Hard Water

Hard water

some never hold court in the dusty palaces where poems are built,

fearing the presence of other writers, their discreet finger trails drawn across cornices, their drawn breaths in steamy

breathless bathrooms where wadded washcloths may lie,

their stray tongues hung out from drawers slightly agape,

cupboards hastily re-sorted & on gradually warped

mantels, telltale fingerprints under wordless prim commentary

of an index finger’s intrusive none too subtle path through sticky dust

somehow recently & yet chronically overlooked,

aging plastic shower curtains folded back

to expose rusted hinges & encrusted fixtures; 

hutches where teacups are stared into & then quietly left unchosen,

& instead show up as lines in poems about rugged writers

going blind in semi darkness with only the solitary locust chirp,

whose attentions, easily stolen by distant dragonflies, traveling troubadours & faraway flutists live frivolous lives

abandoning carefully troubled gardeners, but suddenly

stopped by the whimsical

line of notice in another writer's quick review:

after the bold signature that notes w obligatory smugness how

comparison is odious,

obvious embattled streaks of smudge marching across  majestically windowed views in other scribblers’ dusty lodgings,

litters of aging dust bunnies shaking silently & pinkeyed perhaps

beneath faded furniture,

droll note is taken of the drinking glass that does not glisten,

allusion to dead relatives whose feral photos sit framed

in occluded corners,

the housekeeper who blames everything on hard water,

the industrious daddy-long-legs spider whose webby home is safely chandeliered above the telescoping dust-ragged pole

one brief poetic mention of the single dying philodendron that struggles bravely potted in a piece of outdated, overcrowded antique crockery,

limbs reaching languidly from room to room

barely breathing,

cornered, slowing turning yellow, the unspeakable family invalid

pallid poems surely symptomatic of deferred maintenance

of a soul’s inner life, one small step for negligence, a master stroke

for modern living.

Let your life be

Let your life be

An offered breath returned to life,

A baby’s kiss gifting remembered softness

in its suddenly spasm, clutching instinctively

to the mother ship now certainly untethered,

still knitted invisibly amid negative spaces
through which blue nightsky

glitters, bringing dancing illuminated furies to those receptors of human vision,

a magic orchestrated multiple millennia past
& carrying memory's starseed to continue its replicated scattering

the gathered bits of verisimilitude to some schemata

originally designed in some particular specific configuration
the DNA whose weave you & you alone can possibly dance.

Share in slightly shrill & off key operatic

Soliloquy the chanting mermaids in the singing, stinging sea

Laughter  freckling the known coordinates
of air waves where you in brief human form had passed

in synchronous & instantly disappearing

Breath, the perfect elegy.

My Last Marlboro

My last Marlboro

It was no royal duchess, nor a viscount nor even prince albert rolled like

dusty lambwool from familiar rust painted tin

But just the old standby, grim reaper-lean cowboy astride his well hung stallion,

white & red box with tall black letters, flipped open

& inside the remainder of 20 tobacco soldiers on end, no longer tightly packed

but still sick sweet smell exuding in the instant before good judgment can awaken.

I hadn’t smoked in years. No longer the searing veil once acquired purposefully,  

a screen of stench & lies between us, a way of delaying appetite,

a test to ensure that pathos could  overcome common sense & you would love me anyway, the worst habit.

I’d picked it up as a child w calculated concentration, learned self taught but  proper mannerisms, hands like Daddy’s cupped in the wind, squinting,

one eyebrow raised, determined double barreled exhale like a slow motion Pamplona bull; it was from his dark desk I’d stolen the first ones I tried to inhale.

But after decades I’d let go of it.  No longer any need to shock or stun you,

to prove myself as tough as any gunslinger, some shy new desire

for true acceptance as casual as sand

overcoming  the frosty fortress of former belief that I needed no other friend. 

No compulsion for something to do w my hands, I learned to eat my own cooking and that I loved the real taste of food, I’d kicked that stinky sad

companion to the curb, no matter how loyal and compulsively

I’d kissed him all those years.  Sure, I banked off slow, having loved too much

to go cold turkey, found lesser friends in menthol kools & exotic turkish camel lites,

slim sophisticated shermans as subtle as cinnamon sticks, rivals

promising more mellow tastes, lower risks, & yes I taperered off

for never had I found another who could deliver

satisfaction sweet as the nasty snarling smirk of him, my Marlboro,

w his manly smell, the rich pervasive odor that ruined all my clothes.

That evening, I’d been at another AA meeting when you said something

in the group just to get a laugh. It pissed me off so bad. I had to go outside

and there I found another person

in the cold night air also nursing wounded feelings,

quiet, saying nothing to me nor looking up

Just silently proffering that open pack. I took the smooth and silky cigarette and accepted the glowing bic flame, inhaled between my lips and drew in deep.

Felt  shame & gratification instantly down to my toes & all my anger die down deep,

Felt sweet nothing. Then I noticed it felt bad & tasted wrong  & my reflection in the plate glass window looked absurd. I said to myself “self—he is not worth it,

Anymore.” I ground the Marlboro half smoked beneath my heel

looking down as if to memorize. And from that moment twenty odd years ago to this, I did not look back  to hear your song, or even to recall your name.

Odd, even that this smoky morning in october,  suddenly,  I did.

Chinook

The wind blows fog off distant rivers, unveils the sun

blown in by breezes from a warmer place beyond the sea

carrying birds back home in flocks that fly formations

to our valleys from the coast.

Here in town we luxuriate deliciously in this surprising gentle gift

climate aberration in a region

where spring is normally three cool months of rain and silver showers

in a day suddenly gone unseasonal,

sensuous sweet warmth shining through the brown and bony arms

of trees still skeletal and mostly leafless,

under blue skies boldly bright as any day in june.

This year it’s late, coming in mid-march, to greening chartreuse hills

that harbor hidden yellow knots of daffodils,

and crocuses peeping shyly but predictably  from under rocks.

Normally it might be february were it to occur at all.

Never a sure thing, skips more years than we wish to recall

this irrational and temporary spell, celebrated

by  pretty college girls appearing bikini-clad and buff on balconies,

smelling strongly of coconut and vanilla

the syrupy song of saxophones blaring from open windows

over glorious galloping guitars

during daylight hours

children with their mothers or their fathers reveling noisily together

on squeaky schoolyard  swings,

elders sipping minty ice teas on shaded café patios,

daring each other to get some sun. Chinook’s a sweet and short-lived  thrill,

like puppy love or any other,

half the insane unspeakable joy of it

our unspoken suspicion knowing this can’t last,

is certainly unsustainable and wrong, must be tasted,

that buds that dare to bloom now may lose their later perfect promised fruit,

but knowing now that this is just as good as living on this planet ever gets,

we savor this like lemon drops that melt to nothing in the mouth

there is no joy as crazy nor spell as sweet

than the magic of this freak false spring,

Chinook.

encounter at otter point

Beneath unending skies misty sea horizons

edge across these moors along shaggy multicolor carpet

effulgent evergreens offering new growth in

joyful vigor seldom seen, chartreuses pregnant with promise

sprinkled with tiny brilliant blossoms in wild shades

Voluptuously reminiscent of the most mouthwatering exotic fruit:

berries, kumquat, pomegranate, mango, juicy tangerine.

I dare not name these wild &  newly flowering children,

most as unfamiliar to my eye as if they’ve fallen from

some keltic fairy kingdom, some distant outer planet,

or risen surreptitiously from the florid foamy  sea.

we  trample overgrown & fragrant paths along the breathless edge

overcome with pure elation and appreciation

Until my husband suddenly in a harsh shout wakens me—Watch out! You’re on

an overhang!—he yells, hands cupped

against the ocean’s nearby roar. I turn and see the giant golden sculpted cliffs,

streaked mud-red sandstone walls w oddly vertical layers rise

as if slung there by some ancient capricious continental drift—

denuded by El Nino and the endlessly relentless crash of waves—

a sandy clay where the most tenacious plant from heaven could  never root or grow

I’m standing on a path surrounded by bright blooms and evidently ready now to fall

unceremoniously  into the dizzying drop below, the vast expanse beneath unsupported

weight held up above eroded earth only by the sheerest land bridge made of weak and rootless silt
and shale  sand—all that from the pathway’s vantage point was hidden and invisible to me—

I quickly stride to safer perch to take the trail closer in, forsake the risky ledge.

But now we see another couple, these two with a little yapping dog beleashed

who ceremoniously take the trail we’ve just forsaken and with our arms and voices,

try to warn them—they seem annoyed.  As if we’ve trespassed in their reverie.

We point out the sheerness of the cliffs. “We know” the woman says a bit impatiently.

“this is otter point. Have you googled it? A fascinating history. We’re moving here.”

Get out! I scream and point. But just like me she cannot see. She shrugs and walks

Blithely blindly on, her husband at her tail along the twisting precarious trail.

Great, I defer cheerfully. and welcome to this orphaned land, all patrons and all matrons

Gratefully received—“Be safe! No accidents!” She flings a painted blonde hair
from her eyes w well manicured and diamond studded hand.

“We believe in abundance,” she calls from her suspended ledge,
smiling and appearing irritated both at once.  "NO VICTIMS!"

“we believe in only choices—it’s all energy!”

“OK, perhaps I need to hear that!” I hear myself say w/o credibility. I myself

lose altitude now, and faith and spirit.  We tramp back down the trail

in silence, wordless and  unaccompanied and heading back to the

Camper’s parking lot where our old blue grey mommyvan sits modest and serene

comfortingly familiar and alone except for a brand new Lincoln SUV

w chrome rack and rims, a relative behemoth beast, as  strangely odd and menacing
 in coldly gleaming pure white presence crouching here as some rare displaced,

perhaps endangered  polar bear.

That  woman by the way   -tho not near as old- was almost quite as large
and possibly as heavy as me.

eclipsed

Eclipsed

We sit alone together in the Chinese restaurant  

5 o’clock, the dead zone in the western world, a hollow space

Between lunch and dinner, only a single occupied table,

A huge hispanic family seated in the center of the room,

They’re well nourished, well groomed, well dressed,

Accordioned white spun silk shirts & black shiny satin dresses

having just come from a wedding, it seems,

Or maybe some giant faraway church, or maybe major grocery shopping

kids noshing on everything from egg rolls to mar far sweet & sour.

We are old & tired; the day has been long & exhausting, not much  accomplished,

The biggest news around is the full solar eclipse, not another to be seen

For more than a decade anywhere on earth. For once, we have landed an ideal

Viewing position. I stare out the huge plate glass window, through which the colored

Light leeches irrelevantly as we speak. I wonder at the quietness of space, empty sidewalks,

Sunday afternoon before memorial day Sunday & everyone no doubt  

at the m ountains now or on the beach, hoping for a view.  We are space aliens

who have landed in this funky Chinese restaurant.

We now know there are many more varieties & dialects than even this

20 page menu can contain, but are content to flip & frown.

It is comical almost to watch the children well behaved at table pray

“Gracias por el arroz frito y el fried shrimp”

items we no longer order, managing cholesterol.

No one here cares, apparently, about the alignment of  heavenly bodies.

We are careful elders who barely catch a glance, except for the waitress,

Whose slim figure in polky dot A line is arresting, & who

Culturally recalls how to respect her elders, as we are wise, & probably

Better tippers than the young.  The sky outside is graying fast, like a giant cloud cover

passing, the solar eye a lidded stare. We both stare at one another under pure

fluorescent light,

Too tired to even think to go outside.

I guess the solar eclipse is in full swing, I manage.

Yes, the light looks pretty dull out there you reply. We stare again

At the menu; our waitress arrives, recognizing & recalling us.

As the room fades, her her face lights up.

“One singapore chow fun!

One happy family, white rice!”