fish?
I might drown this far from shore.

The lifeguard station was a flyspeck,
I was a whitecap, a seagull on the waves.

I knew I could only save myself.

I could disappear forever in this vast sea.

How long before she missed me? 

That mother sleeping off the night.
I body-surfed in, but it was a long way to land.
I was learning to rescue myself. Again.

Gasping, I lay face down in the warm sand,
numb from the icy embrace of the sea. 

I was 10.

8/2/23. This is a revamp of part 2 of Lúnasa. I suddenly realized it was two poems.

LÚNASA

1. The roaring sky brimmed with thunderclouds, 

as the cupped wings of birds scalloped the air. 

Fall leaves feathered a vertigo edifice on the wind.

In the creek, shards of sunlight glinted 

and drifted off towards the shadows.

I thought of the siren call of sky and clouds.

and how the birds are born explorers, 

and the clouds are the culmination of dreams 

stitched to the hem of the horizon.

 
But I was caught up in familial distress.

How easily the acrobat of the tongue 

betrays us when we least expect it.

I didn’t know that a derailed tongue 

was merely one train of thought.

There were other stories. Other endings.

The bog is a transition between land and water. 

Its buried secrets harbor the still music 

of the speckled pools of wisdom, and trout

seeking a story line, a neutral buoyancy 

between solidarity and solid ground. 

2. The abyss offshore fed the undertow, 

the coastline scalloped by hungry storms.

Who advised me to swim toward the outsider?

But the waves kept stacking up far from shore, 

remnants of an invisible storm far out to sea.

I swam down each trough to meet the next wave.

And so on. The invisible strand only came into view 

when I rode the crest. Was I mammal or fish? 

Would I drown this far from shore?

The lifeguard station was minuscule, 

and I knew that rescue could only come from within. 

I was no more than a whitecap, or a seagull on the waves, 

an afterthought. I could disappear forever in this vastness.

How long would it be before she missed me? 

That mother sleeping off the night before.

So I began that long trawl toward the beach 

learning that I could rescue only myself.

Winded, I lay face down in the warm sand, 

numb from the cold embrace of the sea. I was 10.

8/2/23 

This was a collage, a pastiche—as poets read their poems, my mind wandered, so it’s half freewrite, half stolen words, exacerbated by the imperfect transcription onto page, with no thought of subject or structure, that came later. My collage was in three parts then written as one piece., but this sure looks like two poems versus one.

MAL DE MER

There is that one invisible moment 

when you are far from shore, 

but the horizon line has other ideas, 

as to what plumbline is real.

That moment where you give up all hope 

for a terrestrial reconciliation with the land, 

because in the trawler, the sea is your only cradle, 

in that briny bath from whence we came,

and you regress to an infantile, colicky stage, 

where nothing is solid, not even the mutiny 

of your traitorous, roiling stomach

and you become like the hunted sea cucumber 

spilling its guts in order to live another day.

The salmon escapes the hook, seeks new depths.

And then you too let go, give up the conflict

of all your worldly goods in the vague hope

for stasis, and seeking a safe harbor, 

you pray for equilibrium, a balance

between sea and sky and horizon.

8/2/23 Write On! Workshop with Terri Glass

I really disliked the model poem. I guess I should post a link to our model poems, but we tend to wander so far afield when we write, that the model poem is merely a jumping off place. An incidental prompt.

Remembering The Buk

(Beat poet Al Winans posted a photo of Charles Bukowski on Facebook, with an amazing letter from the Buk for Al’s 50th birthday. I liked the letter (see below) which shed some light on his bad behavior, and with that, came understanding. But so much faux idolatry emanated from that post it made me gag as my reaction to meeting Bukowski was decidedly different. So I posted my own not-so-pretty two-cents-worth. And, thanks for the unexpected writing prompt, Al!)

I met Charles Bukowski around 1982, when he was crashing on a friend’s sagging couch in a farmhouse perched by the railroad tracks in Cotati. My friend wanted me to meet him to organize a reading at Sonoma State. So, Becca (Rebecca Clintron Osvald) took me over to her friend Ricky Appelbaum’s old white farmhouse over by the trailer court to meet the Buk.

Ricky‘s house was a crash pad for thespians, artists, and wandering poets. The rent was dirt cheap. Every time a freight train rumbled by, the house shook, we’d all scream Stella! like Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, because Ricky was playing the lead at a local theater. 

Unfortunately, Charles Bukowski was dead drunk by early afternoon, nursing a gallon of cheap Red Mountain wine. He had been at it for a while as empty wine jugs circled the perimeter of the couch. The Buk was also in audition-mode on Ricky’s chintzy couch, already in training for his semi-autobiographical screenplay, Barfly. 

I guess by that point, the Buk had already thoroughly burned his bridges with his sole poetry publisher, my friend, John Martin of Black Sparrow Press, who wouldn’t let him crash at his place up in Healdsburg anymore. John, who had founded a successful office supply business in LA, hunted Bukowski down in 1966, and found him working as a letter clerk in a post office. 

In 1969, John sold his collection of DH Lawrence first editions to fund his Black Sparrow Press. And then he made an offer that Bukowski couldn’t refuse, $100 a month to write full time. A month later, Bukowski submitted his first novel, Post Office. John made Bukowski famous again—as a poet—after he had burnt his literary bridges as a writer with a 35-year-long drunken binge which led to a hiatus from the publishing world. 

Bukowski‘s myriad poetry books put the fledgling Black Sparrow Press on the literary roadmap. John, whose first words when he finally met Bukowski, were, “I worship you,” Buk’s reply was “That’s nice, you wanna beer?” But this time John was done with the Buk. (Note to self, need to find Barnes & Noble PR on John.)

I introduced myself. The grizzled, greasy-haired poet, enveloped in a thick grey cowl of cigarette smoke, didn’t even get up off the couch, but he grabbed my proffered hand, said something rather nasal, and then tried to drag me down to his level on the couch. 

Because I was living out of my car, I was rather formally dressed for the times, kitted out in a retro 1940s long teal pencil skirt, and my Irish grandmother’s peach-colored lace insert crepe silk blouse with a maroon leotard beneath. So you couldn’t exactly blame my demure wardrobe for his dirty old man social malfunction. 

I fought like a banshee, red lacquered claws extended, and I had some pithy words to say. I hissed like a car, escaped unscathed, but I was so furious, I was shaking. He was so lecherous that he literally had me puking, Though I was attractive, men rarely hit on me. Ricky used to call me the China doll because I was so pale and wan. It was my anorexic phase (I’d lost a lot of blood from an abortion), so I was fey, not quite of this world.

To be fair, Bukowski tried to call me back after my dramatic rebuke, quite possibly to apologize, but I was gone. I remember running out of the house, and throwing up in the rosebushes, tripping over an orange tomcat desperately weaving around my ankles. all I could think of was handcuffs. I sped off in my old rustbucket of a VW bug, a trail of gravel spluttering behind me. I never talked Charles Bukowski again.

I never could read Bukowski’s work after that. I was running a poetry series at Sonoma State. Ironically, all he wanted was a reading, but he thoroughly burned his bridges with me. Having growing up with far too many alcoholics in the family, I had zero tolerance or coping skills for that kind of behavior. You might say my judgment was colored by the deep well of the alcohol school. 

I ran into Bukowski later in 1984, he was celebrating the sale of his screenplay to Hollywood at the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati. It was drinks all around the house. A deep well at the bar. Needless to say, I gave him a wide berth. He never saw me leaving.

Years later, in an Amsterdam bookshop, circa 1992, I discovered I liked his work. He was wildly popular in Europe. People were amazed that I was probably the only person that ever refused to give the infamous Charles Bukowski a poetry reading. Sure, on some level I regret it. It would’ve been a booking coup. But between The Buk and Gene Ruggles, I was so fed up with the bad behavior of macho male alcoholic poets with flagging egos, I didn’t want to babysit them.

I did produce a couple of disastrous readings for Gene. Unfortunately, he was alway falling down drunk. I was humiliated and horrified. I had known Gene since I was a child, he was a friend of my mother’s, so I couldn’t say no. Only two people would call me up at 3 AM for crazy drunken phone calls in the middle of the night: Gene and my mom. I guess it was a good thing that the Buk did not have my phone number.