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If I had it to do all over again, maybe I’d take the blue pill; I’d choose the illusion.

I’ll get a job in a fancy office where I could wear pencil thin skirts and silk blouses. I won’t date artists or hang out with musicians. When that ivy-leagued-educated homeless man knocks on my door, I won’t let him in. I won’t stay at work after hours just to talk Buddhism with the custodian. I’ll be a good girl and I’ll never miss mass. I’ll join the Junior League and raise money for the Opera Guild. I’ll wear high heeled shoes and beaded gowns to their fund raisers. I’ll go to San Francisco to shop because the stores in the valley don’t have the latest designer fashions. I’ll have 2.5 children and I’ll send them to be educated by the Jesuits. And I won’t worry about anything. Ever.

And then one day, maybe I’ll miss my appointment at the manicurist. I’ll decide to grow my hair down to my waist. I’ll stop shaving my legs, even during swimsuit season, and maybe I won’t even wear a swimsuit. I’ll think about taking a needlepoint class, then decide to take a poetry writing class instead. I’ll start writing on the backs of envelopes and grocery lists, and then I’ll go out and buy rolls of butcher paper to scribble on, and I’ll write and write and write and write, and I’ll wake up and realize I’ve been sleeping for too long, and I’ll write on the walls and the sidewalks and I’ll summon the dreamers and the crazy beautiful wounded companions who’ve been looking for me all along, sure they were supposed to meet me here, on this planet, on this date, at this hour, and when they see me they’ll say, “Oh, there you are. You’re just in time.”

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I wrote this whimsical story a few years back. I think you’ll agree it’s exactly what we need about now. Written with the prompts: Angels don’t have to eat but Gabriel likes it, he missed tasting food, it looked impossible, my first reaction, or

“It looks impossible,” Gabriel admitted, “but remember,” he added, pausing for effect, “impossible is my bread and butter.”

Rafael winced at his colleague. It always came down to food with Gabriel. Rafael felt food was an unnecessary indulgence. After all, angels don’t need to eat, but Gabriel liked it. Whenever Rafael joined him on an earthly assignment, Gabriel insisted they stop off at Zelda’s Pizza or Gunther’s Ice Cream. Rafael had to concede that he missed tasting food on occasion, but he didn’t let it distract him from the work at hand. “No time for Zelda’s,” he told Gabriel sternly. “There’s a line out the door, and what’s more, they’re still smoking in the bar. That’s a violation of city ordinance.”

“Be grateful we weren’t sent to Beijing,” Gabriel said. “They smoke like chimneys on every street corner and restaurant. Here there’s just a few mavericks. Besides we could jump the queue! These mortals won’t even notice—”

“Gabriel.” Rafael affected a deep James Earl Jones voice to sound ominous rather than scolding. “We could deliver our message, re-direct the energy and be back in the ether in time for choir practice.”

“Or,” Gabriel proposed, “we could head over to this really great donut shop I know!” And then Rafael surrendered at the thought of a chocolate old-fashioned.

Later as they hovered above the planet, directing invisible rays of light between the White House and the California Governor’s Mansion and through to the Kremlin and over to North Korea and down to the Sudan, they molded the waves to modulate with those emanating from the home of an elderly woman making a chocolate cake with avocados and cocoa powder.

“Do you see her energy? It’s the purest on the planet,” Rafael declared.

“My first reaction,” Gabriel admitted, “was to notice the chocolate. It will save the Earth.”

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

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Tomorrow's the 4th of July, and I'm guessing my readers realize this is a big old patriotic holiday here in the United States. However, it's come to my attention recently that there may be a lot of Americans who don't actually know what happened on this date 250 years ago, so let me wake you all up. July 4th, 1776, is the date representatives of the American Colonists (who, for better or worse, are now known as "The Founding Fathers") wrote a letter to the British saying, Hey, King George, we don't want to be part of Great Britain anymore. And by the way, we're willing to fight a war to make this stick, so best you back off.

But of course the British didn’t back off--at least not at first. They did eventually surrender however, and now--250 years later--they’re kind of our best friend. At least I hope they’re still our best friend. But that’s another story. The important thing is July 4th is Our Birthday! It’s when this land stopped being colonies of Great Britain, and became the United States of America. It’s the date the Declaration of Independence was written. If you’re ever pressed to take a citizenship test, best to remember that.

You might have noticed that we’ve had a spate of weird years here. I’d like to say something healing or hopeful or even inspiring, but often in summer I feel tired and whiny. One thing I do when I get tired and whiny is I listen to music, preferably music I can sing along to. I particularly like the early Beatles and The Beach Boys, and oh, yeah, some Motown girl groups are great for this. But today we need hopeful, healing, and inspiring, so allow me to post a few favorites from YouTube. We need this right now.

You might be remembering that I posted these same songs last year. But admit it, we need happy music more than ever, so here goes.

This first one is Holly Near at a rally for bodily autonomy singing a song she wrote when Harvey Milk was assassinated.

We Are A Gentle Angry People

You’ll love this video of Arlo Guthrie leading the crowd at Farm Aid in his father’s most famous song. He’s joined by a few dozen celebrity icons, like Kris Kristofferson and Wilie Nelson, but Sacramento natives and GenX Reading Rainbow fans will spot LeVar Burton in the crowd too.

This Land is Our Land

This next one is a Crosby Stills and Nash favorite. It has an animated video to go with it, and it will break your heart. Highly recommended.

Teach Your Children

Here’s an old favorite of mine. The link to YouTube has been giving me some grief, but it’s there, so if it doesn’t come up, search for “Can’t Take My Dreams Away,” by the Shirleys.

Finally here’s Whitney Houston singing our National Anthem. It’s beautiful, and it makes me want to admit that I love our national anthem. Yes, it seems only the most gifted, highly trained singers may do it justice, but it’s ours, you know. I still get a little misty when we sing the line about how the flag was still visible even after a night of battle, still flying over the fort. Anyway, this is my way of saying, it’s still OUR flag, and OUR country. Don’t give up on us.

Hang in there. Have a nice holiday. Dream big. Fight hard.

Photo by Rodrigo de Mendoza on Unsplash

Her mother named her Cheetah, hoping she would grow into a long-limbed, fleet-footed woman, but she developed broad shoulders and rounded haunches like a raccoon. Her father called her Chee, as if it were a nicked name, a shortened version of her totem animal, but Cheetah knew he meant Chi, pure core energy. She wanted to adopt this moniker, but she worried she couldn’t live up to such a legacy. She was quiet and still, a yogic tree, potential not kinetic.

One night in dream, vision, or illusion, she looked out the front window to see the house across the street was a twin of her own. But the roses were not red, the irises were not purple, the chrysanthemums were not yellow. There were white roses, milky calla lilies, white hydrangeas. Chi’s twin appeared, gathering a bundle of flowers, her arms overflowing, tucking the blossoms between chin and breasts, white petals floating on the breeze like white moths circling under yellow street lamp.

Soon the door of the white ghost house will open and a surge of animals will emerge: wolves, coyotes, bobcats, foxes—all predators. Chi will not be afraid, she will open her arms and absorb them into every pore in her body like a sponge soaking up water. She will take on their fierceness, tenacity, focus, singleness of purpose. Her prey will be authenticity; her prey will be desire; her prey will be open-hearted compassion. She will pursue within. She will love her prey. Predator and prey will be one.

Photo by Jean Wimmerlin on Unsplash

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Amanda lost her keys on the way home from the protest march and was locked out of the house for three days. Luckily she had a satchel filled with peanut butter sandwiches and peaches so she didn’t get hungry, and a backpack filled with paint supplies so she didn’t get bored.

She and Alvin had spent two days creeping through the capital city spraying anti-government slogans across the ministry windows after curfew. Now stuck in her own back yard, she was determined to create something more artistic on the broad blank northern-facing wall below the chimney. She had spray paints in primary colors and she fashioned brushes from rolled hydrangea leaves and delicate unopened rose buds. She had a picture in her head of her mother descending the stairs a decade ago carrying her baby sister who was then and forever no more than a toddler. Amanda painted their faces with blood red lips and cheeks crumpled in dimples and laughter. Here on the first day of summer with these make-shift supplies she would dare to create a new world, fantasy memories, an alternative history. Is this courageous? she wondered. Or merely escapist?

After the military coup, Amanda grew up believing no one, trusting nothing unless you could hold it in your own hands. Now she wanted to trust this vision. Maybe because it was so hot outside, camping under the sycamore, maybe she was hallucinating. She painted her mother’s hair blue, and she gave her sister lavender eyes. But there was a new color that was melting together from her blending and her machinations, a new color that arced above the human faces, like an imaginary sky on a planet that doesn’t exist, a color that has no name. Will anyone even be able to see it? Amanda wondered. It was a color from a land without language, a land of pure experience.

On the third day, her father trudged up the driveway after God knows how many losses at the race track. He froze in the doorway between the garage and the yard, staring at the portrait of his late wife and daughter who gazed peaceably down at him, and he began to cry. Amanda awoke from her mattress of leaves. “I didn’t know,” her father said. “I didn’t know you remembered.”

Amanda went to him with open arms. “I’ve been waiting for years for her to show me where to look. Now I know. I am tasting life twice.”

Photo from Museum of New Zealand TePapaTongarewa on Unsplash

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Give me a moment, in this mouse of a day, such a tiny bit of daylight left. I can barely muzzle my frustrations before it’s midnight again.

For hours the children’s faces have been swollen with mumps or malaria. Or maybe it’s measles. We can’t be sure, but we must keep moving if we hope to reach the clinic by dawn.

The lead wagon’s drummer beats time to hasten our pace. My elder son joins in on recorder. His melody is jaunty, yet haunting, and it’s setting my teeth on edge. I am inadequate. I am trying, but I am so tired. My younger son wants mustard on his mortadella. My daughter wants vinegar to tart her too sweet tea. Threading mountain trails we encounter a mixture of extremes: a swarm of lady bugs, silent and immediate, in our hair, ears, mouths. Then a murder of crows, loud, cacophonous, lurking in the pines above our heads.

The drum speeds up, the recorder too. The road narrows, the trees step closer. Suddenly, a grotto, a trickle of holy water. Mary the Mother of God appears as blue as morning, trilling like a meadowlark, welcoming us in.

Is this salvation? Will she teach me to endure? Or will she teach me to fly?

Photo by Hosea Pramurdianto on Unsplash

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Unripe berries
cluster on the vine.
One is dark, but not dark enough,
a pinot, not a cab.
The others look creamy
white turning pale yellow
a few tinged pink
like a peace rose, my favorite:
they used to bloom
in my mother’s garden.
As a child, I was amazed
how soft yellow
would yield to pink,
not a transition a color
wheel might predict.

Yet everything everywhere
is tied together somehow.
These hard berries looking like
knobs on a dresser drawer
will soften in the sun.
Everything hard will yield.

Photo by Nancy Schoellkopf at Confluence Garden

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Written with the prompts:  beware, you are bound for a heartache, break my heart buttercup, clutter, dancing fingers stole that away, extra spice, find one you do like, it takes money, leave home, not isolated, once you were only in my dreams, sweet, the trail wasn’t easy, wine dark sea, wind keeps blowing the sea, you might be surprised, one by one we gentled our loves to the ground, crazy stupid love 


When you come to this planet 
when you take this form: 
beware:  
you are bound for heartache.  
The terrain you encounter 
may seem cluttered 
and everything you’ll want to do 
will take money.  
But you will not be isolated
you will not be helpless.  

You may ask for extra spice
extra sweet 
extra salty 
or milky and weak 
but dancing fingers 
will steal it all away.  
Don’t let it bother you.  
Try everything until 
you find one you like.  
Then start again, 
find two, find three, 
find everything you like.  
Then let it happen, 
let it all break your heart.  
It’s what we do here.  
It’s what we come for.

The trail is not easy.  
A wine dark sea will fool you.  
You will be surprised because 
one by one the things you love 
will wrestle you to the ground.  
This is crazy, you’ll say.  
This is stupid.  
I came for this?  
This?  

The wine makes everything glow, 
and the wind makes every river blow, 
and the rocks carry water away 
from the shortest path. 
So many detours.  
That’s why we come.

Once this place was only in your dreams, 
but you’re here now.  
You left your home for this.  

No one can take this feeling away from you.  
Let it happen.
Go ahead.  
Break my heart, Buttercup.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash



Written with my Thursday night group with the prompts: where did you live? Love, Kennedy to Heathrow, living is a limited-time opportunity, only drowning men can see him, on the way to the funeral, he hadn’t seen her since high school graduation, there are children in the morning, in the midst of all the recklessness, please don’t hit me, now that I don’t have a dad Santa Claus is my god, but now he had a beard that was twice as long, she was fluent in English, sensation, lost at the racetrack

I hadn’t seen Saint Anthony since we graduated high school. “Where did you live all these years?” he asked me.

“I’ve always been a seeker,” I reminded him, “so for a while I lived on a plane from SKennedy to Heathrow. I ate nothing but teriyaki chicken and rice that came on little plastic trays, bags of peanuts, and tiny bottles of vodka. I added orange juice, you know, for the vitamin C.

“Later, I lived on a beach near Big Sur under a lean-to I fashioned out of redwood boughs. I lived with a man who worked as a department store Santa. But it went to his head, all those fatherless boys who treated him like a rock star god. He grew out his beard till it was twice as low as his belt loops, then he bought an electric guitar and went on the road, hitchhiking from coast to coast.

“I lived in the midst of recklessness on the edge of sensation, my face always hot, my hands and feet cold, the air sparkling so I could see only half of the faces of all the children of the morning, drowning in the melted snow river. I was reaching out for Jesus who was walking on the water, but we were losing money at the racetrack, both of us loving a woman fluent in English and Spanish and French and seven dialects from the Ivory coast of Africa.

“Finally I moved into a limo on my way to my Mother’s funeral. I was squeezed in there with my 90-year-old aunt, and a collection of cousins. When we passed the park near our late Grandparents’ house, I told them the story my Mother had told me: there once was a road that ran between the palm trees along the edge of the duck pond. On Saturday nights Grandpa would say, I hear kids speeding through the park again. I’m going to call the police!

But Grandma always said, no, no, don’t do that! It’s Grace and her friends. I hear Grace laughing!

And everybody in the limo laughed because my Mother was tattling on her big sister Grace who was a teenager in the park but was now an old woman in the limo going to her baby sister’s funeral. And I think for a minute and realize, my Mother told the best stories because she was the baby, she was shy and quiet, taking it all in—and she saved it all for me.

“Now,” I told Saint Anthony, “I am the storyteller. I found what I was looking for: not necessarily a happy life, but a good story.”

Saint Anthony pushed back from the table. “Don’t hit me with all this information,” he pleaded. “Remember living is a limited time opportunity. You can reframe your story.”

I rolled my eyes. “How?”

He took my hand. “You are a seeker. Over and over again you have found what you were seeking, but you did not recognize it. You are now, and have always been, a channel for Divine Energy. Love your story. You have come not merely to tell the story, but to love it.”

Photo by Thomas Vogel on Unsplash

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I see a kildeer couple on the lower levee this morning loitering on an inhospitable edge of hard pan, a track of decomposed granite and gravel, racing back and forth on their long skinny legs, looking agitated and vigilant as a hiker approaches. One takes flight, sounding it’s shrill two-syllable alarm, its long wings pitched up the steep slope to a trail that borders backyards and park.

I watch it, and I want to go looking for its nest. For no reason, really. I mean, it’s none of my business now, is it?—the domesticity of this handsome pair with their white bellies, their chestnut brown wings and backs.

Do all of us humans have this insatiable curiosity? Oh, I want to see these eggs. I’m sure you’re hiding them somewhere near, aren’t you? In some tiny recessed niche on the bare ground. I tell myself my curiosity is tempered with concern. Isn’t there something I can do to protect this young family? But I know there is not. This is simply a longing of mine, a desire to observe what is natural and beautiful, a species whose experience is direct, unfiltered through contemplation and language: taste and scent, perhaps the crunch of insects, sensation of sex, “childbirth,” the imperative urge to shelter one’s unborn progeny in a reedy nest exposed to the open air on the ground.

Is this a smart way to live? Can’t I help somehow? Though you and your ancestors have survived in this fashion, reveled perhaps joyfully, for millennium?

If I can’t help, won’t you please let me see? Let me wonder in gratitude for all I do not understand.

Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash

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There were only two prompts for today’s piece: “the woods are lovely, dark and deep” (a line from Robert Frost’s Stopping byWoods on a Snowy Evening) and “Things Change, Even Now.” I’m calling this flash fiction even though it’s based on actual events because I took license with a lot of details, so don’t tell when it was or wasn’t snowing--it was recent, okay? Also, my narrator says she doesn’t want to live in the woods. . . I myself have lived in the metaphorical woods a long time. It’s tricky but I love it here.

We had a hot spell mid-March, it was nearly 90 degrees on St. Patrick’s Day. But we went out anyway to an old Irish pub we used to frequent when were in our 20s, gosh, almost 50 years ago now. It hadn’t changed much, had it? No, it was big and boxy, a cavernous warehouse draped in rugby jerseys, green bunting, and black and white photos of poets and rebels across from a mural of green fields dotted with ragged sheep. We didn’t know they’d dispensed with table service for the holiday so it didn’t matter that we’d come early. It was hot and stuffy and crowded, but we ordered fish and chips and stood at a counter to eat because there were no chairs.

I could tell my friend felt bad she had dragged me here in the heat. I said, “You know, I think this is the best fried fish in Northern California.” I said it because I wanted to cheer her up, and this year I’ve resolved to be more positive. But I also said it because it was true. That fish was amazing. The breading was light and crisp and the white cod was hot, flaky and flavorful. Ah, the woods are lovely, dark, and deep, and this fish was lovely. I hope it had a full magical life before it took the bait. It deserved fresh clean water and a bit of joy.

We left shortly after eating the fish, before the music even began, because it was so hot inside that it made 80 degrees feel cool outside. My friend said we should come again when the AC is working. I laughed. “Yes, after the Equinox, when it’s officially spring: when it’s supposed to be warm.”

We didn’t say it, but we were both worried we would have highs in the 80s and 90s all spring and summer, and even through October, maybe till Thanksgiving. Such a pleasant way to die: because the woods are lovely, dark, and deep.

I pulled the heavier blankets off my bed. I pushed the turtlenecks and sweaters to the back of my closet. It was T shirt and sandal weather. Except then it wasn’t.

It was snowing Easter weekend in the mountains up above the valley. I pulled on my heavy corduroy slacks and my knit scarves again. Before climate change, I sagely told new residents of the valley, when I was a kid, rain was typical in April. May too. Even into June sometimes. But it was a lighter rain, warmer. But this—oh, there’s a snap to it, this wind. It bites.

This isn’t our weather! Why is this happening? Things change, even now. And the woods are lovely, dark, and deep.

It seems I have a tendency, I’ve noticed as I get older, a tendency to assume that what is, shall continue. It is warm today. It will be warm tomorrow. It will be warm all week.

Until it’s not. Then it will be cold today, tomorrow, all week. It is a routine. It is simple. I can plan for it.

I will be healthy today. I will be healthy tomorrow. Life is easy. We are lucky. Until we’re not.

The woods are lovely. The woods are dark. The woods are deep. I visit these woods occasionally. I learn stuff. But I don’t want to live here. Though it seems, it seems lately, I live here.

Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

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Written with my Thursday writing group with the prompts: forbidden, midafternoon stop and go pattern, cracking into the present, escaping into the future, stared and waved, towels dropped over her, cheese paddle, song, shoemaker’s daughter, she was a cheap exhibitionist, with the sun in her eyes, if you want to learn the truth of it

Everyone thought the shoemaker’s daughter Annika was a cheap exhibitionist but that could not be further from the truth. Every morning as she ventured out of her father’s shop into the front garden or the town square, the scent of fennel and mint would engulf her and a song would escape her lips. Some of her neighbors looked forward to her soft sincere trilling, others stopped their ears with cotton, but if you want to learn the truth of it, most people just ignored her.

Nonetheless, poor Annika was mortified. She didn’t want to sing. No, she had crashed into the present day from the past, under a dark magic spell, and she couldn’t help herself. When the sun was in her eyes, she had to do it. She had to sing.

No one knew she was trapped by this spell; no one knew except her own future self. When Annika from the day before fell through the mysterious portal hidden beneath the clothesline, she inadvertently tossed a half dozen damp towels onto the head of today’s Annika, who was quite surprised to see herself yawning and mumbling and glancing around in a confused midafternoon stop and go pattern. Despite her shock, today’s Annika surmised the situation quickly and dove through the portal herself, escaping into the future, leaving her past self to deal with the ramifications of her mistaken foray into time travel.

Annika of the Day Before became Today’s Annika, although this was not her intent. When she tried to tell everyone what had happened, all that would come out were rhyming song lyrics about moons and Junes, dreams and schemes, and the occasional bawdy sea shanty. Soon children were following her about, staring and waving. Annika ran when she saw them, which happened often. She became strong and fit from all the exercise, and her unruly hair curled about her face in a very pleasing manner.

Yet this didn’t matter to Annika’s mother, Mrs. Shoemaker, who was constantly embarrassed by Annika’s forbidden songs. She took to carrying a cheese paddle to hide her face. Oh, it was a sad pickle they were all in.

One day a traveler named Caleb came to town dressed in faded denim and flannel, carrying a backpack filled with granola to stave off hunger, and shoes to sell to pay for lodging. When he saw Annika and he heard her singing, his mouth dropped open. For Caleb was traveling backward in time a day here and a day there, and he had encountered the Future Annika years ago, and he was sure he had found her again.

Future Annika was a famous shoe designer creating stylish foot wear in red leather and blue suede. She was rich and beautiful, and Caleb—who had been a top recording star—was drawn to her when she designed a pair of hand tooled green boots for hm to wear on stage. They fell in love, but the charmed existence of Annika’s life was dependent on the dark magic that led her to escape her mundane village through time travel. When she dared to fall in love, the bill came due, cursing her beloved, much to her painful regret. But there was no fighting it. All she could do was arm him with a backpack which magically filled with granola and shoes every morning.

Now Caleb caught sight of the woman he loved----at least he thought it was she—singing Beatles songs as she purchased fruit and vegetables at the farmer’s market. He approached quietly, glancing shyly at her as she altered the lyrics to Obladee Obladah to ask the vendor how much he was charging for the mandarin oranges. At this Caleb could wait no longer; he knew it must be his Annika because she loved Clementines so. He burst into song, an a capella version of Blackbird, for he knew it to be her favorite. Present day Annika turned and gaped in surprise at his strong well-trained tenor. She joined in, and moving slowly toward each other they harmonized beautifully. Every person in the square paused in awe at their endearing performance. When together they sang the lyric “You were only waiting for this moment to be free,” the spell was broken. Present-day Annika now spoke without singing, and Present-day Caleb was no longer compelled to travel.

Caleb soon discovered that Annika was not his Annika, but she was an Annika with whom he very much wanted to become acquainted. Though shy, Annika was grateful, and agreed to allow his visits at her father’s shoe shop.

It is impossible to know what happened next because the clock is turning, days are growing longer, than shorter, than equal again. But it is said that Annika and Caleb still enjoy singing together, and sometimes, not often, but sometimes, they both harmonize with the wolves who linger at the edge of the village when the moon is full.

Photo by Melanie Rosillo Galvan on Unsplash

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Because April is National Poetry Month, I’ve decided to share with you some ekphrastic poems I’ve written this past year. Ekphrastic poems are written about works of art, most often visual art like paintings and sculpture, but they may be about a performance piece like dancing, acting, or film. This poem reflects on a lovely O’Keefe painting of a New Mexican river. I love the painting because it reminds me of my very own American River (a tributary of the Sacramento) which flows behind my house.

My river is greenish brown
in sun, slate black
in shade, traveling
a well-worn path from
Sierra snowmelt over
boulders, tree roots,
pebbles, dreams:
gush to stream to trickle.
It has earned its darkness
and its mysteries.

It mates with the sun
in the California heat
escaping into
an invisible sky
perfect hiding spot
from captains of industry
corporate warlords
those who seek
to bottle and commodify.
Her river is milky blue
and I think, This river is young.

Curving round/carving
sandstone canyon,
this river wants to play
to shape the landscape
to exert the force
of its voluminous power.

It is spring.  Life renews.

Blue river, you shimmy toward
the bottom of the canvas.
As trees offer fruit, 
and birds song,
you present your bounty—
abundant hope
inevitable generosity.

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I wrote this poem nearly forty years ago, give or take a decade. But it’s April, National Poetry Month, and I thought I’d drag out a few old favorites of mine. My late cat Hibiscus makes a cameo appearance in this poem. He was a long-haired gray tabby, with caramel colored strips on his face, a magnificent animal. His spirit endures.

He’s doing it again.
That snotty little kid from next door 
has knocked two--no three--slats
from our ‘good neighbor’ fence
with the handle of a broom. 
I saw him do it.
And now they’re coming
the fairies
they’re seeping
through the hole
in the fence
blazing a trail between the twin hydrangeas
past the peony and the ferns
and wherever they step
with their sapphire shoes
nothing grows
the lupine seeds never sprout
the pinks wither and die.

Quick!--sprinkle rose petals
on the doorstep
lest they get inside and sour the milk.
My cat sees them;
he’s racing toward them
across the lawn
but the sticky sword-shaped leaves
of the yarrow stalk
reach out and snatch a clump
of his gray fur.
The fairies laugh.
He’s a portly feline; he waddles.

In the darkening summer twilight
I sit on the steps
my notebook on my knees.
The telephone pole on the corner
bisects the full moon
and I know they are coming
with their satin eyes
to salt my dreams
with the vision
of a man with long dark hair
and eyes that crinkle when he smiles.
His movements are graceful.
He reaches to take my right arm,
but I fight him every time.

It’s all the fault of that kid
next door.
If he were my kid
I wouldn’t let him get away 
with stuff like that.

Photo by Aleksandra Boguslawska on Unsplashed

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April is National Poetry Month, so I’ll be posting a few poems this season. Currently I spend more time writing prose stories instead of poems, so it’s been fun for me to look back at poems I wrote in past decades.

This poem is from a period when I was experimenting with classic forms. When I was younger, I had steered away from such forms, thinking they would cramp my creativity. Instead I found that the discipline required was paradoxically very freeing. The constraints of the form would point me in a certain direction, and often lines would come to me unbidden, as if by magic. It seemed a very spiritual experience.

As you can see, the sestina consists of six verses, each with six lines. The same end-words repeat in every verse, their order prescribed by the rules of the form. Don’t worry about figuring it out, just enjoy!

Afternoon sun lays a golden hand
on the cinnamon brown
head of an advancing bear,
loping west
past snow-melt river
to sanctuary of spicy redwoods.

From safe perch atop redwoods
she watches, her hands
itching to feel cool river
rush across sore fingers, feet, and aching brown
limbs, but seductive west
beckons her to follow robust bear.

Powerful bear,
my fear and fascination, redwood
heart, wise elder of the west,
gift my hands
with healing and forgiveness, brown
angels of the valley, wash me in the river.

Swift is the river
that carries me to my bear.
He looms in large shadows, nut brown
in fragrant forest dense with redwoods
extending feathery hands
leading me farther west.

The sun is melting into west
between the river
and my hands.
Fearsome bear
lovingly embraces me, redwoods
sway, my sky a muddy brown.

His face is cinnamon, his eyes coco brown.
Orange and pomegranate drift west
above the redwoods.
Autumn river
slows down; mighty bear
prepares to sleep; he frees my hands.

My hands, brown and bare, flutter like slender birds
winging west along this river/redwood freedom/empty sky. 

Photo by Jessica Weiller on Unsplash

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Last week I was generously invited to join a group of friends who have been meeting every year for decades to whale watch at Point Arena Lighthouse. On our third day there, we hiked over to a labyrinth that they remembered from previous visits. From a distance this labyrinth appeared to be poorly maintained, and perhaps in disrepair, but once we started walking I could see it was meticulously designed and beautifully constructed. It was easy to follow. It was dedicated to Alpha Ursae Minoris, which I learned from a bit of googling is the North Star! Isn’t that wonderful?

Before we began, my friend Lucy suggested it is traditional to make a wish that one might contemplate as we walk. Some might call it “setting an intention.” Ah, a wish! Such a magical thing. I thought about it and decided what I really want is a good strong story that might become the basis for a novel. My companions were equally thoughtful. And so we entered the labyrinth.

I had just come into the center, and was having a moment of contemplation, gazing at an engraved etching of the Bear Constellation when–literally out of the blue!—a Coast Guard Helicopter swooped in and landed at a helipad a few football fields away!! I mean RIGHT THERE!! It was outrageous! I can honestly say I’ve never had my meditation interrupted by a helicopter landing right next door before. I felt a little miffed.

Suddenly I realized: my wish had been granted. I hadn’t asked for a good mindful walk, I’d asked for a good story—and that’s what I got. I don’t think I’ll be writing a novel about this helicopter, but I think the Universe was saying, Stop worrying!! Stories follow you home like stray cats. Yep. For better or worse, that’s really my favorite thing.

It seems at this time of year, magic—and good stories—are everywhere. As I’ve noted in previous spring posts, Easter reminds us that magic is possible. If a man today claimed to have come back to life three days after being declared dead, we probably wouldn’t believe it. We’d assume it was some kind of a scam. It would be easy to explain away Jesus’ resurrection too. Maybe he wasn’t actually dead. After all, they didn’t have all that electronic equipment to monitor brain waves and heart beats two thousand years ago. The soldiers thought he was dead, so they didn’t break his legs. Maybe he actually survived and his followers were able to revive him.

Or maybe he died, but his followers told such a convincing story and they got enough people to believe it and the next thing they knew they had the Catholic Church. Maybe they should have thought a little harder before they went through with that!

Or maybe it happened just the way the Gospels say it happened. Anything is possible. In fact I believe everything is possible. I believe that God manifests in whatever way each person will understand, as Jews and Muslims, Catholics and Evangelicals, as Pagans, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, and so much more. God may come to you as the sunrise or as a blue scrub jay or as your pet dog or cat. She is in every human face you will see today. And sometimes, quite often, God likes to remind me that she comes to me in my writing. I’m blessed that way.

May you have a Blessed Good Friday, a Happy Easter, and a Wonderful Spring!

Original Photo by the Author

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On our first trip to Europe, some of us fell in love with Paris: the art, the architecture, the tiny cafes where you could sit drinking coffee and eating bread and cheese all afternoon. Lillian took up smoking short brown cigarettes and spent hours jotting in her journal. Petra teased that Lillian was talking on a Gertrude Stein persona. “She’s got all the answers,” Petra said.

“And all the questions too,” Lilian responded.

Maris took a train to Provence and got a job serving cassoulet at a farm house bistro. She sent us a card saying she would not be returning to the states with us. Raul, who had always been in love with Maris, declared his intention to return to drinking. But he didn’t much care for the only wine he could afford in Paris. He hitchhiked to Bavaria where he could drink himself drunk on German beer and cheap gin.

Maris wrote long letters to Lillian which Lillian shared with the group. The letters had seemingly random titles centered on the first pages, as if they were essays or short stories. Lililan’s favorite had been dubbed “In the Middle of My Grief.” Maris had just finished sophomore year at Oregon State, and as far as any of us knew, no one close to Maris had ever died. Yet Maris wrote about a deep sorrow in which she felt compelled to dive into the shadowy corners of her own heart. She wrote of traversing dark sidewalks without street lights into a corridor where a mighty bald eagle was snagged on some kind or orange netting left by a team of careless sewer workers. Maris’s heart was breaking at the struggle of the hapless bird.

“What does this mean?” she wrote to Lillian. “What can I do?”

“The choice is yours,” Lilian replied on a post card from the Louvre, still attempting to emulate Gertrude with a terse but weighty remark. Then, hoping to further provoke Maris’s creativity, she added, “Mister White has seen the elephant.”

Concerned, Petra wrote to Raul and convinced him to catch a train to Maris’s small village and entreat her to come home. Eventually we all converged on London’s Heathrow—as had been arranged all along—and headed home in time for junior year.

We are all older now, and I remember that summer as a time when my biggest challenges were the unforgiving nature of railway time tables, and the limitations of time zones.

I spent the last day before returning home in Greenwich with Petra and Maris. It was raining like crazy but we didn’t care; we walked along the Thames, snapping photos and eating sugared peanuts. There was a moment, waiting for them at the loo, when I looked out a café window and saw a sky so deeply purple against a shattering green grass, and I thought: I have never seen these colors before. I wonder if I will ever see them again.

When we came home, Petra returned to her given name Patricia. But Maris abandoned Marianne, and became now and forever Maris.

Photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash

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Allow me to share a parable my late friend Craig told me:

Before we are born, we are hanging out on the astral planes, having fun with our friends. Then our number is called: it’s our turn to don a body and come to Earth. We come here, live our lives, spending as much as 80, 90, even a hundred years. Then, bam!—we drop our bodies and go back to the astral planes. Our friends greet us, calling out, “Hey! How was your weekend?”

People generally laugh when I tell this story. The meaning is pretty clear: life is short, and the older I get the more true that seems. It all happens very fast.

But lately I’ve been thinking that Craig had a larger point as well. This trip down here to Earth?—this is our vacation! We all came here to experience stuff you can’t find anywhere else. After all, there are wonderful sensations that are available only to those who have bodies—the view from a mountain top, the roar of the ocean, a Beethoven symphony, songs sung by whales, the rolling whistle of sandhill cranes in flight, pizza, ice cream, sex, brandy, a long leisurely discussion about favorite books and movies, the smell of roses in bloom.

And what of emotions? Even the heavy stuff we’d prefer to avoid, maybe we come here to feel it all. What if grief and sorrow is a highly sought-after ticket? Not because of the platitudes we’ve all been told--ah, yes, it happens to everyone--it makes you a stronger, more empathetic person—no, I’m asking you take a leap and think about certain emotions the way a space alien from another planet might consider them—as something novel to try. What if we come here because grief is a peak experience—I don’t know, maybe something even thrilling, like bungee jumping. I know it’s crazy—but what if all of this is special? Something we want to try out, to see what it feels like? What if Earth is the only place in the Universe where people get to laugh? Oh, I would wait for days in a Disneyland-type line to go on that E-ticket ride*. Wouldn’t you? Maybe souls come from all over the Universe to be reincarnated on Planet Earth because we are just so much fun.

I’m not sure, but I’m guessing some of my Atheist friends think this essay is silly, and some of my friends who have seen more than their share of abuse, violence, and pain, may be angry that I’m making light of all this. I promise you that is not my intent. But I do believe that we all agreed to come here, that at some point we chose this. Maybe not this--the pain, the unfairness, the corruption, and abuse we see around us. Of course none of us want to experience that. But there is something very precious about this, our lives here on this stunningly beautiful planet. Something worth holding close in our hearts and minds, something worth fighting for, worth praying for in this time of war and suppression, through all the feelings of futility and despair.

I have no answers, but I will share a prayer that came to me a few weeks ago. Allow me to be of service, I pray. Allow me to be of service to the Universe. Through the grace of Divine Energy, may I be aware that I am of service.

Amen.

Have a good week. Then, if it feels right, come out and join us at a No Kings rally. Thank you and be safe.

*When I was a child, all the rides in Disneyland were labeled A through E, A being the simplest rides (maybe the Carousel), and E being the most exciting, most desirable rides like the Matterhorn and the Pirates of the Caribbean. You had to purchase a packet of tickets that included every letter, even if you knew your kids had outgrown all the A’s and really just wanted the E’s. I guess this system has been abandoned in favor of something else. I don’t if the newer system is fairer, but it’s certainly more expensive. At any rate, for my generation, an E-ticket Ride will always be a sought-after, peak experience, something worth waiting in a long line for.

Photo by Brandi Alexandra on Unsplash

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After midnight the day-old loaves of bread in the bakery turn into slumbering cats. Some are brown and toasty, some white and fragrant, some calico dotted with black, brown and golden patches that used to be raisins, apricots, and berries.

They stretch, blinking their golden eyes, then pad down off the discount shelves to chase mice, nibble on cold meat-filled pierogies, and lap up milk left on the cold window sill. By 3 am, feeling satisfied, they push open the unlocked windows, and by some instinctual knowledge, wander the path other bread cats have trod, arriving at a feral cat colony by the river. There they will live short lives of whimsey and adventure, until they become hard and dry and stale. They will close their eyes and abandon their crumbly bodies to the birds. It is an end they will not see coming, leaving the cats who arrive on this earth through more conventional means to wonder at the randomness of fate.

Back at the bakery, the baker knows his business thrives. He attributes this success to his own hard work and business acumen. He assumes homeless families who sleep on the church steps on the west side of the square shuffle into his closed shop at night to help themselves to his wares. They never take anything more than a half dozen or so day-old loaves, so the baker doesn’t bother to report the thefts. Nor does he bother to contribute to charity or offer alms for the poor. Giving the stolen loaves, he feels, is enough.

But his daughter knows magic is afoot. She wonders if magical creatures, perhaps elves or fairies, visit the bakery to cart off loaves of bread each night. She sprinkles the shelves with crumbled sprigs of rosemary—whether to welcome or dissuade them she can’t decide.

Only their dog—an aging German Shepherd called Francis—detects the scent of the bread cats. He sees them in the square, chasing rodents and begging scraps of meat from the butcher shop and the deli. He can distinguish them from the traditional long-lived cats. He knows which are the sourdough, the whole grain, the cinnamon loaf. He accepts this is the natural order, for what else could it be?

Photo by River Kao on Unsplash

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Written with the prompts: be able to answer that call, are we there yet?, shit no!, you are told what to think but, a faded newspaper picture, why they did what they did, intuition, water can get hot, dream or fantasy, guidance, let’s look at this from a different perspective, I am in a body, sticky

Even as a young girl living high in the frosty thin air of the Sierras, Susan felt she had a calling she needed to pursue. It was an amorphous feeling, an intuition that she needed to follow the crystalline water as it melted and rushed, carving deep crevices and sculpting tiny furrows through stone, seeking the water until it puddled in lazy green lakes beneath trees sinking into meadows and swamps in the valley, finally watching it spread into a veined pattern, like blood vessels from heart to fingers and toes: delta magic settling into the sea.

“Are we there yet?” she used to ask her mother when they drove down what her mother jokingly called the hill. “We’re here,” her mother said finally as they arrived at the north coast. But Susan was disappointed. The ocean water was so cold, so gritty, so slap in the crotch rude. She wanted to go where the water was hot and she vowed to find that spot.

In a dream or fantasy, Susan is opening a cardboard box filled with jelly jar glasses, crystal candy dishes and thin china plates all swathed in bubble wrap and the glossy pages of torn magazines. On the bottom is a faded newspaper; Susan lifts it with interest because the date will tell her when this box was packed. April 1978. She turns it over, surprised to see an old photo in the paper of her grandparents, young, not yet married to each other, climbing over a cyclone fence into the yard of a munitions plant above an article telling how a group of teenaged rebels were arrested and released, fined and sentenced to community service. “Shit, no!” Susan murmured. “I didn’t know. No one told me. I didn’t know.”

We are taught to believe, we are told what to think, they control what stories appear in the newsfeed. Then it happens, a new perspective appears, you make a quarter turn, just 45 degrees, and the sun casts a different shadow. Why did they do what they did? Susan never believed in leaving things to fate, she wanted to steer her own course, but if she’d been fed a false narrative, where could she go for guidance? She knew her answers were sticky now, and they lay in basics, the body, the land, the sky.

She sat down to meditate, sipping a cup of tap water. The water now, even the tap water, is always hot.

Photo by Alberto Roldan on Unsplash