Twenty Years Hence

This morning I am thinking of friends I've not seen for more than twenty years — a man whom I met protesting at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant who held the keys to the cars of those of us in our group when we chose to be arrested and while we "did our time" and who became a fast friend from that point forward, and a woman with

whom I read poetry and drank boiler makers in North Beach and the Mission district of San Francisco, dressed as two of the singing Supremes for Halloween, watched comets in a morning rising sky, a woman who now lives in Prague, or did, the last time we spoke and she was in New York visiting her family. I think of how people say "we talked after all this time and it was as if no time had passed", and I wish I could bring these old companions into my rooms today, introduce them to my husband, my teenage daughter, and my dog. Thanks to the wizardry of modern day technology I could, if the connections came together, "skype" them and find their faces on my computer screen, faces a little more elongated with years of worry and yet bearing the same familiar smiles, I could "meet" their wives or children,if they stared into the peephole of a camera embedded of balanced atop the monitor. I can't help but think of the television show from the sixties of The Jetsons and how they were able to see each others' faces on their floating t.v. screens, the magic windows of today. This would be gratifying on one level, to picture David and Laura like this, to nearly be able to touch them again, my hand on their arm, or my glass raised to toast our late night imaginations. Last night I did this, a virtual "high five" with Evangeline as she taught me how to do something new with my computer from 1130 miles away. She in California and me in New Mexico. We seem to have shrunk geography this way. And then, still, I walk past my daughter's morning bedroom, a room strewn with her pink pillows and discarded blue jeans, and it's the present that seeps into my heart that causes a sensation that I can only experience alone and with myself as sole witness. Dave and Laura, I miss you. Call me.

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Grit and Sunlight

What springs up: insistence in this persistent mother of mine (still breathing) Even busy ashes from a rescued urn float up reconstituted as morning dew She unfolds her tendril arms from shadow (shaking just five days ago as if in temporary surrender) (that moment when I am less certain of her longevity) this woman ever present (anyone’s mother) aging when even the most spindly clover of her fragile skin captures the sunrise light like anticipation’s shower blood underneath all humming bird or spores from her heart and in her mouth inhale (frightened) breath exhale grit inhale (certain) breath exhale grit

Open Mic, Cafe Babar

I remember arriving, not the prettiest but appealing to certain bards in the back room, entering through the Castro Valley corner door, walking the postage stamp sized Cinzano bar curated by a man from Detroit who named his establishment after a certain French elephant in a children’s book I arrive with budding consciousness around politically correct solidarity for disheveled neighbors, entering the cigarette lit night rising to tin siding ceiling to floor thumping insistence Bruce and Joie and David and Laura and John, their ash and sweat accumulating as I waited patiently for my place on the crumpled sign-up sheet Today, three decades later, I sit in a Santa Fe gallery named simply Here, and a poet reads to us of roadrunners and a bear and a continuation of the call for preservation of our environment There is an otherworldly hum outside the window of leaded glass The owner sidles up behind me and pushes the frame down to contain what we came to hear I have applied lipstick

A Matter of Travel

Solstice, 2019, for Tracy 1. And cross borders we do often without leaving our houses. Our bodies dream of gardens. Our hands flutter as feeling exits as we press hard against the solid entry door. I type the names of cities. My search reveals rivers, airfares, temperatures in July. 2. Seeking sleep, I am transported through music piped into tiny earbuds. While on an island my father has two seizures in the night. His ten children fly to one another with cautionary fright, typing. Time zones vary from each cell phone exclamation. Two sisters, you and I, raise questions that barely touch down for others but I witness you. 3. By morning we’re assured was merely fainting, and I reconsider change of plans. No emergency to rush to his quiet side. I walk no farther instead to this table for eggs, an English muffin. Arrive inside my individual conclusions. Concern that happiness, once again, is quickly stymied.

As Mourning Doves Persist

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