when i was a child,
momma told me:
sticks and stones
may break my bones
but words
will never hurt me.

i am neither the seed
nor the fruit –
You water
me in the in
between;

between love and
the weeds
where i hide,

A month after our daughter was born,
we planted a white dogwood. I didn’t know
the legend of the crucifixion wood.
I just liked the symmetry
of the four-petaled flowers, plump white crosses
with bright green pistils in the middle.

when the night’s
dark eyes won’t lift their lids
the sun
won’t cheer the day awake
storms
lose their breath
oceans
forget their flow

The subordinate clause clattered to the asphalt:
Because I didn’t want to be a house flower.
He fluttered his fingers like a hitchhiker. He hoped
to thumb a ride from a dependent clause,

dressed in white
your deep eyes pierced the daylight
*Araminta, defender of the people
when you crossed the line to freedom, the stars opened up all around you

something in your heart made you pause, turn around, breathing

First explored by Spanish Army troops
From Mission San Juan Baptista,
Led by Jose de Guadalupe Cantua,

Son of a prominent Californio Ranchero
In the 19th-century Mexican era
Of early California history

First at sunrise,
Then at sunset
You ebb away
leaving me suspended.
My kaleidoscopic charms
laid bare at the altar
of jumbled cowries,
flowers of the sea,

The car I grew up in
Was a 1960 Pontiac Star Chief
Four-door sedan hardtop
In a color my Crayola 64 box called Flesh.
Even at a time when most cars
Came in a wide variety of vibrant colors,
This one stood out.

Mother needles & threads her way into conversations,
as she does with everything,
tacking here
& there, piercing
the cotton weave of our family, her place secure.

last Wednesday night
on the phone
you said
I want my kids
to know you
as you leaned toward
the darkened future

How do you keep on getting out of bed each morning?
A bed that is half empty since the day your husband died.
A life that seems like a flight of stairs missing a step
and you always seem to trip on that one.

Poet, you mama’s girl, so bad at volleyball, first dates, job interviews, your albatross of asymmetry flung floorward like an eloquent glove, ironic as that yellow pedestrian yield sign on Chestnut Street, permanently pavement-flattened.

When he’s eight he envies neighbor/buddy Bobby his airline pilot father
who drives his eye-popping harlequin Ford Thunderbird
with gears-a-poppin’ engine roarin’ to and from Idlewild
before and after taking off into the wild blue yonder.

I don’t expect
a soupy river to steal you away.
White blood cells explode into whitewater,
filaments of breath sweep
downstream.
A confounding disappearance into
the thundering confluence.

Bound on some skillful retreat,
a long march
north and west;
cut off from the rest
we end up foraging
in some scanty orchard,
the two of us.

I.
Purple delosperma frozen on stone cliffs
windswept granite.
Permanent calligraphy on blue canvas
only tides change.

II.
Carved into a driftwood bench
three names now forgotten.

oh physics
of warped gluons in the matrix chromosomes
molding children with necks and knees

disjoint and attenuate physics of the transport
of chlorophyll far more certain
than law or reason

and the stopped blood of embryos

The flutes of those
who live
with,
not just in,
nature,
mimic windsong.

Even accidental noise
blown by untrained lips
echoes the haunting, ethereal
whistle of wind
through limbs and grass, crops and structures.

something settles. Next week’s
oatmeal eases into simmer,
the wide slow mouths of the first
few bubbles no longer startle
and pop as the surface smooths,
heaves with the humility

of normal mornings. It’s a chore—
the boil, filtering through
what I know, what is new.

Propped on three pillows, another
under my knees, I am following
Natalie Goldberg as she travels
to Japan and France, sits zazen
with her students, through walking
meditation, writing longhand
in a café, always in a spiral notebook
with a pen that lets me write fast…

the time for grieving ends
grief does not

so I unfurl what is no longer and smooth out the
wrinkles
my soul loosens and leans in to the unwanted hereafter
the before murmurs just beyond my hearing
my heart skips in a dissonant rhythm
comfort strikes a truce with disquiet

compensation blankets
barrier the solitude
cold air :: we are aware
that skin is unsuitable ::

we are a perfection :: the mass
of an ego returns
#DIV/0! :: and we understand
we are not portioned ::

it was the way you stood in the dark kitchen long after
the oven had already cooled, slurping
just out of date yogurt but also because the first
time we talked, you listened, swaying me gently
in constant commas shifting slightly
(while everyone else played poker for crisps)…