Stone Mother

Limbs stiffen,

Lose sensation---
Petrifaction of the bones.

I search remembrance to occupy

The space of minerals constituting

            Human torso,

Like a late river

Push against congregating

            Gray stone ice

            Making this mother

            A statue

            For children to visit

            With flowers. 

Strike my ribs

With Moses’ staff.

Open a hole for water

Where children can splash their feet.

A stream that weeps and laughs,

Washing her stones

Singing them smoothly

            To sleep. 

                                                                                                 Santa Fe, 2004
                                                                       

Diversion Dam

Redding, California      
c. 1970 
 

The irrigation ditch was boundary line:

our side an ill-kept orchard

giving fruit in random years

when trees were in the mood--

Morning was for chores like chopping a trench

to the dry garden planted with good intent:

 

     this year we would weed—

     we would have a harvest—

     we would tend—
 

I engineered the water flow,

white string tied to sticks like a small ski lift

minus all the snow—

marked then cut the dry run
while county crews sank panels

routing water from the Sacramento

to canals that in those days said

Redding was a rodeo town,

racing horses on hard packed banks

dry in winter, cutting through yards,

crossing neighborhoods sprung
where new kids weren’t allowed to play
since they might fall in open water.
We caught the new kids looking,

hazed in dust our horses raised,

hooves in time not caring how fast we rode—

our horses knew how not to crash.

If you fell, and it hurt, you got back on.

 

It took a hammer, every year, to knock the valve.

You heard metal on rusted metal,

then the wait—

for the white plume, pressed from canals

fed by the dam restored every spring,

when the Sacramento swelled with snow

off Mount Shasta and the melting Cascades.

                                                                                        April 15, 2012

                                                                                    in memory of Jack Best,

drillmaster

ACID Diversion Dam,
Sacramento River
Redding, California

Casting

The drift of coffee before remembering
     You traveled last night
          And this is a hotel
          Not your room at all
A thought of the scent at sunrise

Could be enough
To cast a form for the day:
          Warmth in hand,
          A cup already full.
The idea of the day
          Before the day itself--
The idea of the life
          Before the life itself,
At least as a place to start.

Perhaps the casting of a thought
At dawn, when the fishing is good,
Would draw to the surface something
Muscular, bright, and alive.
Something proud of its fight.
Then, if the hook slips,
And the ripples cease,
And the water smooths,
At least the rest of the day you'll know
Something is there,
And it is muscular, bright, and alive.
          It is there--
You'll cast for it again,
                      and again.
                                                      August, 2004
                                                      Santa Fe

as jugglers do

               The chief element of happiness is this:
                                   To want to be what you are.”

--Desiderious Erasmus, Praise of Folly

Jugglers know what music makes
            And hear it on the outside too,

Through music they shape
            With their hands

             The curve of wrist must follow

                     In time

                          Conducting songs that are seen

                          Not heard unless

            You know where the music lives and hear it

                         On the outside too.

                                    As jugglers do. 

They know why clowns are sad but also

how to make them smile.

Jugglers however are not clowns.

And they have promised the clowns not to reveal

            The secrets of sadness.

                        Because everyone then, would either be clowns

                        Or their killers. 

Jugglers however are not sad because sadness lifts with the balls

Which don’t really hang in the air unless you’re trained to watch

            In slow motion.

They of course are trained to watch in slow motion.

It is wrong to juggle living creatures, such as cats

            Or lizards, despite replaceable tails

(of lizards, not cats).

Small birds such as finch accept the first toss, then fly.

The nearest to living a juggler should juggle

            Are food items,

                        Such as squash, which don’t mind if they fall.

                        Or apples, for the tradition of Trees.

                        Only the bravest fool attempts

                                                Raw eggs. 

The world needs fools,

Though most are eventually hanged

Just before Kings

Go to war or turn insane. 

Fools however are not clowns, and they aren’t insane.

All jugglers are fools, but not all fools are jugglers.

         The wise fools practice juggling
                 Every day
                         It passes the time
                         Improves circulation

                         Enhances reflex, flexibility, and grace.

So we end with the art of the toss

            Determining all especially

The time it takes to fall

Catching is understood as a toss by imagining

            Hands as a launch

           When the launching and catching have blurred into one, 

           The work of the juggler is done—

           And watchers hear music

                      That’s already sung.

                                                                                    April 9, 2012

                                                                                    In the month of fools

Living there at all

Redondo Beach,  California
c.1960

Consensus was anyone stupid enough

to build on the beach cliffs deserved what they got.

We shook our heads at the footage,

drove PCH to gawk the next day,

and when the TV peacock first turned color

saw how the cliff houses melted

on orange mud, like sherbet toppings

sliding off the cone.  They never

slid at once – the cliff held shape,

soaking in storm, held to the last,

then exhaled, like a shift worker at quitting time.

All the ways a house came down

showed in color now, sometimes whole

but usually in parts, sometimes neatly cracked

like eggs, wealthy white sofas, carpets, curtains

spilling down the orange mud, half still clinging

gaping open for helicopters over the Pacific

to film the broken shells of California wealth and fame. 

“They can afford it,” my working parents said.

“Shouldn’t have built there to begin with.”

I'd nod my head gravely, learned to have no pity.

Until the morning our suburb went to sea,

the San Andreas taking a deep breath,

brushing loose the crumbs of buildings,

buckling the famous freeways, flipping cars.

My bed, on wheels, rolled from wall to wall,
loose cargo stopped against the door,

trapped alone at sunrise, not surprised:

The peacock showed in color now—
mudslides, earthquakes,

forest fires at Big Sur. 

Maybe that night a kid in Seward

watched the news of the California quake.

Maybe some good sense farming parents shook their heads.

“Shouldn’t have built there to begin with,”

maybe they told each other.

“That’s why they call it a fault line,”

with a sense that yes, it’s our own dumb fault,

living there at all. 

In Nevada, the joke is beachfront property,
when California's done sliding to the sea.

Too bad my parents didn’t live

where people had more sense. 

I might have known better, then. 

                                                                                    April, 2012

                                                                                    in the month of fools

 

Los Angeles Earthquake, 1971