English as a Second Language

 

English as a Second Language

Twenty adults, all Vietnamese,
sit respectfully in a classroom,
San Jose City College, silent.
The point is to talk (in English).
The instructor asks, “How did you get here?”
Hesitantly, first one:
    She walked a hundred kilometers
    carrying two children, paid a boatman,
    too many people, boat sank, a child drowned.
Next one:
    Attacked by pirates, daughter stolen,
    never seen again.
Then an outpouring:
    Typhus. An ambush. Cheated.
    An angel in the form of a helicopter.
Courage, heartbreak, luck.
And plenty of talk.

Next class.
“What is the most beautiful
sight you’ve ever beheld?”
They traveled, reluctantly, half the planet.
What splendors passed their eyes?
A hesitation, then the first:
    “Most beautiful I ever see
    is San Jose Airport.”
Immediately a chorus, they all agree.
First glimpse, descending from broken clouds.
    Tarmac. Landing lights.
    San Jose Airport.
    Beauty.

…..

From my book Random Saints
First published in Dove Tales. Thank you Carmel Mawle, editor.
Photo is of the San Jose Airport as seen from above.

Hear me:

 

Carpenter, Pacific Coast

 

Carpenter, Pacific Coast

Though they sleep man and wife, one bed,
only when she rises, morning, does he notice
sleek silk she wears, so white
    but no time for touch.

In a drought year five pees, one flush, saves
water. The little guy's first day of carpool.
    So little. So brave!

Alone driving a truck of garbage
under raining redwood needles the carpenter
passes sleepy-eyed cattle, apple harvest,
    but no time for beauty.

So sad, bright toys among rotten roofing
at the Pescadero dump but such a view!
Cauliflower clouds stuck on mountains.
    Cotton strings of surf.

At Big Creek Lumber on the oceanside bluff
he buys pieces of forest as the yardman points:
    whale spouts!

Bouncing to the job with an overloaded
rack of sliced wood, Highway One,
wind shoves and shakes like a rude boy.
Off Año Nuevo Island fishing boats bob,
bath toys. Driftwood beaches.
Pigeon Point lighthouse—flash!
    Here comes fog.

And the work: cut and hammer.
Splinters rip ragged fingers
like a horror movie:
    ATTACK OF THE TREES
    starring Douglas Fir
    with Red Wood
        and introducing
    Penny Nail.

Sawdust hair, brown dandruff
on the dinner plate.
Little guy liked the carpool.
Homegrown tomatoes, juice runs
    down five chins.

"You coming to bed?" "Not yet."
Under blankets he tries to wait, fights sleep,
wondering will she wear it again?
Morning comes, wake, wake, the answer:
    smooth touch of silk.
 

…..
 

First published in Windfall
 

Note: I wrote this poem in 1985 to celebrate my busy beautiful family and the insanely beautiful region we call home on a redwood mountainside wedged between the San Andreas fault and the Pacific Ocean.

Hear me (a first-person version of the poem):

6.0, August 24, 2014

 

6.0, August 24, 2014

The earth wakes us
shaking the bed.
It’s 3:21 a.m.

I sit bolt upright,
the dogs growl,
you clutch my arm.
We, naked
in the dark.

To the ears of this old carpenter
the home we built is
moaning
but not in a painful way
more like the way my body feels
when I stretch after
sitting too long.

After a few seconds: silence.
The planet rests.
“Want to check anything?” you ask.
“No,” I say.
So we curl together and go back to sleep:
you, me, dogs, our little house,
forest, mountain, tectonic plates.

No damage
but a reminder of
who owns this place,
payment due some day
and when it comes
I want to be with you.

 
…..

From my book Foggy Dog
First published in Freshwater
Photo by Zaid Pro on Pixabay
 

Note: Just another night in earthquake country. This one’s epicenter was in Napa, so it had softened by the time it reached La Honda. But ask me about Loma Prieta, 1989…
 

Hear me:

Boy, Almost Six

 

Boy, Almost Six

You are five or as you say, almost  six.
You have a toolbox
    like me.
You read books in bed
    like me.
You even make up poems
    like me.
I am thirty-five which is almost forty.
I wish I could cry
    like you
and scream at people when I'm angry
    like you
and heal my wounds with a blanket
    like you.
With your eyes through which
    I am learning to see,
take in our redwood mountains,
    our blackberry hills,
    quick squirrels.
Brake for them, please, when you drive
    when you're sixteen, which is almost
    twenty-one.
Learn to love moss
    and fat spiders.
Feel the fungus feeding on decay.
I am rotting, my son, as you feed on me
    and I would have it
        no other way.
 

…..
 

From my book Son of a Poet

47 years ago my first child was born.
When I first saw him, first touched him, a glow began inside my body. Still feel it. Shortly after he was born, I crossed the age of 30. Small pains, small limits, began inside my body. Then larger. Before my son’s sixth birthday, I wrote the poem: “Boy, Almost Six,” and took the photo you see here.
Now I am 76, which is almost 90. Now that boy has a child, almost eleven, and another, almost nine. Life is almost a circle, always a miracle.

Hear me:

Birthnight

 

 

Birthnight

I was born on August 19, 1947.
I have proof: a hospital bill
handwritten in script, blue ink,
from Sibley Hospital in Washington D.C.
for one childbirth, $48 stamped PAID.
My mom probably picked up the tab.
Dad was careless with pennies and sperm.

On that swampy-hot summer evening
Dad must have driven us home in the
wood-sided Willys, no seat belts, bouncing
beside the Potomac River so broad and so quiet,
the B&O railroad tracks, the coal trains
like black snakes, the C&O canal
in moonlight, the sycamores
heavy with leaves.

In the crumbling brick house
of too few rooms I would sleep
in a closet, for fourteen years my bedroom
was a closet and yet I would grow,
I would leave pennies on the tracks,
swim the river, walk every step of the canal
all the way to West Virginia with a girl
who would hold my hand and kiss my lips
and lie with me among sycamores,
with her I would grow to be a man, a father,
grandfather of wonders who kayak many a river,
who climb many a sycamore,
setting many a penny
on many a track.

.....

From my book Random Saints.

First published in Potomac Review. Thank you Katherine Smith, editor.

Photo by Alan Camerer

Hear me: 

Some Day, Grandson

 

Some Day, Grandson

Infant of painful belly
sleeps only when held, gently bounced,
seeking skin contact, the family scent,
flesh to flesh. My daughter, so tired,
new mother, must rest.

Men need to do things. At least, I do.
The porch rail remains half-built,
the truck idles roughly, not today’s chore.
Just as I once rocked my daughter, now
her babe sleeps with warm little cheek
against my stubbly old, hot puffs of breath
on my grainy neck.

Some day, grandson, you may wear
my scent of sweat, sawdust, motor oil.
For now you smell of milk, mommy, peace.
Life is so basic with a baby —
doing nothing, giving comfort,
the work of love.

.....

From my book Random Saints

First published in Dove Tales. Thank you Carmel Mawle, editor.

Photo: that's me with my grandson Ravi and his guardian dog Gonzo.

Hear me: 

That Dog

 .....

From my book Foggy Dog

photo by me of my dog Dakota who inspired this poem 

Hear me: 

Redwood Prayer

 

Redwood Prayer

Grant me deep roots.
Solid branches.
Let the fires pass me by.
Let generations of squirrels and blue jays
hop on my limbs.
Let me breathe fog, chew sunlight
and look down
over centuries.

.....

From my book Son of a Poet

 Hear me:

Bells of Nicholas Green

 

Bells of Nicholas Green

Like a square-legged spider stands a steel tower
rigged with one hundred forty bells.
Ocean air rises, falls, breaks like waves
ringing chimes above Bodega Bay.

Nicholas Green from this small town
at age seven was killed in far-off Italy
by highway robbers. His donated organs
gave new life for seven Italian souls.
From that country in gratitude, in sorrow
these bells etched with seven names.

Bells peal of hope.
In search of a more merciful world
we come, sit, listen.

Children come, do not sit, do not listen.
Children make offerings, a kite, a plastic airplane.
To the branches of a nearby pine
children tie handmade mobiles
marked with the names of dead siblings,
dead friends, shot schoolmates.
Here’s a string of origami hummingbirds,
and here among fog-damp needles
toy matchbox cars on fishline
are dancing in the breeze. Dancing.

.....

First published in Califragile. Thank you Wren Tuatha, editor.

photo by Angus Parker

Nicholas Green (September 9, 1987 – October 1, 1994) was an American boy who was shot and killed in an attempted car robbery while vacationing with his family in Southern Italy. Robbers mistook their family car for a jeweler's. When Nicholas died, his parents chose to donate his organs. Five people received his major organs, and two received a cornea transplant. The incident is credited with generating a significant increase in the rate of organ donation in Italy.
—Wikipedia

Hear me:

The Diplomat's Daughter

 

The Diplomat's Daughter

The diplomat’s daughter
can recite the 23rd Psalm in Hindi,
once drank Coca Cola with Martin Luther King,
is 11 years old. I’m 14. The year is 1961.
Public school, we’re the same grade.
“I’m not brilliant,” she says. “I’m experienced.”
We ride the bus. She sits with me,
walks with me after I rescue her once from
certain ignorant assholes. In a white school
she’s skinny and shy and brown.

Her father sizes me up, says “You can be her big brother.”
I get the drift: Don’t you dare touch her. No worries.
She knows embassy protocols — when to shake hands,
when to curtsy, when to kiss both cheeks. I know
the secret map of where to sit safely in the cafeteria.
She says “We can’t save the world. But we can serve it.”

Somewhere between September and April
she grows less skinny, more female. One day
she takes my hand when we’re walking
and says “In June we’re moving to Singapore.”
Sudden pain like stomach gas. I guess it shows.
“I am not your little sister,” she says. “Do you love me?”
At that age I’m compulsively honest,
so I say “I don’t know what love is.”
“THIS,” she says. “What you feel right now is love.”

We hold hands, kiss a few times,
sweet stuff, both of us shy, she for once
as inexperienced as I. Last day she presses
my hand to her heart, her little breast and says
“I’ll miss you. I’m scared. Goodbye.”

A postcard, exotic stamp. Just kids,
we lose touch. So 40 years pass
until her photo, name in the news:
car-bombed fighting polio in Pakistan.
Served the world. Couldn’t save it.
In human culture there’s no secret map
of where to sit, where to not.
Only THIS, what we must feel. 

.....

From my book Random Saints

First published in MOON Magazine. Thank you Leslee Goodman, editor.

Hear me:

Coast Range

.....

Poem from my book Foggy Dog
photo by me, taken at summer solstice

 

Hear me:

My Little Town

My Little Town

In my little town
dogs sleep on the street
and act affronted
when you drive on the bed.

My little town allocates resources
in proportion to priorities.
We have one school
two churches
and three bars.

The teenage boys in my little town
gather by the pond after dark
with big engines and little cans of beer.
They steal the Stop sign, stone the streetlight,
moon a passing car.
But at least
we know where they are.

In my little town some girls keep horses
in their back yards. Above the dogs and surly boys,
they cruise on saddles astride a big beast,
dropping opinions as they meet.

There are more children than grownups
in my little town,  more dogs than children,
more trees than dogs,
more fleas than trees,
more slugs . . .
    and more slugs . . .
             and more slugs . . .

Standard equipment
in my little town:
    a chainsaw
    a pickup
    a kerosene lamp.

On the Fourth of July
the whole little town
has a big picnic.

The ducks on the pond in my little town
waddle across the road each afternoon
a milling, quackling crowd
round the door of the yellow house
where the lady gives them grain.
When it rains,
they swim on the road
or sleep there, like dogs.

Beneath the pond surface are
bluegill, Budweiser, and bass.

Every summer weekend some
flatlander driving through town
misses the curve or tries to pass,
and dies with his head
through broken glass.

From mountain streams the water
in my little town
tastes like algae and old pipes.

On a cold morning
the woodsmoke of stoves
entwines the redwoods like fog
in my little town.

We hold village meetings
where a hundred-odd cranks and dreamers
grope for a grudging consensus.

We cling to the side of our mountain
building homes, making babies
beneath trees of awesome height.
We work too hard, play too rough,
and sense daily something sweet about living
in our little town.

.....
From my book Son of a Poet
Drawing by Denis Shaw
Note: I wrote “My Little Town” shortly after I moved to La Honda, California in 1979. Forty-four years later, the numbers have changed: we have one school, one church, one bar. The dogs are more gentrified, the water is cleaner. The townsfolk, cranky as ever. I’m still here.

Hear me:

A feral calico cat

 

A feral calico cat

used to sleep in my truck
like a ghost leaving
the driver’s seat warm
but gone when I’d arrive.
Heard me, sharp ears.
Sometimes on the console
she’d leave a bat with wings intact,
a baby rabbit, neck broken. Rent paid.
I set out kibble, she wouldn’t touch.
Never bore kittens though I’d hear
nights of yowling, fights.
Later, her ears failed. I’d open the door,
she’d startle awake. Leap. Clawed
my shoulder once in her haste.
Near the end she’d eat the kibble
but still got skinny, ribs outlined.
One day I found the food untouched. She’d vanished.
Like most animals, she knew how to die.

I tell you this because a while ago
in the garage I found two children,
boy and girl curled together
in a filthy sleeping bag half under the truck.
On the girl, arms like wire. On the boy,
a scar like purple rope between ear and nose.
Eyes that hold fear and keep secrets.
I try to say Estas a salvo aqui — you are safe here.
They refuse to follow into mi casa.
Quickly in the house I grab fleece jackets,
a box of Cheerios, a jug of milk
plus bowls and spoons. I come back out.
Boy and girl are gone.

There’s an underground railroad
of farmworkers up the coast of California
but my garage would be off the main track.
An hour later I’m loading corrugated drainpipe   
when a frantic woman shows up. She’s short, ragged,
missing one eye. Her language not Spanish, not English
but with fingers on her face she indicates the scar—
those were her kids. With a mother’s super sense
she’s tracking like a bloodhound.
All I can do is point to where they slept
and offer her some Cheerios which she declines.
She takes the jackets. And then she’s gone.

I return home after dark.
Running late that morning I’d left
the milk and Cheerios on a tool box.
Now nowhere in sight. Might’ve been an animal
except the bowls and spoons are upside down
on a smoothed-out shop rag, washed and dried.
Never see the kids or the one-eyed mom again.
Probably migrated north with the harvest.
This much I know: Later, maybe a year,
one morning on the console of my truck
I find a jelly jar of wildflowers,
a paper bag of pears.

.....

First published in Live Encounters. Thank you editor Mark Ulysses.

photo by skeeze

Hear me:

Wet Nurse

 Wet Nurse

Harold asks for a résumé.
Akna bares her left breast.
The nipple is bulbous, erect.
No, Harold explains, where have you worked before?
Akna bares her right breast.

Akna’s from Guatemala;
her language a Mayan dialect.
Harold’s world is software;
his language, hard code.

Harold’s wife handled soft things
like growing the child inside.
Now out, helpless, hungry.
Wife suddenly dead, Harold over his head
coping with grief and a newborn.
Through church comes refugee Akna, with infant.
Harold’s baby barely alive.
Nurture, soothe, survive.

Boys grow, hermanos de leche. Milk brothers.
Meanwhile Harold the father, Akna the mother
live under one roof, sleep in separate rooms,
have girlfriends, boyfriends. Nothing sticks.

Harold and Akna at the soccer games,
the robot competitions. Breakfast, dinner,
always together. They whisper, they laugh.
Do they—? Are they—? People wonder.
Harold dodges. Akna says No entiendo.
The brothers don’t answer, simply smile.

At high school graduation sitting side by side,
Akna in tears, Harold takes her hand.
Pareja de leche. Milk couple.
What matters they do, they are.
Nurture, soothe, survive.

.....

From my book Random Saints

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you Hayley Mitchell Haugen, editor. 

Note: this poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of Net.

Image by comboionos brasil via Pixabay

Hear me:

Here’s to the fragrance of concrete

 Here’s to the fragrance of concrete
    as it cures.

Yes I said fragrance—
    damp
        yet oddly dusty,
    petrichor of first raindrops.

As you can smell an oncoming storm
    here is the aroma
        of pending permanence,
    a spirit peaceful, unloved.

Honor the skilled arms,
    the corded legs and hairy backs,
        the labor that shaped
    this puddle of stone.

Inhale, savor the dignity of concrete—
    the humility, the brawn,
        the gray bouquet. 

.....

From my book Random Saints

First published in Verse-Virtual. Thank you Firestone Feinberg, editor.

Hear me: 

Wells Fargo Bank

 

Wells Fargo Bank

 Noon, I’m next in line behind an old man.
“I want to withdraw fourteen dollars,” he says.
The teller, a young woman with a soft sweater, says
“There’s only—let me check—yes—fifty-two cents.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She tilts her head. “Sorry.”
The sorrow is genuine.
He wears a pinstripe suit, frayed,
wafting an odor of smoke and earth.
A smartly folded handkerchief, breast pocket,
has a dark stain. His silver beard
is neatly trimmed.

On one wall above the safe is a giant
mural of teamsters driving a stagecoach.
The man says, “There might be—”
“No. It’s always the same.”
For a moment he closes his eyes,
a slow blink while indignities of a lifetime pass.
Without a word, the young woman slides a sandwich
over the countertop through the teller window.
“Blessings on you,” the man says with a nod,  
and he walks away with a limp.

I cash my check, a big one
from three days of messy labor
for a matron of the horsey set.
“He lives by the creek,” the teller says
without my asking. “Under a bridge.”
Outside the bank, in the parking lot of glistening cars,
I look around for the pinstripe suit, the silver beard.
I might offer the man something.
He might refuse to take it.
Anyway, no matter:
he has disappeared like the last stagecoach.
Only the blessing remains.

.....

From my book Foggy Dog

First published in MOON magazine. Thank you Leslee Goodman, editor. 

Hear me: 

Things He Can Do Which I Can't

  

Things He Can Do Which I Can't

He can make a knife
    out of cardboard and a clothespin.
With wood scraps
    he can build a death-ray gun.
A banana
    is a telephone.
The floor is burning hot lava.
    The furniture, islands.
He can swim
    in a bathtub.
With one paper and three pens
    he can fight a whole war.
He can sleep
    when there is no money.
He can cuddle in a lap
    to make everything right
and, you know?
    I think it is.

.....

From my book Son of a Poet

Later published in Poetry Breakfast. Thank you Kay Kestner, editor.
 

Photo of myself and my son taken in 1982, which is also when this poem was written. 

Hear me: 

Official Licensed Poet

Official Licensed Poet

I go to the hiring hall for poets
but a bouncer at the door demands to see my license.
“What license?” I ask.
Don’t play dumb, he says. No license, no entry.
“But I’m a poet,” I say.
Lemme ask, he says. You got poems in the New Yorker?
“No,” I say.
You got the MFA? “No.” You got awards? Prizes?
“Just a bowling trophy,” I say. “How do I get a license?”
You got to take classes, conferences, workshops taught
by Official Poetry Teachers. Then, the license.
So: no hire, I’m illegit. Oh well. The pay was shit.

I keep the day job. Go around the city. Open mics.
Reciting poems to small groups.
Out loud. For free.
The audiences, they never ask to see a license.
After the reading a few men, always men, come up to me
and say I don’t really like poetry but I like your stuff.
Always, they call it stuff.
Women say they like it, too, but without
the disclaimer and they don’t call it stuff.
Face it, guys are uncomfortable with poetry.
Me, too.

I find a wise woman. She’s got the MFA,
the publications, the awards.
An Official Licensed Poet if ever there be.
She says, I met that same bouncer.
Everybody meets the bouncer.
She walks with me to the Hiring Hall.
The bouncer blocks the door.
With a quick move, martial art,
she flips the bouncer to the floor.
She says, A poet is a verb, not a noun.
A person writing a poem is a poet.
A person not writing a poem is something else.
You’ll find her poems in anthologies of Great Lit.
She says, By the way, the pay is still shit.

So listen, bouncer: I write stuff, therefore I am.
My license. Now scram.

.....

 Note: There’s this little voice inside my head that keeps telling me “You’re not really a poet.” Maybe you hear that voice, too. Maybe everybody writing poetry hears it. So I wrote this poem as a rebuttal. My thanks to Jane Hirshfield, a wise woman indeed.

First published in Verse-Virtual. Thank you, Firestone Feinberg, editor.

Included in my book Random Saints.

 Photo credit: I like to credit photographers, but I've lost the source of this bouncer image except I'm sure it was Creative Commons License. If it's yours, please notify me so I can give you credit. 

Hear me:

Hi folks

 For a few years now I've been posting my poetry on Facebook (and made many friends in the process). Now I want to be more widely available (and make more friends) through this blog. Poetry is a warm community. Join in -- leave a comment if you like. 

There will be no ads. This isn't for money. I just want to share poems.