In Step

 

In Step

New boy, old shoes,
seems to know how.
Girl studies, furrowed brow.
“Would you show me?”
He grins. “You bet.”

Brown girl, white boy
share soccer tricks
(fakes, spin kicks)
like tango steps
on a dirt floor.

Nimble feet
for the ball compete,
their only touch.

Lips clenched, Tania pauses
to repair beaded breads.
Tight shorts, brown thighs,
her body a diamond
centered in the hips.

Tony smiles lots, curly red hair,
his head a pumpkin
on a pale post.

After one-on-one,
three laps they run
side by side, chatting.
unaware that arms and legs
are perfectly timed
like a chorus line
in rise and fall of
knee to knee, right to right,
cleat to cleat, left to left.

Walking to the street, Tony talks,
Tania listens cradling ball to her chest
as they wander in synchrony,
step to step,
breath to breath,
making a start
heart to heart.

…..

First published in MOON magazine
photo by Dimitris Vetsikas

Note: It may be impossible to convey something so visual in the words of a poem but I had to try. I watched this boy and girl, obviously new to each other, shy at first but quickly connecting, trade soccer moves and then run laps unaware of their perfect arm-and-leg symmetry which continued as they walked away together. I saw two souls meet and synchronize.

Journey to Armenia

 

Journey to Armenia

Her posture, a question mark.
Her neck, a withered stalk as she peers up at me.
First, a flicker of fear. Then seeing my tool belt
she smiles. A scar like a dried fig from eye to jaw.
The world has run roughshod on this tiny old woman.

Pointing at the baseboard heater, she folds
arms over chest, shivers in drama.
“Okay,” I say. “I get it.”
With screwdriver and flashlight I kneel
on a soft rug, exquisite patterns. She points
at a dragon under my knee, says “Vishapagorg.”
“Huh?” I say. Curtains thick as carpets
shut out the courtyard, neighbors, society.

A nudge on my arm. Holding a tray
of baklava and apricots, she says, “Take.”
In a minute she’s back with a tiny cup. “Take.”
Brew so thick that if you spilled, the coffee
would not splash. It would shatter.

Quickly I’m crazy with sugar and caffeine,
and the heater is fixed. I kneel over the baseboard,
rubbing my hands in a pantomime of heat.
She grasps my face between her fingers. She beams,
nodding her head. It’s a thank you. And more.
Be nice, she seems to say, and conquer evil.

Opening the door, she sends me outside
with my tool belt and work boots
to the bright sunlight of California, USA.

…..

First published in Dove Tales

*Vishapagorg, I found out later, means dragon.

Fog like a river of peace

 

Fog like a river of peace
flows from ocean
into valley
feeding redwoods
dousing fires
and dawdles
at dusk
wrapping my home
in misty droplets

lit by porch lamp
nimble-footed
swirling

Oh if only I could dance
like the fog

…..

From my book Foggy Dog
First published in Peacock Journal. Thank you Bill Lantry, editor

Photo by me of the foggy valley where I live

I was raised by birds

 

I was raised by birds

First by robins
of rosy belly
who listen to earth
whose gain
is worm’s loss.

I played among chickadees
each given a crown
of black or brown
sometimes chattering
upside down.

I heard wood thrush sing
lullabies of burbling brook
teaching metaphor
before I knew.

I was guarded by blue jay
shrieking spleen
who never spoke of love
who brought seeds of sunflower
who broke a wing tip
attacking the hungry snake.

I was nudged by crow
who laughed, who told jokes
who pushed my butt as I grew
until at last
I flew.

……

First published in Freshwater
photo by Mali Ancor

Chatterbox

 

Chatterbox

She to whom talking is like breathing
at age 3 a mockingbird of words
wades in foam on a Pacific beach.

A sleeper-wave slams
her little body face down
floating.

I grab hair like seaweed
pull her up coughing spitting.
Later, wrapped in towel
she is quiet, thoughtful
when to my lurching heart she says
If I drowned would you have another baby?

The silence I could not imagine.

……

First published in Verse-Virtual—thank you editor James Lewis
photo by me of her

The more the man calls her a liar

 

The more the man calls her a liar

the more I believe he is the one
because that’s how liars work.
“You lie! You’re a liar!”
“No.” She, small woman, responds softly
but firmly at the side of the road.
I pass walking my puppy.

I never stick my hand into a dog fight
and it would be none of my business
but they have a daughter
her face inscrutably blank
who clutches a stuffie lion
large as herself.

My puppy named Doc wants
to greet lion and daughter both.
I stop and watch from across the street
until the liar-man sees me and says
“This is private.”
I say “Then make it private.”

They go.
The little girl follows dragging her lion
which seems ever larger.
Doc whines.
We grownups are so stupid.

……

First published in Anti-Heroin Chic
photo by Lisa Runnels

Pescadero High

 

Pescadero High

Cops with guns
surround a school in lockdown
but this time, better news
for us and for the emaciated lion cub
in pain with a fractured tooth
who somehow wandered from the forest
into the English classroom
and curled up cowering under a desk
as I used to wish when
called upon to read poetry.

Cub sedated, transported
to the Oakland Zoo for feline dental care
and a home where cub may grow
to growl and purr and pounce,
a better outcome than
many human cubs can hope.

May we all
have dental care.
May we mix science with love.
May we rescue the fractured, the hungry,
may we emerge from under desks
to stretch,
to grow, to bounce,
to growl and purr and pounce.

……

Note: True story. Pescadero is my local high school.

We should show more love for bolts

 

We should show more love for bolts

I tell Roy he bought the wrong bolts.
Black iron, they’ll rust in this forest, this rain.
We’re building his cabin way out nowhere.
I build to last.
Roy returns to the tiny country store
where the hardware man laughs, says
Those bolts will be there
when you and I are long gone.

Building a trellis with my teenage son
who is my summer hired hand,
we are bolting posts to concrete anchors.
Placing a steel ring on a bolt I show the boy
how one side of the washer is dull, one smooth,
and I want him to place the shiny side out
even though the clients won’t care
and in fact nobody will ever see
hidden by shrubbery and dust,
still I want the smooth side out because—
I know, Dad. He laughs.

After wildfire I return with Roy
down a washboard road through moonscape.
Roy is shaky, hair-trigger.
The cabin of 45 years is now smoldering debris.
We kick boots through rubble. Look, he points.
The bolts, still there. Roy grabs me in a bear hug
that lasts so long, holds so tight,
I wonder if he’ll ever let go.

……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig
photo by Alexei in Pixabay

Note: In August of 2020 I had to evacuate my house in La Honda as the gigantic CZU Complex wildfire approached.  In September we could return. Many isolated homes were lost — some I had worked on — but thanks to favorable winds and the heroic efforts of the La Honda Volunteer Fire Brigade, the core of town was spared. For my house it was a near-death experience. I newly appreciated each door I’d hung, each floorboard I’d nailed not just in my own but in all the scattered homes where I’d worked in these hills for feisty independent friends and neighbors who are more enduring than fire. So I wrote this poem.

Bird Laundry

 

Bird laundry

My preschool daughter
tells me she doesn’t want to grow up.
She wants to grow down and be a bird.

I unload the dryer and dump warm laundry
over her worm-wriggling body on the bed
as the phone rings and it’s Tai
who says he woke up this morning
beside Alicia who was dead
and he should have recognized her little fade-out
episodes as transient ischemic attacks
but it never occurred to him because she’s only 34
and now Alicia’s dead and what should he do?

He’s in Jamaica; I’m in California
so there’s not much I can offer
except to say I’m so sorry.
She was so wonderful.
What a shock.
I’m so very sorry.

And she with a sock tangled in her hair,
she who heard,
who sees water on my cheeks
says sometimes birds fly into glass windows
and bonk their beaks
and that’s the bad part about birds.

……

First published in Black Coffee Review
Photo is the ghost image I found one morning on my window. It haunts me. (Next day I installed shiny stickers on the glass.)

Kitty Kapitalism Karma

 

Kitty Kapitalism Karma

In the old days
they smoosh your credit card
with a slider and you sign a receipt
with an actual pen. They rip out carbons
and flimsy slips, one for you, one for them,
one for a factory in San Francisco where
in 1970 a hippie can work night shift.
We whoosh stacks of tissue-thin papers
through machines that might mangle
so upstairs the bank can send you a bill
that might be correct.

One dawn as I leave work,
as my sunrising shadow walks
to my flowery VW beetle,
a credit slip blows across the lot,
slaps against my shoe—
I bend and pick it up.
Sixteen cans of cat food, eight dollars.
My moral choice: go straight home
so some lucky lady gets free kitty food
or return the slip and let
the merchant be paid.

To my surprise
and to this day I wonder why
I choose to return. Feeling the fool,
expecting no reward from implacable gods
of capitalism, I hand the charge slip
to the machinery amid paper dust
smelling of carbon inks which are
made of soot and wax (did you know?)
a one-minute delay in my departure
so on the way home the Porsche
losing control on 101 plowing head-on
into two oncoming cars killing six people
happens one minute before
I drive up in my beetle.

……

First published in Halfway Down the Stairs —thank you editor Jeannie E. Roberts
Cat photo by Amna Sayeed

Migration, Judah Streetcar, San Francisco

 

Migration, Judah Streetcar, San Francisco

“You have the face of an otter.”
She sits beside him, the only open seat.
“Yip,” he says imitating an otter’s bark,
then wonders: Do otters bark?

He, professor of anthropology, white man
with red beard recently divorced
taking the Judah streetcar to campus
where he will conduct a seminar
on Incan migration patterns.

She, to his practiced eye, of Native American
bone structure and flesh (smooth, flawless)
dressed as though taking the Judah streetcar
to mop hallways and swab toilets.

Pleasantly he asks “Do you like otters?”
“We used to roast them on a stick,” she
says. “First we’d sell the pelts.”
From her body he feels warmth,
glow, like from a campfire.

“Are you making fun of me?” he asks.
“No. I would marry you.”
Awkwardly he laughs. “Now you’re making fun.”
“No no. I would marry you.”
And it comes to him: You, I,
we could make beautiful babies.

At the campus stop as on a leash
he follows black hair braided like strips of leather,
a tassel like a tail over her butt.
She steps to the crowd. Gone.

A sharp pain in his leg as if
caught in the steel jaws of a trap.
Where did she go? Why is he here?
A river of students part for his island,
splash at his rocks.

……

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig
photo by Christel Sagniez

August 9, 1984: “I hit her.”

 

August 9, 1984: “I hit her.”

I hit my daughter.
A poke? A slap?
I can’t imagine using a fist
but then I can’t imagine slapping either.
A scene deleted from my memory
but discovered in my daily journal
where I summarize and confess each day.

At age almost-6 she was screaming
because her brother got to go with Mom to buy pants
while she my daughter had to go home
in the front seat of my smelly truck
so in frustration after a horrendous work day
including a dropped brick on my toe
which is not an excuse but
I hit her.
She carried on screaming
so I drowned her out with the radio.

A mile later, she quit.
By the time we got home she was singing along
with the Beatles. And me.
So says the journal.

She’s 43 now.
She might remember.
I’m afraid to ask.
She still likes the Beatles.

……

First published in Rat’s Ass Review
photo by Ogutier

Morning, Chancellor’s Handyman

 

Morning, Chancellor’s Handyman

Two dogs promise
with sincere snouts, soft whimpers:
Set us free to run this fenced yard
just a few minutes. We’ll dance
the dog-polka and be ever grateful.
With human fingers I unlatch chains.

Whoa! Like deer they leap the gate.
Gone, the graceful goofy mutts
through mud and wet weeds sticky with seeds.
Call me sucker. Call me fool.
I say to you, this world needs more softies.

Here comes Dr. Markoman tying a bathrobe shut
asking why I let his dogs out, so I jog around
the private school campus as fancy cars arrive
unchaining beautiful young minds embedded in
goofy graceful bodies.

Can’t find dogs until I return and,
awaiting me in the back yard:
Warm tongues, happy tails.
Now who’s the fool?

Monday’s first task is to stuff scattered
rained-on garbage into a dumpster.
Shove. It squirts. Rinse, repeat.
Call me dirty. Call me smelly. I say to you,
deal with your garbage. Or deal with me.
Choose.

Next, this old door is sticky, delaminating.
Glue and clamps, grease the hinges,
shave the edge while from the next room
come murmurs, donors, an elegant breakfast
of croissant, crème fraîche.
Give me crunchy bread with black coffee,
then let me run with dogs. I fix things.
You need me. What’s next?

……

First published in Anti-Heroin Chic
photo by Vik M

Beanball, 1957

 

Beanball, 1957

Jimmy and me, we play in the street,
broomstick for bat, ball wrapped with black tape.
Today he’s Roy Campanella, I’m Pee Wee Reese.
Bangedy car, old black DeSoto, jerks to a stop.
Some lady jumps out dragging a little girl and shouts
“IS THAT THE BOY, CINDY?”
Cindy, she’s about four.
Gaps in her teeth. Same as mom.
Little spit bullets fly from mom’s mouth.
“ANSWER ME, CINDY! HE SHOULD GO TO JAIL!
WHICH ONE DID THAT TO YOU?”

Jimmy and me, we never met Cindy
and I say so.
“YOU SHUT UP.”
It’s Bob Feller going into the windup.
You know it could be a beanball
but you’re up and you stand there.
All you got is a broomstick. You’re eight years old.
You don’t know, you can’t imagine what happened,
except this: Cindy, so hurt, she makes you sad.
She could say anything.
Your life could change forever.

“IS IT HIM? IS THAT THE BOY?”
With a cricket-voice Cindy says,
No. Not them. No no. Not them.

Cindy and the mom in the DeSoto,
gone in a screen of blue exhaust.
“Who’s up?” I say, but we just stand there.
Hot sun, pesky gnats. Ball with black tape.
“Sheesh,” Jimmy says,
which is the best explanation.

……

First published in US 1 Worksheets
photo by James Kern
Note: True story. I still wonder what would have happened if “Cindy” had fingered Jimmy or me.

Acorn, stolen

 

Acorn, Stolen

Rough oak planks I sand, oil, polish
with the deference a rich man expects.
The roulette table a gift, a surprise
for his young wife — sparkly,
pretty as a rich man expects
but I spy a flaw in one board, a hollow
containing an acorn tucked long ago
by industrious woodpecker.

The nut has split sprouting
— sexy, hairy, one root
— pale, hopeful, one stalk
curled crammed in that womb
seeking earth, seeking light.
This board I set outside.

Lunch time, snowed with sawdust
I step from wood shop to fresh air.
The plank, still in sunshine.
The hollow, empty. Who stole?

Three years later in spectacular blaze
the roulette table burns to cinders
along with the mansion and the rich man himself.
Sparkly pretty widow with flamboyant grief
relocates to Paris with the money
and the men you’d expect.

Twenty years later an oak tree
shades my wood shop,
host to woodpeckers with red heads.
Some gifts are wasted. Some, transplanted.
Some of us in craft are rooted.
We seek the light.

……

First published in I-70 Review
photo by Ivar Leidus

Bilbo and Me

 

Bilbo and Me

I rent a garage for a wood shop,
and immediately loping up the driveway
big Bilbo adopts me.

With lion’s mane collar and giant paws
Bilbo sleeps on a folded furniture blanket.
If a stranger approaches, Bilbo springs to his feet
with watchful glare until handshake, then sniffs
those same fingers to store in his file.

Bilbo knows the message of every muffler,
the flavor of every garbage can,
shows me secret special smells
on many a walk as we wait for glue to set,
for oil to dry, for clients to buy.

Once each day Bilbo trots to a pink stucco house
where a woman in a wheelchair sits on the porch.
He returns with snout stinking of liver and grease.

I tweeze ticks, dust fleas, brush his neglected mane.
I try to approach the pink stucco house
but always Bilbo blocks me with his body, bares
teeth and mutters about ownership, about loyalty,
about playing the hand you’re dealt.

I find a larger garage, better neighborhood.
Bilbo is skeptical but watches from his blanket
which I haven’t the heart to pack as I load
the old pickup, until I heft the final box.
Bilbo in his dignity rises on hind legs with paws
against my chest and—first time ever—licks my face.
I stagger against his weight, nearly fall backward.
His eyes are closed. Tongue, almost dry.
The tickle, the wisdom, those whiskers.

In the mirror I see Bilbo standing mid-street,
watching without pursuit. Another block,
and I must stop to clear my eyes.
Bilbo with his gravitas, his big bushy tail
trots toward the front porch, the pink stucco house.

……

First published in I-70 Review.
Photo by me is of my neighbor Kona. The real Bilbo said farewell to me in 1973.

When Fernando closes eyes

 

When Fernando closes eyes

he sees Josefina, hair thick and sleek
like the pelt of an otter. He smells
the blooms of her body in the meadow
of her belly, the spicy scent
between her breasts lined with fluffy powder
like the nest of a sparrow.
He hears the thump of bread dough as
she kneads, stretches, shapes.
He feels the lips of her pony
nuzzling sugar from his palm.

He remembers the cabin’s hot oven,
the cold nights. The spring flood.
He tastes mud of the river,
mud of decay. He wonders
where Josefina came to rest, never found,
not a trace. Perhaps the pony knows,
the pony who was captured trying
to cross the Interstate highway,
the wild broken-hearted pony
who made the six o’clock news.

When Fernando closes his eyes,
Josefina is there, her body
dusty with flour, resting abed
just a few moments, bread rising
under a dish towel, pony
standing at the window hoping
for a carrot, playful otters sliding
down riverbank to the sun-speckled water.

……

First published in I-70 Review
photo by Christine Sponchia