Leaning House, Canyon Rim

for children everywhere, broken, homeless & disabled

My eyes are brown and green as the mountain's piñon. I wear
thinning, purple long underwear in the morning and warm socks

sometimes late into the day.You probably don’t know my name,
but it was stitched simply. Perfect quilt of father and mother.

Occasionally I fold up inside myself. Doesn't everyone?

What I love best is laughter, cold water running through my hands.

I should have been a whole boy with no mystery inside of me,
but others don’t see me that way, look straight through me,

except my mother who will always love me as I am.

Firecracker in the closet hidden behind someone else’s shoes.
Too many times I could have been disowned. But I know
the newborn ghosts that haunt the corner hotel downtown now,
once the hospital of the nuns.

Many of the piñon are dead on the mountains. Bugs.

Safe quilt slowly shredding at the seams. My father, long gone,

whispers to me, telling me to stand up straight, secretly praying

that his funny son is always fed.

That no one else will ever tear down his leaning house. Someday I will
come in safely from the rain, enter through the garage with the ring of
trusted keys, having carefully parked her car, and give my mother perfect
roses, my laughing smile softening her patient eyes.

Comments

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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