Poetry

 

 

Echo Mountain, California

 

You are slicing a lime as the mountain burns.

The sky shouts with smoke,

Black stumps cackle, sirens howl.

 

Destruction is part of nature, you say.

Ash enriches soil so budding restarts.

Ecological succession, you say.

 

Echo-logical

Does it echo forever?

 

Once a mighty hotel rose on that mountain.

White chariots lifted gold-hatted lovers to white towers.

Electricity enchanted their dancing, drinking,

Laughter and rapture on the veranda

Before the first fire.

 

 

We hiked that mountain years ago,

Crossed rails of the road that

Let those men and women ascend

So they might gaze through telescopes,

Grow closer to heaven.

 

A city of angels floated below.

Deer grazed on the veranda.

 

Now the sky fills with ash every year.

Should we flee?

 

Finish your drink, you say.

Dance with me.

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                                  Winner of the second place poetry prize at the 2023 Wine Country Writer's Festival

                                                                

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Vista Altadena
   
A peacock is doing a mating dance 
On the roof of the school.
With each hop, his shimmery tail jigs and jags
In the faces of the peahens.

The girls turn, close ranks, and wag 
Their dull rumps 
Back at him.

Leaping, 
The cock flutters his stubby wings, and
Scrabbles on the pavement before gaining pride
And posture 
So he can stalk a dropped Cheeto 
Under the lunch table.

“Shoo, shoo!” shouts the teacher,
And the children laugh as the cock scampers -- 
His fat bottom on fragile stalks,
His tail scraping the sidewalk.

A hen floats down to the pomegranate tree 
In the school garden,
Floats again to the ground,
Then strolls to the carrot patch
To study their green tops.

She ignores the cock
Who tracks her -- his plume erect
And quivering.

The teacher shoos the children now –
Into the classroom.

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Who knows what the children

Might learn from the birds?

                                                   Altadena Poetry Review, 2018

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Pomegranate
 

Apple is my cousin.                                   

She is full of herself—

Shiny, pink, and proud,

She displays her dimpled bottom,

And everyone reaches for her.

 

I am at a lumpy stage,

My bust and future in doubt.

With my tough rind flaring behind,

I would wobble on a table.

 

Maybe later, I too will be chosen

And might even shine

Because of those gems inside me

Now just beginning to glow.

                                                                                                Altadena Poetry Review, 2019

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Cotton Candy Girl
 

All day in the stand between

Balloons and Guess-Your-Weight

She turns syrup and air into mist.

With every great circling of the wide spinning vat

And a turn of her wrist,

She wraps wisp upon wisp.

 

But flying sugar is not always caught on paper wands.

It glazes counters, windows, and walls of the shop,

Coats the cash box and coins within

Enmeshes the girl herself—

Webbing her fingers

Netting her hair

Sealing her skin like masking tape.

 

Still she spins the confection—

A cloud for each child.

Unfazed by the chaos of sweetness,

The sticky stalactites on the ceiling

The thickening nectar of her sweat,

She keeps on,

Grit and sparkle under foot,

For she knows about carnival matters

And how much ephemeral means.


                                               Heartland Review, Fall 2022

 

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Special Relativity

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At six I heard it

While she ironed my father’s shirts:

“When I was your age,” she said,

“We would go to Princeton on Sundays.

My Grandfather was a Professor

At the University there,

Which means he was very smart.

After lunch, I would go on walks with him

And do you know who we saw?

 

Albert Einstein, that’s who.

Albert Einstein, a Genius --

the smartest man ever alive,

Worked with my Grandfather.

What do you think of that?”

 

She stopped ironing and looked at me.

Her eyebrows shot above the rims of her glasses.

 

I knew about princes, how I had to be smart,

So I counted the wrinkled handkerchiefs in her basket –

Seven of them

So my father could blow his nose

Every day of the week

 

“I’m sure I met him,” she said,

“He had white hair and a big mustache.

He smiled at me, touched my head, and

Talked with my Grandfather about something

Important at the University.

Some people said he was a recluse. 

Do you know what that is?”

 

I didn’t. The iron hissed on my father’s sleeve.

 

“It’s someone who stays inside all of the time.  But

Einstein wasn’t one. Not when I knew him.

I think he saw me and smiled. 

I was a cute little girl with curly hair. 

My Grandfather bought me ice cream, too.  Cones. 

We probably bought ice cream with Einstein.

I think he even shared a lick

with me.”

 

The iron gasped.  I knew it would spread

A brown stain like a triangle if she didn’t move it

And my father would be mad.

 

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When I was in college, I whispered this

In the ear of a boy with his hand up my shirt:

“My mother knew Einstein.”

 

The hand stopped moving;

he was a physics major.

 

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered. 

I wanted him to know

I was close to genius.

 

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Now she is 70 and she stamps her foot.

“You don’t know about me and Einstein?”

She asks the physics major’s children. 

Her eyebrows shoot up:  How had I forgotten

To tell them this? 

 

So she tells them.

 

The ice cream is chocolate now,

Melting. Einstein’s tongue

Works the rim of her cone

As if it were an equation

On a chalkboard, his moustache

The eraser.

 

“What do you think of that?”

She asks.

 

They are too young, I know,

But someday, when

They are in college

They will understand relativity,

the special kind, and

Discover what little anyone knows

About Time, Space, and Mother.

 

                        Literary Mama, 2006

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  Two in the Morning

 

This thunder is my final child.

Bursting into my sleep,

Gushing out of my blood,

Exploding into light.

 

The quaking when I engendered him

Became the storm I waited for years

To pass over,

Ignoring what foundations shook,

             What breakage ensued.

 

Too soon he grew and more:

A rumble of doors,

Turbulence as he stumbled in,

Fumbled in stairwells

Til I woke in alarm:

So late, so early!

 

A quickening. Rain?

No. Distant flickering–

Bathroom switches,

A faucet confessing.

 

Mothering is all about this:

Thunder at nighttime,

Rushing water, new light–

The startle and succor of

A son come home.

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                                                                                                         Literary Mama, November-December 2023

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