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. 

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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.

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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 

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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

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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

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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

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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. 

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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.

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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.)

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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

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