I always like summer
best
you can run
endlessly through trails
in the primordial woods
jumping copperheads
and water moccasins
threading through creeks
slimed green with algae
slipping, giggling, racing
and resting panting
against an oak trunk
with the reflection of
the Chesapeake Bay stinging
your eyes
and slip the bounds of land
on a small sailboat
feet hanging into the wake
and be free and free and free
all the time
and not only when you open a book
and read.

PART I: Midlife Crisis
She said:
Do not protest another year of life
as year on year into each other run,
mark not the dusk as a dying of the sun,
nor let the twilight cause unquiet strife.
Though in the deepening night lie shadows rife,
do not believe your cheer this year is done.
When webs of pain about your joints are spun,
do not protest another year of life.
Yet let this time be summer of your years;
It is this time that is compared to gold;
Your back is yet unbowed with care and fears
and still your spirit shines forth true and bold.
We – grey hair and aching joints all belie  –
will find our youth within each other’s eye.

PART II:  Suspicion
It’s not the way that silence cloaks the rooms;
he sits and sighs; she lives within her books;
she speaks;  he doesn’t hear nor even looks,
she reads and tries to block out strange perfumes
while deep inside her, knowledge slowly blooms.
He works too late to eat the love she cooks.
His temper short, she walks on tender-hooks;
Within their walls a confrontation looms.
There’s nothing worse than knowing she’s ignored,
that maybe someone else has his regard
She’s hiding from the truth, resentment stored
and building to the crux; true trust dies hard.
One day he comes home reeking of cologne,
“Nice try,” she whispers, and the seed is sown.




PART III:  Discovery
She lived with stale deceit and loathsome lies,
a dull and dispirited songbird of the night;
a speechless Lavinia hiding from sight
of he who threw away the marriage ties.
In the garden of lies and false intent
were harridans who in that marriage saw
stray bits and pieces that they stole and rent;
with laughter salted unfelt wounds more raw.
If she again finds love within his eyes,
offers her heart to he who laid it waste-
she prays that his integrity will rise,
discern her jewel- discard his pets of paste.
At home amidst the mercy she has rife
his heart will then lie naked for her knife.


PART IV:  Leaving
Her nature cries to leave this hostile land,
This cactus-ridden rock where she’s been kept:
Riding into what looked like a sunset,
Instead dusk ended in this hell of sand.
The lies have formed an ever tightening band
Across her chest and head, her heart is reft
of love, hate, anger; she is berefit -
Eat too much crow and talons grow on hands.
Yet there are conduits she still will not swim;
What’s left to them now?  Only bone and scrap.
The curtains close and all the lights are dimmed,
Call out the butcher, tell him it’s a wrap;
The heart exists only to drain blood;
Rain in the desert still is only mud.

PART V:  Forgiveness**
This she knew, all beauty soon becomes lost,
love and trust simply carts for grief and pain,
the buds that promised blossoms in the rain
grew black and shriveled at too great a cost.
The marriage ties too soon became encrossed
with kids, in-laws, resentment unrestrained;
this she knew, that nothing gold could stay
and all she gained would soon degrade to loss.
Self-fulfilling, of course the love would end,
her trust like glass lay shattered and deformed.
But in his tears she felt the moment bend
and like a barren tree out in a storm
she felt the glimmer of another life
Storm-wrecked, sure, but still as man and wife.

They set off from white rocks,
red geraniums, blue tile,
and let the green sea
lift and drop their ships far above the white foam waves.

The stony islands that were home
were swallowed in minutes by the hungry Atlantic
but they hunted the big fish,
the giant whales  with human eyes
who rolled and sang and swam
in oceans a continent away.

They came from Sao Jorge, Sao Miguel
Faial, Pico, Terceira, Horta -
Nine island emeralds set in a black volcanic chain,
neither of the old country nor the new:
Halfway there and halfway gone -
secret jewels of the Portuguese sailors.

They sailed into unknown waters,
south around tropical shores
where dragons smoked and writhed on the rocks
and birds with brilliant red and yellow plumage
rose in clouds around their heads.

Then north, and north, north again
to colder waters
where sea lions barked and lunged
at the strange massive wooden beast
that coursed the waters,
strung with brown bodies swaying
on the lines and cursing the sails.

North still they swept
casting contemptuous eyes on
the cheap turquoise waters and monstrous slow turtles
of the Sea of Cortez.
Coming up from the desert, past the palms and the yucca,
the Joshua tree and Spanish daggers,
they chased their smooth grey prey,
riding the vast Pacific on their wooden island,
herding the leviathans onto their spears,
adventurers with an audience of only
gulls and sky and seal.

Until they sailed too close one day
to a rock-strewn shoreline
and saw the golden hills.
Gnarled oaks like grandmothers from home
with orange poppy jewels at their feet,
missions strung like beads in a ruby marked rosary.

The boats slowed, ****** in by a Scylla of soil
rich and brown and loamy
waiting to be seeded with grapes and apricots
peaches, avocados, lettuce, alfalfa,
fertile and heavy with sweet promise.
And the whales sang and the lions barked and the gulls cried
but the sailors were entranced, encharmed, ensorcelled.
The treacherous sea, the mysterious deep, the stony jewels of home,
called and wept
and waited in vain for the sailors 
 - beached and grounded -
cutting not waves but earth,
tracking seasons not whales,

seduced by dirt.

Do you remember December in the valley;
a time of fog burned off by heat?
Sun burned hot in the truck, warm like an oven,
my sisters and I small gingerbread cookies baking in the bench seat while Dad stops at the Nightcap on Main Street
where the giant neon martini glass
is tilted and almost spilling the massive olive
into the dusty parking lot?
It is cool and dark in the Nightcap; it smells of farmers and dirt.

Did you know the pretty lady with flame-red hair
who fed us cherries from the dish at the end of the bar;
gave us quarters to buy grape bubble gum?
Dad smiled a lot then, drank clear liquor
talked about cotton and rain.
Did you know how slowly the day called him out
until he packed us back in the truck oven
we sat, lined up and sleepy and smelling of grape and cherry.
We flew past dusty fields, past roads named Idaho and Kansas and
did you see us coming up on Jackson?

Jackson Road was a tangle of barbed wire buried deep in dirt,
a broken gate and twisted steel, a
car barreling past the stop sign.
Half-drowsy from the heat and the cherries t
that I could still taste on my tongue,
just before the windshield exploded into flying stars, I saw you,
a face in the windshield that was not mine.

We were laid like waifs in the weeds at the side of the road,
My leg was bent there and there and there.
Did you see the ambulances skid through the gravel:
they put us kids in one and the grownups in another?
You and I shared a bed, foot to head, I saw your face
through the windshield just before.

Did you see how I tried not to move?
Your clothes were ****** like mine, you were small like me,
but your hands hang limply while mine were fussily
hanging onto the rails, straining to keep the bed still for you.

When you sighed, the world changed.

Did you know that when we were unloaded, I went one way
where they pulled on my leg to straighten it
but they forgot to check my knee and ankle
so they pulled on it even more
months later and even more after that
until one day I told them
to stop pulling; it was crooked and would stay that way.

Like life.

But you, you went down a long white hall away from me
same as your mother, the last one unloaded from the grownup
ambulance because there is no hurry for the dead.

And did you know that at least your place was quiet
and they didn’t pull on you and sign your cast
and ask was your daddy drunk
and then turn away in disgust
when you threw up red cherries on the white floor?

It was a green time:
a rose tree time.
Oregon spring budded children and
washed away five year goals and strategic plans.
The summer was scented with blackberry blossoms,
growing wild and thorny and sour and sweet;
They tasted of timelessness
and the utter lassitude of youth.
How charming it was to be charmed
by the low music of the chimes on the
beams of the back porch;
wine in hand, children on the lawn, blossom floating
like fairy tales on the air.

Time like a fish turning in the river
Quick smooth glint on the green water
Sun bulb flashes, then gone with a flicker.
Youth is a lot like that
Don’t blink or someone will die.

The world seems medicated today
susurrus of tires on wet pavement
while nicotine swirls like mist on graves.
The desert air collides with my memories
sharp and acrid, it ***** the water from my skin
leaving wrinkles and age like a kiss.

The past beckons
its hands are dark and translucently cold.
The blackberries are frozen in mounds of snow.
They won’t grow again.

My eyes glow and glitter in the night
hard and reflective like obsidian
Watching you cradle her voice in your phone
if her words were golden-plumed cage birds
I would uncoil in an instant, spring and rip
Their little wings off.
  
Her wail soars
hangs in the air between us;
bleeding other-woman-anguish it
drops like a dead swallow into my palms.
It’s her suicide bid, her Hail Mary.
Your eyes are knifed with remorse
my sigh floats a white feather in the cold air.
  
In the barren coldness of this
New Mexico night
my wine weeps the dregs of
the distance between us.
My hands squeeze tighter,
bones pop, nails crease skin
the moon grins the truth at me:

*I am the other woman too.

It is important to add just enough
of the lemon skin:
Too little and the cake is crushingly sugary sweet;
without the sharp texture that tickles the back of my throat
and brings on the threat of a sneeze.

Too much and the tiny yellow pieces-
like gold, like garnets, like tiny crystallized pieces of the sun,
like summer  -my youth-
can overwhelm all else with the sharpness of tears, sour and bitter.

Smell is the sense
Most closely related to our memories
It should be sight -
I can teach my eyes to see anything.

I grind the lemon carefully against the grater
releasing summer in a rush of yellow
too heady for me.
and stare out the window through the pane.

If I focus hard enough, I can pretend I see
your suitcase was only a briefcase
as you hurried down the path,
and the giant lemon tree in the front yard
was budding soft white stars of scent.
But the smell of golden pith springing from the grater
prompts the memory of pendulous fruit dropping to the ground instead –
the wanton tree already ******* for spring’s touch.

The grater grinds against my knuckles
a drop of blood falls into the batter.

I am reminded again that
only the best fruit will hang too close to the thorns,
only the theft that is given makes us bleed.