THE MEMORY OF STUFF

A brown tweed dress from Saks I saved months to buy.

A telephone operator toy set I begged my parents to get me for Christmas.

A note from my mom when I still lived at home with instructions on staying at the house alone while she worked.

A box of special Christmas cookies I made and sold for $5 back in 1961.

A rented Vespa in Italy, ******* my *** as we headed to Sorrento from Pisa.

A sailors hat worn when I was ten, one summer at the lake, when I rowed a boy around.



Do they have my feelings of fondness and become something more?

Do they wait to be used?

Do they remember longingly our relationships?

Are they happy to be remembered?

Do they sit waiting for one more jaunt into the world?

When we die, do they weep silently for us?

My Sister Gay - December 6, 1959

She was the older
Always the best
I was the second
And always less

She didn’t want me
But I dragged along,
Trying to protect her
as my special one.

I made due with second
As she won every game
But I tagged along
Hoping to do the same.

At 16 she shouted and cried each day
And I left the house to avoid the display
I shuffled the leaves in the cold windy fall
And wished she would go away, any way at all.

At 17 she grew wilder and I watched her dissolve
Wondering what puzzle she brought, wanting it solved
Then on a cold December day she did go,
Leaving me shivering in the holiday snow.

Sixty years passed, I’ve been brave and daring
And now after all, I find my lost caring,
Forgiving myself for wanting her gone
Yet thanking her for years of silent urging me on.

Is leaving our friend?
Is loss our perpetual neighbor who drops by too often?

What is this strange world we all inhabit, our only home, our mysterious mother?

Living in a glass box looking out at the huge thing called all of it,
moving through each day mesmerized by the merest of daily events, hoping for the best, refusing to see the sign saying ‘the road ends here.’

What can we make of this vivid,
inimitable, unpredictable universe we leapt into?
What is our job here?

Are we to make friends with every loss along with every awe filled moment of shattering beauty?

Why not say we each are walking a road home, to a God we chose or into a distant light of the unknown?

I came for the skies of illusions with mirrors
I stayed for days of laughter and tears
I left with the lights of a great unknown
I leave for a place we are all at home

I’m a person who writes poems when someone dies
Who gets up every morning at dawn to see the skies,
who paints a watercolor every night,
And over politics will pick a fight.

Who is the pale person who looks out at me?
who walks like my mother and rarely  shows glee?

Who trips on the steps and cracks in the road
As though the years are a heavy load?

Who avoids mountain passes that give me a fright,
And is often afraid to go out in the night?

That’s not me
That’s not me
That’s not me

I pull a trailer across ten states,
And sit alone under stars til late.

I donate monthly for a wild horse
And in hitting a squirrel, go through days of remorse.

I pick up old people in the freezing cold
Whenever I spot them stumbling down the road.

How to include the different views
Is an enigma and leaves me without a clue

But it’s not a problem if we know it to be
That our lives have the meanings we make for free.

I am not afraid
I am fearless

I am not flawed
I am whole

I am not sick
I am well

I am not uncomfortable
I am comfort -- and the world is mine

Thousands of years of humankind
Have led us to this place.
Alone and unprotected,
We shiver out in space

I yearn to go to the desert
With arms that keep us safe.
A world for all the children
With smiles upon each face.

Poem

The Gray Man

Here comes a man
Bent over and gray
Should I be afraid
Of his desperate ways?

He passes my spot
And smiles with a wave,
not heavy with life
Like a gray man to save.

Life is a struggle
Life is a quest.
Some of us best it,
many oppressed.  

What is the key to making the trip
With nothing at birth, no sort of a script?
Maybe the answer is simple to find
a smile we need, til the end of the line

Time

…is the child’s years, drawing out days to weeks and weeks into months, as though summer may never end. Then autumn begins the cycle again, drawn out endlessly by our innocence.

…is the desperate moment where time is suspended, the mind holding back the floodgate of pain and loss, keeping the future at bey for an eternal second or two.

…is an elder’s years, where one month tumbles over another like books from the past, falling to earth, unopened in their speedy descent, memories slipping secretly away, stealing the stories as though someone else coveted them.

Where are all of the moments, the days of joy and sadness, the threads that make up our lives? When we are gone, do they linger briefly in nostalgia for a life? Or do they turn to dust with our bodies, settling in deserts and mountain tops, keeping vigilance for us?

What was that like?

The first day of school
The last time speaking to my mother
The first time I lost someone
The last time my daughter needed me

The first road trip
The last road trip
The first boyfriend
The last one

The first moment of awe
The last of pain

What is that like?

Our lives are made up of memories,
Of flashes, moment after moment.
No real yesterday or tomorrow.
Just our stories.
Our memories.
Our lives.

I have some friends who don’t visit me much.
They are deer and a raptor and owls and such.
Creatures of all kinds who signal a change,
Beings who escort those leaving this plane.

I call them the Soul Keepers, who protect and defend,
On our mysterious journeys at life’s sudden end.
They hold our spirits in their hearts
and insure we arrive safely in other parts.

Watch for the Soul Keepers, as they are kind,
They come as a comfort for those left behind.

Completion

I want to take pictures of barns falling down
I want to write poems about my happy days of yesterday
I want to go on long trips into the desert and wake up joyous
I want to feel love for every person I see
I want to trust I belong as a being in the world forever
I want to be grateful for life, my own and all lives
I want to see the beauty in the clouds every day

What do my wants have to do with completion?
Something
Maybe everything since they can all be done right now.
And right now.
And right now.

Making love in the afternoon sun by a creek
Smelling roses in the dark, walking a quiet dark road together
Hiking over the eucalyptus hill to rip off our clothes and ease into the hot tub, the sea raging below us
Listening to the drum circle at the beach bonfire
Shaking the glistening water in a mason jar under the full moon

Eating a caramel donut, riding a bicycle around the ocean highway, crying
Lying on top of my garage, staring at the sky full of stars, crying
Watching a bubbling caldron of chili on the mountaintop, the dark waves far below, crying
Living in a lean-to by the ocean on El Sur ranch, homeless, crying
Packing up my ‘53 bright blue Chevy truck, heading to San Francisco alone, crying

She was the older
Always the best
I was the second
And never felt seen

She didn’t want me
But I dragged along,
Trying to protect her
as my special one.

I made due with second
As she won every game
But I tagged along
Hoping to do the same.

At 16 she shouted and cried each day
And I left the house to avoid the display
I shuffled the leaves in the cold windy fall
And wished she would go away, any way at all.

At 17 she grew wilder and I watched her dissolve
Wondering where we were going, wanting it solved
Then on a cold December day she died,
Leaving me shivering in the holiday snow

Sixty years have passed and I’ve lived a great life
And I see I decided to be brave and daring
But finally I forgive me for wanting her gone and
Instead I thank her for silently urging me on.

Take me to deserts of red and gold
To ruins whose people still linger in the silence
To miles of empty spaces
And no sound other than the winds
Where the saguaro stand watch over the centuries.

Two of us watching the sky
An unlikely pair, my dad and I

The tree lawn
Has a damp nighttime smell

No clouds hide the lights
Thousands in a row, maybe millions

They come in rows
So distant I can barely see them

But they are coming
And we are not afraid

Day 5 poem



I am offering this night to you. From my child’s world, I saw the universe coming towards me, larger than any earth thing, a thousand lights in a row, coming in the summer night.

I remember I was not afraid, I did not run away. I lay on the night grass and watched, feeling the awe of the coming, the unknown of it, the enormity.  But I was not afraid. It came to all of us, caring in its infinite unknown. The lights.

I speak for the sun, distant as it is.  No matter.  I tell it’s story every day the sun shows itself.

I speak for history and for the current. For the passage of humans. No matter. I tell their story whether good or bad, alive or dead.

I speak for the lost and not found. No matter. I see them in my dreams and my nightmares. I feel their hearts beating.

In the ‘50’s we all lived in black and white, marching in step with each other, our lawns making us ashamed we weren’t more perfectly matched.

We didn’t know it but we were waiting for the 60’s, that time of candied heart love and daffodil embroidered clothes.

We got more refined, less cluttered in the 70’s but kept a mellowed down pink turned taupe, having grown too cool for pastels.

But little did we know the permed haired, gaudy colors would leap out at us in the 80’s, an overdone shiny world, trying hard to find something lost, but never known.

Relief came with the 90’s, calming us down with normal colors, not too bright, just right, giving us hope we were getting better.

But around the century’s corner lurked the black and white intel world, a mystery that was inexplicably mingled with blood, too terrible to imagine, only finding a reprieve with a safer, mutely colored world, diverse and reassuring.

The 20-teens got even more comfortable, washed with seeming inclusion, ignoring the faint cries from the earth and its creatures.

Then 2016 rolled in and the world erupted, leaking and oozing, quickly covering the humans and their earth colors with grey, seeping into black. Warning us of nature’s revolution lying in wait.

2020 and the world is the color of fear, yellow searching for red fear.  But as we wait, hiding inside, the earth quietly begins to pulse, the trees suddenly bulging with the need to blossom, as all the creatures sigh in turn, hopeful, waiting to begin again.

Brave world.

Sadness is a well
A world of wells
The women gathered there
For centuries
Forever

The same t-shirt
The same guitar
The same long face with black beard
The same words
Forty years and the same
We are all young
We are all old.

I never knew an empty house before,
I never felt this way.
My memories and thoughts have fled.
have gone from me today.

I feel the world around me more,
still humming with its life.
But everything is made of words,
from our human joys to strife.  

Who will I say I am next month
without my house of words?
Anything I care to be,
Even flying with the birds.

I belong to the world.
I belong to the beauty,
To the struggle,
To the joy,
To the wrenching grief,
To the heron,
To the sparrow,
The dweller and
The homeless.
The earth and
The wasteland.
The builder and
Destroyer.
The loved and
Unwanted.
I belong to all of it and
It is mine. For now.

I¹m not sure how I came to be obsessed with Dorothy L. Sayers and her
beloved Peter Wimsey.  At any rate, I was determined to go on a pilgrimage
to England and walk in the places where she walked  and to see the place
where her ashes lay.  And  to ostensibly find a signed copy of one of her
books  every copy of which was beyond my economic horizons on my internet
searching.  So  I went to London  I saw her heroine, Harriet Vane¹s
Bloomsbury.  I went to Russell Square and stepped back into a time when
hotels smelled of potted meat and wet wool  and it was always raining.  I
saw    where Harriet and Peter set up housekeeping after their marriage.
Finally, I wnet to St. Anne¹s Church in Soho  DLS¹s final resting place
where she was warden for some 12 years before her deaeth in 1957.  It took
three trips to the small tower where her ashes lay under the concrete before
I could get inside and stand in that place, but I finally got there  What
is it that makes us feel connected when we stand where someone else is
buried?

And  wandering around London on our second day there  I stumbled into a
small book shop and, wonder of wonders, I asked if they had any Dorothy L.
Sayers¹ books and they said ³Are you her to look at her private library that
they had recently purchased at auction?¹  So  I now have three of DLS¹s own
books  and I have one signed and annotated in ink by her from her private
library.  I have the books sitting in my living room in a small house, in a
small town in Indiana.  But I have a part of something in my bookshelf  I
take it out periodically and ****** it  and feel like I can reawaken some
lost show in some other place and time.

It¹s Raining
Here in this place a forgotten past
The smells of damp wood, of mold, of dusty books, of rooms occupied for many
years;
Of wet wool
Of brewing all day long; of cooked cabbage and rolls and butter; of potted
meat;
The mustached old men close their umbrellas  they make sounds like talking
of something but nothing is said;

These rooms are not here any more -
It is a place of another time that I know but cannot have known.
Will it disappear the moment I step back outside into the Bloomsbury street?

SMELLS
WET WOOL
HEAT
BREWING TEA
YEAST AND WARM ROLLS
TINNED MEAT
DAMP WOOD
MOLD
OLD
RAIN

OLD MEN WITH MUSTACHES
AND UMBRELLAS,
SITTING IN CHAIRS
EMPYING DINING ROOM
GRAND STAIRCASE
FADING RED STARRED CARPET
HOTEL RUSSELL
BLOOMSBURY

She left with the leaves,
blown away by the October wind;
She left on a warm night with the full moon.

Days before, she stood at the door, silently, silhouetted against the bright sun;
   saying goodbye to the light, goodbye to the world.

What about the visits not made, the places not seen?
        - no matter;
No more winters to endure;
No more Novembers to wait through.

She left with October,  before the cold winds blew the world gray;
She left with the yellow leaves,  free to fly away.

I found a letter my mother wrote to my sister in her old cookbook;
”Lock the front door and go to bed in my bed – I will call you - Mom.”

If I could just go back for a moment to that time and that place­ - our small house with the gold painted walls -  my mom walking up the steps, coming home from work in her nurse¹s cap.

Just one more day, sitting at the dining room table, the open window at my back letting in the late summer heat, the early evening light, the droning of a lawn mower. The six of us at the crowded table, spread with the summer food - slices of tomato, baked beans, cottage cheese, iced tea in a ceramic jug.

Just one more night, out on the front curb, listening to the whispering adults on the front porches; lying back in the cool grass, watching the fireflies, waiting for something ominous to move in the night sky.

There was no time without my mother then - and it’s true - she will always be there.

Memories of my sister
Other times and other people, gone now but once real;
More than forty years since she was here; no almost fifty.
An older sister, always around, bigger than me, stronger, better at
everything;

She's an artist, she gets upset easily;
likes things untouched - her toys left alone, her room precise, her
bed spotless
She gets her hair cut and cries - it is the end of her life but she doesn¹t know it;
the last great event before she is no more

It¹s late November and walking along the empty streets, I kick the leaves,
feeling sad, alone.
Only a few more days filled with crying and upset and the struggles of being
seventeen,  then the quiet
Newspaper clippings, dead flowers, forgotten pictures all that’s left as a record of
seventeen years.

I am not a home dweller,
Nor have I ever been.
I am just a wanderer,
Ready to begin.

I am not a question dodger,
But simply on a quest.
I belong to the desert now,
The first answer to the rest.

In the dreams of my mind,
I am standing on the ridge.
Striding along the bare winding trail,
A view both ways.

I am a ridge walker,
Coming home to walk.

Life is a runaway train,
Running on rails of solid steel,
Invisible as tomorrow and impossible to steer.

But freedom lies in runaway trains,
With no rails, and no fixed route,
No future, no past.
It takes us into the wild of our lives.

Dense woods
Amidst broad meadows
Wilderness fights
Where the river runs red

People.
Christmas.
Warm.
Alone.
Noise.
Quiet.
Families.
Lights.
P­eace.
New world.

I am a hollow vessel in the world
floating in space, alone,
in a universe without humans
There is no fear, merely enduring.

Sixty eight years of floating
today I feel something
loosening around my heart
just a small ache there

In the world of no one but me
I am locked out of anyone
I am without the spirits of the past
I am alone

Today is a first step towards
the place where the people are.

Dear boy who fell off my ladder;
Whether I wanted it or not,
you left plastered with green paint
becoming a matched set for my house.

I do not want a boy matched house set
Yet I cannot shake the notion
I am now responsible for you.

Will you please give up your sad story?
Will you write a new one for me
Promising something bigger
Than a fall from my ladder?

I'm in a new place,
A silent inner stop.
Alone. Deep and still.
A well with narrow walls
With  no way out.
I see nothing.
I am a weight, dangling but steady.
The heavy sense of done is unfamiliar and I am afraid.
Be there. Be there.

I am the house of the Self
With many rooms to explore.

I have been wandering this house
Since I was born or before.

I did not know the house,
Did not know it was mine.

When it did not seem to match
I was doomed to live confined.

Watching others come and go
All I knew was to endure.

I was frightened by the house
Not recognizing it as mine.

Lately, though, I began to see,
It is my house of Self,
each room my mystery.

The house waits patiently
For me to find the key.

And unlock the door,
Buried deep inside me.

A ****** of crows, an ostentation of peacocks,
a parliament of owls, a knot of frogs,

a skulk of foxes, a siege of herons,
a paddling of ducks, a charm of finches.

This bevy of birds is a vocabulary find,
But what can it all mean,
In the world of human being?

A troop of toddlers, a slurry of students,
a gaggle of gentry, a bevy of boys.

I am of a mind that in naming of kind
Human being is best defined.

The monster has lived there since I can recall,
So long I often forget to remember him at all.

When he does show up, he never knocks,
But rather climbs into my brain as if he belongs.

He leaves me dark and leaves me weak,
He even takes my memories so that I cannot speak.

In my mind, he is always me, whether he resides under the bed
Or in my sleep, or in my head.

One thing I have never tried,
is to receive him in and let him abide.

I Have Lived A Backwards Life
I have no idea why it is.

But I decided at the end
To turn around and head back again,

With no right way to find,
I am setting out afresh.

Traveling now without a map
But easier to go
Without my will to bend.

I have no idea why
Yet I am eager to begin.

I AM NOT MY MOTHER

I am not afraid
I am fearless

I am not flawed
I am whole

I am not sick
I am well

I am not uncomfortable
I am comfort and the world is mine

I AM NOT MY MOTHER – Judi romaine

I see Lizzie everywhere –
in the neighbor’s yard,
on my front porch,
even in my bedroom, sitting there
waiting for her food.

I go to the front door ten times a day
And peer out, expecting to see her there.
I listen for her meow outside,
Worried she will feel abandoned if I don’t go quick

But Lizzie was never mine.
She was a wild pretty little thing
Who seemed to belong to no one.
She came and went as she pleased
And sometimes lay on my bed as if to comfort me.

So long Lizzie.
See ya.

Sitting at the striped crossing arm
In a one-eyed white Ford
Sunrise at my back
Red light blinking
A lullaby clanking
By the bell.

Gentle giants
Looming white
Arms flailing
Silent in the dusk
Where Cary Grant once ran
Through corn fields in a tidy blue suit.

POEM FOR A YOUNG GIRL GONE

I am sad.
The little mouse, alone now in its glass cage.
Waiting.
The room with nothing there like a life.
Or a life concluded at eight with pink slippers and dolls. And some videos of us when we were happy.
Nothing is there.
Where did she go?
Where does a person’s life go?
It evaporates into the air, except those few,
who leave behind a monument, a book, a creation of some sort
—or a child.