The Teacher's Obligation

For those bound to four-legged stiff backed chairs,

to the drone of puppetry

dangling children tied to sticks,

to them I come and snip the strings. 

A putting on of flesh ensues,

Pinocchio made a real boy at last.

Drawn on by my calling,

I open windows, letting in insects that we name,

Welcome as new students to perch on pencils,

Add their insect voice to the generation whose job it will be

to adjust the climate so such creatures are still able to fly

through windows, perching on their grandchildren’s pencils,

in classrooms of teachers who value such things,

The dignity of the sovereign mind,

Spontaneity of lightning thought

Tracing jagged lines across the evening sky,

Through all their years solid in belief

That in the summer, fire does fly.

                                                                             June, 2012

Arbitrary Lines

Torrance, California   c.1960

Printed ink flickers

Against the fact of water

Falling as itself, regardless. 

And I felt better watching it fall

Without telling myself that it did,

Down the green gullies

Of the Flores’ fiberglass roof

That shed a green glow

Upon bright ceramic figures

Crowding the patio shelves.

I knew the brightness of green

Surpassed the ink of the name

I’d learned to read: “green”. 

Mr. Flores sang with the Spanish songs,

Full voice lifting through the rain.

I liked not knowing the words

That taught me the sound of a happy man.

I wished I could be the neighbor girl

Who helped with the shelves,

Polishing the figures,

Seeing his face as he sang. 

I watched from my window next door,

The streaming of water

From the green roof

Where I wasn’t allowed

Since his words didn’t match ours: 

Verde.  Green.

With a cinderblock fence to remind me

Of the arbitrary lines between.

                                                                                    June, 2012

"Almost necessarily . . ."

"As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines."
                                                    Thomas B. Macaulay, (1800-1859)

Despite advances, my Southern town embarrassed me

the night a traveling poet offered verse.
One would think the simple task of lights staying on,
barring thunder strike or worthy catastrophe
were accomplishable, more easily fixed
than the feedback loop squalling its complaint
politely ignored like an infant on a plane.
The technical failure of flickering lights
independent of region (Northern lights have failed too)
embarrassed nevertheless as diminished hospitality,
a wire crossed, a breaker failed,
old wires overdue—

Civilization should have increased our ability to host
an event we bribed college students to attend
“almost necessarily” as Macaulay warned
the smart-phoned freshmen on hiatus from their text,
while necessarily those waiting most patiently,
without conversation, holding most tightly to their seats
used advances in hearing aids and heart pace monitors
to amplify the poetry in their falling years,
a symmetry of advance and decline.
 
I would like to know what the poet saw, from her stand,
an audience present then fading,
her thoughts when the lights failed on her text,
continuing from words she’d written elsewhere,
seamlessly, to the mixed ages flickering in then out,
a voice that held, needed.  Necessary.                                                                                   


                                                                                         for Natasha Trethewey
                                                                                                                                                     June 21, 2012
                                                                                          

Wharf Cats

Black mussels crust wet columns

pushing down through surface sand
to something solid, deep
where pile drivers hit
repeated concussions that scatter fish
while the Pacific takes its hits,
until a wooden platform
extends a stage over the washing sea
where my grandparents run concessions,
carnival nomads who sold their trailer,
calling this home for the raising of kids.

Fisherman’s Wharf was my first backyard
where I tamed cats that never walked on land,
nor would I, no need, with all the levels of life
under bare feet, barnacled columns,
rooftops of shops burning my feet--
you learned to leap from mark to mark,
until a layer of tar took the function of shoes,
no scrubbing past the black calluses,
personal barnacles branding me wharf child
who never would have walked on land.

If we could have stayed suspended
over columns deep in blue,
if the raging decade and its war
hadn’t mixed its smell with the fresh caught fish,
glazed eyes of the shocked and damned
haunting the stage at night,
no cleaning station with a hose
to rinse the unused parts
falling where the wharf cats waited,
licking themselves clean
when the fishing was done.

Columns below and roofs above—
The burning of tar indelibly inked
Layers beyond the washing of feet.                                                                               
                                                                                 June 19, 2012


                                                                               


Redondo Beach Pier, California
c.1960





  



What Plums Know

The best plums of hot June

were well above my picking reach,

small this year but wet with warm

red meat precariously contained by purpling skin,

bursting at the thought of teeth

or on them – such fullness in a fruit,

and eager, I couldn’t help but fill myself

with eager plums off the tree,
 

wondering on Father’s Day,

the first since coroner's report proved

absence of eagerness, despair of meat,

if more plums would have helped—

even one to burst its summer

on your winter life.

 

even the summer plums know

to store their warmth, waiting for

the tug of time and gravity forcing

elegiac falls and then the glorious burst—
 

I shook the tree,

putting my whole weight to the task,

red meat of wet plums running warm and sweet

down my face, barrage after barrage,

until the tree could yield no more. 

                                                                                                June 17, 2012

                                                                                                Asheville, NC

                                                                        

 

Sculpting Earth

Raw clay of the hours presses into form

On an unseen frame,

Conceiving motion from the reach of limbs

Extending joints

Earth shouldering its trees

Arms raised like questions

Fingers spreading leaves

Played upon by wind 

Thus wind moves the darkness

Far beneath the sight,

Opposite of upward leaves drinking green

Are downward skeleton fingers white

Gripping to the dark clay,

Wind on green leaves answers the questions of trees

Gentles the fears

The motion of leaves

Reaching knowledge of wind

To the white fingers

Holding clay—

The reach above

Sculpting earth below.

                                                                                    June 15, 2012

Articulation and Development

Warm your words as you warm your notes.

Speak in long tones, rich and deep.

Test the weight of them on your tongue.

Repeat them, varying speeds,

Slowly first, until the meanings fall away

Like smooth gowns at end of day.

Let them be naked sounds.

Then dress them again, articulately,

In soft harmonics.

Widen circumference.

Speak in colors.

Consider their start:

           Warlike, stone, or sand?

Stir them to see where the current runs.

Even if the water flows muddy at first, 

Wait

One full breath—

          Streams clear, after storms.

And speak.

                                                                     6/6/2012

                                                                    Amy’s back porch.