Between that first moment
Of giddying dizzying
Infatuation and
Anticipation
And this one of
Debilitating disappointing
Despair and
Isolation
When did you flip
The switch?

Was my hand on it, too?

I don’t want to
Stay here in the dark
So I turn on
My own Light

C’mon now
We both know
This doesn’t make
Anything
Alright

I been using a washboard since I was eight
Cutting up the fels-naptha with a paring knife
One tub to wash
The other to rinse
Hanging on the line and then
Shaking out the stiff wrinkles
In the half-frozen dawn

Sunrise sure looked pretty,
All pink and orange and gold
I used to shiver but not from the cold
Thinking of scrubbing and rubbing
My hands raw
Bending and stooping
As my heart grew old

Not my body though!
I knew how beautiful I was
But I also knew how
Dangerous was love
Both the making and bearing of children
Lord knows how it rips you up
Shreds your most tender parts
Screaming bleeding flesh!
I don't think about it much
And anyway, it ain't always
About love - making babies and
Soiling clothes

A while back there were six of us
In the house
With the boys, when they were home
Wash day came twice a week then
When they brought home
That machine,
It's true it got a little
Easier but it still took me
The better part of two days

When the little ones visited, laundry day
Was every day
I didn't mind then - they
Were bright as sunshine those
Children
No mark of my agony on them

My granddaughter is having her first
Baby now and she does complain,
There are piles of damp, rumpled
Towels, and men's shirts
***** and stained
For her to attend to, they
Constrain her
Conference calls and
Computer time -
Once I caught her sobbing
About the endlessness of it all

And the invisibility!
The humiliating impossibility!
She hasn't even realized it yet
But I won't tell her about that,
She'll see soon enough
There's no quarter for dreams
For girlhood
Snuffed by that one
First scream
The one that is stifled
In the dark
Under his weight
The night of the wedding
And never heard again

Oh, the centuries of
Drudgery
I carry in my cells
The wails of grandmothers
And their dozens of children -
The ones who lived
Blotting out the memory
Of babies who died -
All that! For such a short life!

I don't want her to know the enormity of it
One day soon,
She will understand all too well
And like seasons,
The inevitability will break her heart

Eroding brick wall
all that remains
refracted, fading
fishermen shadow
red dawn’s early light

brackish still water
shocked violent green
seeps from the desert
to be subsumed
by an unrelenting sea

restless dreamers rise
muscle sturdy pangas
into the churning tide
seeking quicksilver
at the continental edges

returning boats ride low
the shrinking horizon
race to safe harbor
cold beer on ice
under palm palapas

in the restaurant
a young man
shows off tuna
half as tall as he is
to admiring tourists

like me, seeking
the deep, slow burn
salt, jalapeno, lime
a fitting end to this
unraveling dream

Pueblo Mágico
of “no bad days”
walls of contention
in a fractured land
will never separate us

one margarita, two
another raised in defiance
of those who would try
to confine and define
free-range spirits

the Pacific touches
this contiguous shore
from equator to pole
we could catch
a clockwise current

follow Polaris up North
arrive transformed
magnetically charged
disparate souls fused
together bound

I wonder often which side
Of the coin I am on,
The magnificent irony of God
For giving me words;

I am the lightless eyes that see
From the dark what is leftover
From a library of dreams that
Seem dimly lit longing to be.....

Each stanza I vainly write,
Or are they written already,
Insensible scribblings wondering
If I am the poem or the poet,

A book of sonnet infinite,
Inaccessible rhymed schemes
Prewrit as the lost manuscripts
Of Alexandria lost to fire,

I live among the metaphorical,
Gardens of verbs and fountains
Of nouns, the blind word speaks
All that is seen.

Librarian of my days,
The the form is free I believe,
The cosmic universe in which
I write call to me in words,

Who am I?
The poem or the poet,
The twilight of my days have
Come to wonder what's real,

The delectable world I watch,
The words feed into me,
I realise I am a poet
Living inside the poem.