As Mourning Doves Persist

  No god is secure from the lofty flight of mortal thought .       - S or  Juana Ines de la Cruz   Un-attach your leaden wings. Replace them with survivor scalp of  post-chemo down. Speak to the angels in your sleep. Assure your daughter you will always catch her. What we’ve grown from such compost is splendor. What we chant still are the ABCs. Washing our hands up to the elbows. Poetry Postcard Festival 2021  

  The dreams that found me here induced by others.  Temporary rooms where the anticipated inhabitant  never returned.   We rummage for lost things. As I pack  I survey this  cottage into which I’ve spilled white coral and cords for charging.    My dreams once home again will likely be of hibiscus, blood  pink  pinwheels, and the Willi Willi bloom stitching the limbs of highway trees -  yellow and orange and fading. I will awake to remnant archipelago green; roosters’ wild calls and tea cup sized mourning doves somnolence interrupted by soot black lava  reef and north Pacific wind little sips of the narrowing cave of my father’s dementia as we shared nightly dinner visits here. And on the rental lanai, the sun setting above the lucky  horseshoe tip of the other side of the island,  dropping from brief chimera.    There will be rain. (Haiku, Maui, Hawaii, August 2021)

Six women arrive at the table. Cup remnants of waking dreams in crowded, dissipating wisps, faceless characters and confusing maps. We arrive to decipher together, mouth groggy snippets over biscuits and bacon. Outside, snow that could just sigh. We've returned to our previous seats. Forks placed to the left or tossed collectively into the center.  Last night we drank at this table, over  Scrabble tiles. Making up rules. This morning, one early riser emerges from the day's weather. Sock monkey with down on her brown cap.  We start a new game. Acronyms are not acceptable, we decide. Directions  no where to be found. I slowly stir my drink. Another undresses  to hot tub on this vacation patch of Colorado cottonwood and pine.  Red cars turn white in the driveway. We reach for the names and  favorite sayings of bygone partners as if a clue inside. How we arrived here. Fortunes scripted on our tea bags.  One continues to whip farm fresh eggs.

If I cut my hair approaching chemotherapy  let's refer to it as fruit tree blossom scatter anticipatory lightweight valuables windy decision making ahead

                                                                                                                                                  for eb Who knew leaves could land like this. Twin silhouettes  on wet pavement. Half a century of travel to meet again, sisters. Water and sap through veins. Decades of San Joaquin Valley orchards of orange fed by concrete aqueducts. Leafless hedges like  oversized bonsai in the hundred degree heat.   But then, under San Francisco Bay’s sky eucalyptus scent so heady it’s medicinal, this arrival on spindly fronds. Your familiar intonation.   Such root pressure ...

At age 12  there was a park hill going down   To join my family gathered around a rugged table with refreshment I began  to descend     slowly at first               proud to master space     But gravity and determination were not well-matched and propelled me speed began its pace    to betray me And once I reached the level bottom  where grass and concrete met    I had fallen bruised I hoped no one had seen  the disaster of such eagerness Scuffed    there was no brushing off Standing revealed stiffness of one such  solo hands  my tentative but able brakes and then other’s hands to lift me up Laughter offsetting ego’s red Oh that I had learned to drop my self indignation then but it would be 50 years befor...

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter   cookies nested    in paper that  releases a sigh   But instead there may be fiction   within   wishes never reciprocated   Playbill of redundant arguments   One black glove    found fraying   This vessel on an emptied  table   solo     temptation is labeled with  another’s name   Guarded initials as if carved in melting snow     A tool unsuited  to the task of   prying open  Not yet valentine