PAD Day 5 - Too Much Information

The Bag of Snakes Let Loose

Tell me the truth

She asked me

Over and over

I knew she didn’t really want to know

Tell me, just tell me the truth

She asked me once again

And so

I told her

Like a bag of snakes let loose

Across the kitchen floor

We’ve been busy now for years

Coping with that truth
Trying to put it back into the bag.

PAD Day 4 - History

 

Arroyo Seco

What are we doing

 in these alien desert places

under brooding mountain faces,

fierce light

winds

that drove pioneer women mad?

Drying from the edges

hands, faces, feet and hair,

our very hearts  grown

dry and withered

soft corpses in the sun.

Living with the daily losses

of our sisters,

landscapes that formed us,

daily rainfall on the

gardens that we knew.

What are we doing in this desert?

We have no history here.

PAD Day 3 - Partly______

Partly Read

This house is littered with our lack of concentration,

partly-read books in every room.

Self-help and poetry on the bedside table,

several novels on the carpet

by the purple reading chair.

postcards marking our lost interest.

Cookbooks and dictionaries, limned with dust and fur,

cover dining table, sideboard, chairs,

until we need to use them,

look up a word, cook something, entertain.

On the coffee table, stacks of travel books and

magazines with articles about the places

we dream one day we’ll visit.

turning the pages of our lives

while we still can.

hoping not to leave

too many chapters partly read.

PAD Day 2 - Water *

Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve 

It hasn’t rained for months.
The Santa Ana winds
are blowing dust and grit

into every pore and cranny
of skin and furniture.
The mountains
have been invisible for days,
cloaked in wind and dust.
in the backyard lettuce seedlings struggle,
 need water twice a day.

Yet I know, not far away
there is a miracle,
a place for rehydration of my
dried out desert soul.
Pocket wetland,  eye of water,
waving cattails, lily pads,
rushes, reeds and ferns.
All the thirsty green things
find home and shelter here.
Even in the hottest days of summer
 the air is damp and green,
 alive with forbs and flowers, nodding willows,
butterflies and birds.
Bullfrogs wallow in the shallows
at the edges of the pond,
bask on rafts of rotted vegetation,
under hovering damselflies.
High desert miracle of hidden wetland,
watercress and cactus
side by side.

PAD Day 1 - Lonely

Good Friday Afternoon

Still in my pajamas, under the portal,

on Good Friday afternoon.

Watching white-winged doves

 blown across the powerlines

on Santa Ana winds,

helpless as leaves or straw.

Two thousand miles of

mountain chains and prairies

away from everyone I love,

sorting through the morning mail,

listening to the wind,

waiting for the phone to ring.

Night Rain

Night Rain, Late March

Awake at two a.m.

and then again,

three-thirty,  eyes wide open,

under comforters and cats.
Listening to nocturnal blessing of

rain pounding on the hallway roof,

dripping into barrels just

outside my bedroom window.

The rain we haven't heard all winter,

falling through gravel mulch,
dry drifts of autumn leaves.
Soaking deep into roots of

cottonwood and olive.

Pores of the earth

drinking in the clouds,

the snowmelt

from the mountains miles away.

It may rain all night

on river, gardens, roof.
But there is purring at my shoulder.

I fall asleep til dawn.

Storm Clouds Moving East On My Day Off

STORM CLOUDS MOVING EAST ON MY DAY OFF

 I went outside just now

To move the trash cans to the curb.

The wind was like a hammer

Against my chest, my face.

The mountains in the east

Had vanished utterly

In curtains of fog and snow.

But it was clearing in the west,

Cloud patches tearing loose from ragged blue.

Back inside, I joined the cats

Watching from the bedroom window

In a patch of sun

As house finches emptied  feeders

In the plum trees' naked branches.

Looks like the weather guys were wrong.

Here in the valley
It will not snow today.

Late February

Late February

We want it to be spring

Right now

The backyard birds and I.

Birds gathered in this cold

At suet blocks

Flocking on feeders

Feathered knots of hunger,

Desperation, greed.

          At the kitchen window

          Though warmed by coffee,

          Wool socks, silk underwear,

          I too am desperate,

          Empty, hungry, cold.

          Waiting for something I cannot find

          In a bag of black oil seed.