August Storm Clouds and An Unexpected Serenade

Begin with the sounds of my husband in the kitchen pouring freshly boiled water through a beige paper filter that folds over and hisses just the tiniest bit in the insignificant mishap. He yelps like he does to himself, and even from two rooms removed it irritates me like he’s a person touched and unstable, and I get up and shut the door to my study and pretend I don’t know him and am anywhere else where the coffee is dripping perfectly or waiting for the lightest press of palm against top against spring, against ebony grounds, and an aroma of pungent perfection is squeezed heavenward;

Start again. The full, running water in the bathroom where our daughter showers, the most Olympic shower in the history of twenty-one-year old girls, like swimming the length of two oceans to achieve both cleanliness and a certain sheen of muscular endurance raising her arms to lather and rinse, lather and rinse again; straining the patient endurance of her parents who, when the utility bill arrives a month later, try to remember who last visited or was it a dry month and the trees needed dousing?

Here the the dog we named Butterfly. She is old now and wades into a puddle of still, evaporating water, wanting to lick it up directly from the dusty cement porch after the night’s rainstorm that seemed as though it might lift our house, as if tilted toward Oz for the ferocity of the sideways throb of baritone and invisible seams ripping; I lay half awake very late hoping that the skylights wouldn’t burst;

Remember the night before standing in the cool air path at the bottom of six stairs from this downtown Mercado. I am waiting for my husband and daughter to decide whether we are stepping out for movie or dinner, or both, and if so whether it will be comic book villains or story of a young man with a heritage he must hide, and suddenly as if from a passing car on San Francisco Street, a mandolin is playing and I tip my head out and around the adobe post blocking my view to see the musician, busker with heavy height and round face like a young nephew. For all my anticipation, a personal, unexpected serenade.

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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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