August seems like such a long time ago but in the world of words, it's simply part of another season. I love the postcard challenge every August and try to form an intelligible blog of cards sent and received but this year, I've fallen more behind than ever before. Yet, here they are...por fin...at last in Spanish. Sadly, this isn't all of them, due to my poor record-keeping this past summer. I bring in the new year with wishes for everyone and plans to do a much better job keeping up with my blog.
I hope you enjoy these poems, the cards that were chosen to carry them on their journey and invite you to peruse other posts on my blog.
Richard Novak talked me to sleep. He came and sat on the big Naugahyde chair and spoke softly, while I nursed one baby, sandwiched between me and her brother, whose back I rubbed with my spare hand. I tended to drift off to sleep somewhere in the middle of Richard's gentle words that hung in the shadows of my California sunset room. I never knew where Richard lived but at some point, he became quiet, left and went to that home, night after night. I never thanked him. I found his obituary online. Richard had so much room in his heart.
The morning of the Sylmar earthquake (1971), all I wanted to do was sit still, and hang onto something, anything. I didn't even want to be in a moving car. Aftershocks knocked me around, just when I'd get my bearings again. A big bang started it, with bright flashing in the dark. The sun rose suddenly and we didn't know what happened. Sixty people died.
Dad would gargle his Listerine and we would laugh and laugh. I wish I could remember these things with you today. I walked by our old house when you were dying... just a street away, and there lay before me a multitude of images; our childhood.
Frances (our grandniece, age 10, who looks so much like us in so many ways) walked with me one of those days. We sought out the handprints, initials, and dates you and I left behind in the concrete that Dad poured so many years ago. We are history, you and I.
We used to say, in
full seriousness, our mother would live to be 100. It took us all by surprise.
She died at 89 after a diagnosis of brain cancer two months prior. We were
filled with sorrow (and some with remorse.) She was not! At 89, she's stoically
claimed she's seen enough and was ready to find out what came next.
Living killed my
brother. Years, he lived so close to the edge, Falls were inevitable, but he
always managed to claw his way back up to paths with brambles and beauty. He
was never hostage to the truth and has been called both a "man of few
words" and a "Storyteller." I miss him.
My dad spoke highly of
these guys, as if he knew them, growing up in Idaho, Montana and Eastern
Washington. In the way we talked about favorite athletes, celebrities. Some say
Butch lived his life out in Spokane and only the kid died in Bolivia, but my
dad said it was not likely Bolivia, but Mexico. Interesting... my dad's
fascination with these Crooks. He wasn't fond of movie stars at all. He hated
Frank Sinatra. 
Sitting in bed, Sunshine covering me in its warm morning blanket.
Reading last week's New Yorker, listening to birds gossip. Tweets, chirps,
caws, wishing briefly... That perhaps there might be someone, almost anyone,
who would bring me a hot cup of tea. And yet again, maybe not...
Do you feel as tall as
you look? Do you feel as tall as you are? You stand over most of us with eyes
that wonder in your own head, seeing things you'll never share, not with us.
There were always laughs because that's what it was like when he was around. Uncle Russ sat at our dinner table, told silly jokes and riddles, and gently teased us. That was before before he married again. Aunt Myrtle, as we were told to call her, was shy and my mom said not really his type. When he died, Aunt Myrtle was the one I mourned for. I was a kid, 13 maybe, but she never got the chance to be a part of dinner laughs, nonsense at our house. She was all alone again, like she’d been before him. We couldn’t find a way to bring back those jokes again.
At my brothers memorial
service, I spoke to you on the phone from Portugal, where you now live with
your wife. I loaned you my guitar, you said, in 1966. We chatted about music,
my brother, Portugal. I struggled with images rolling in my head of you, New
Year's Eve, 1966, and months later coming home to find you chatting with my
mother in our family kitchen.
Sitting in bed,
Sunshine covering me in its warm morning blanket. Reading last week's New
Yorker, listening to birds gossip. Tweets, chirps, caws, wishing briefly...
That perhaps there might be someone, almost anyone, who would bring me a hot
cup of tea. And yet again, maybe not.
It was words that made me stay in Seattle, New Year's Eve 1999. Not numbers, not 2,000 millennium scare, not weather, not fear flying, or computer crashes. Words. Words took me away again, sent me away, drove me away, pushed me away. Many words, one word, your word, my word.
I left notes for John on the bulletin board of a Portland hang out cuz someone told me he had moved to PTown, too. One day I found a response. We were notes passing in the night. I wanted to see John and talk to him remembering our one quick historical moment of passion. It was 51 years before we would make contact again. Over someone else's death bed. His eyes of blue. They shot across the universe in the invisible ether and I felt naked again.
When we drive down
Interlaken, Ewan's eyes are fixed on the ravine, leaning forward in his booster
seat, straining the straps, hands gripping small armrests, skinny little boy legs
dangling, swinging slightly, using his imagination, seeing things in the trees;
creatures, humans maybe, moon people, samplings from the pockets of his mind.
I was four years old when I saw a buffalo, a bison, for the first time
and my Dad held me by the waist and cantilevered me over the fence and let me
touch the majestic, tangled, smelly, beautiful head of what was now docile,
broken, long-ago decimated; our national animal, a symbol of what we became.
(After living in Mexico for 12 years) I've always found it interesting
that white women, gringas, are excited
to meet Mexican men, dance with them, drink with them and often have affairs
with them. But in the US, when a Mexican man makes attempts at conversation
with a gringa, compliments her looks or makes a subtle pass, he is considered
cheeky, even dangerous.
We had unmitigated hope. We thought all was right with the world. It was
so short lived; it was as if we had nothing but a dream. What we've learned is
that when all white people love all white people, there will no longer be a
black problem.
We must keep living
life to the fullest.
Never give up.
Cross every possible
bridge.
Bridge every possible
Gap.
Sail all the
oceans. There is so much to be
done and many who are up to the task.
