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 Allegro. Thank you Sally Long, editor.

Photo is of the San Jose Airport as seen from above.

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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.

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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…

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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
50 years ago my first child was born.
When I first saw him, first touched him, a glow began inside my body. Still feel it. Before my son’s sixth birthday, I wrote the poem: “Boy, Almost Six,” and took the photo you see here.
Now I am 79, which is almost 100. Now that boy has a child, almost fourteen, and another, almost twelve. Life is almost a circle, always a miracle.

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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

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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.

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That Dog

 .....

From my book Foggy Dog

photo by me of my dog Dakota who inspired this poem 

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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
and my book Foggy Dog

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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

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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.

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