That slip of the mind
That momentary disengagement
Like the clutch in the old Dodge
I think: I have to get a message to her
Then: how can I get a message to her
As if it were a problem I could puzzle out and solve
Then I remember.
All this in a heartbeat
FEWalls
Two sets of them:
thieves in the neighborhood
at 2 A.M.
Thieves testing every door
looking for unlocked cars, sheds, basements,
things left outside, things unattended
looking for the slip-ups, the mistakes
looking for the careless, the forgetful, the unaware,
like water on the roof
seeking any crack in its path down.
These predators angle for weakness
hunting for a pay-back, a paycheck,
hunting for what they will never find
here.
FEWalls
A cake her father bought her mother –
always on the frosting the shape of
a clock with the hand five minutes
to midnight for the New Year’s Eve
birthday gal, happy in their dancing
celebrating then, even now
as a daughter shares that story
so others hold that memory
clear, sharing to widen the net –
rippling sound waves in the ocean
racing to other shores,
the butterfly wings fanning into winds.
Where do the memories hide
in the stringy brain, in that long goodbye?
What in this still celebration grabbing tight
this moment holding back the river of time
with the stiffening dam of resolve
strengthens the many triple-braided cords
not easily broken?
FEWalls
Once, in the garden of Jack London’s home,
I sat so still thinking of him
that a wren landed on my head
thinking I was a statue, perhaps,
a place to stand and survey the land
for his kind of food, berries or bugs,
while I thought of Jack London –
how he didn’t wait for inspiration
but wrote every day
insisting the words appear on the page,
those stories that ripen as the berries in his garden
as alive as the birds getting ready to feed.
FEWalls
There is no end to the darkness above my face –
the darkness, moonless and without stars.
Below me, a small mound of palest light
fits stark and clean on the root of night.
No movement sensed in the silence,
no other face or hand,
as if a newborn were laid asleep among the dunes,
she awakens wild with cold,
and the mother has turned away for the last time.
FEWalls
The Ice-Cream Man in the little truck playing
“Bicycle Built for Two”
speeds up as I run out of my house
wallet in hand with ice-cream on my mind.
No, really … with chocolate on my mind.
not the good kind of chocolate
connoisseurs like with caramel and salt
but the kind from childhood, the ice-cream bar
with thin slabs of chocolate
around a stick of vanilla ice-cream
so cold in the heat that taste doesn’t matter,
lying with my sister on the grass before her illness
trying to eat the bars before they dripped
sticky onto our necks and chests,
nibbling the top, then the sides, and finally,
licking the last bit off the wooden stick
savoring even that woody taste.
But now the Ice-Cream man speeds down the street
at the end of his day.
He no longer hears “Bicycle Built for Two,”
or sees the line of children chasing him
or me waving my wallet
and shouting at the top of my lungs
to the receding truck,
I remember! I remember!
FEWalls
Krista was the InterPlay Leader for the morning. She had just returned from Paris and Provence so we did “walk, stop, runs” to French music and listened to Krista faking a French accent much to our pleasure.
Krista had us “babble” with partners on the following words: lazy, “big cheese,” procrastination, and delight. Then, we each made up a story about ourselves using one of these words. For example, I talked about the delight of being a kid in Seattle and going to First Avenue and rummaging through the thrift shops. I would find buckets of wonderful buttons to sort through. Some buttons were shaped like the rings of Saturn, some of brocade, some of crystal.
Then, Krista asked us to get in touch with the following inner states:
Your Inner fashion statement (a lot of sashaying down the run-way of life),
Your brooding (anquish and melancoly!),
Your procrastination (not much got done),
Your inner Louis IX, the Sun King (lots of strutting and grandiosity).
Krista had seen a French comedian do a routine in Paris on, “How to become a French man in an hour.” For example, enthusiasm is shown differently in various cultures. The French man showing enthusiasm leans back, folds him arms and looks mildly askance. The American showing enthusiasm says, “OMG! that was WONDERFUL.” He says this over and over while moving his body around vigorously. (OK, it was over the top but fun!)
We did a “contact” dance with a partner to music. Some partners stood back to back and “rolled” from side to side. Some did free form dances. What larks!
The drums come from the back of the band
the rhythm Jamaican
the poet drifts to the microphone:
“I killed a cowboy today
I didn’t mean it.”
We, the audience, shift over-hot in the room
but pliant leaning into the beat
as the poet sucks us in with the lilt
of his accent blending word and note:
“I killed a cowboy today
Thought they was dead you know.”
The trombonist
with her lips tight on the mouthpiece,
the guitar man nodding in sync
the band loudens and softens
watching the poet run this dream.
He is reeling us in like a tame shark
the whole lot of us
over-eager, awkward,
ready to fall in love.
FE Walls
In this sweet curve of time we fly south,
over the up-lifted earth of the Sierra Nevadas,
gray-green forests brown where fire touched the stretching earth,
catchments of smooth blue water,
patches of snow cast like manna on the peaks.
In the plane, I see the small curl of a baby’s ear,
the slight redness in the fold of fat at the neck
as a young mother pats and rubs the back
of the crying child across her knee.
Clouds form from the gauzy light.
Later, holding the stranger’s baby asleep,
I remember the tough brown crust of bread
hot from the mud brick oven in the Kalahari Desert,
my own son cradled in my arms,
far, far away.
FEWalls
A Long Perspective 