Knee Deep in the Water Somewhere

For Brittany

When your husband has gently 

requested a break from the constant stream 

of Jimmy Buffet, and you’ve finally

given away all the flamingo flotsam

your family thought you loved—you, 

whom they mistook for a beautiful, pink, 

strange bird, balanced on one foot 

in the front yard of their lives—

and your new, somehow oldest friend, 

on a scorching alpine desert trail 

that burns beloved dogs’ feet, assures you 

after hearing the longing in your voice 

for cool sand, your heartsick song for the sea, 

that, yes, yes, you must go, go to the beach—

well, then, you must go. Go where the body 

wants to go. You cannot lie to the body.

And while her heart breaks to send you out 

of this quiet, dark sky valley, with its cacti 

and sand dunes, its desperate children

in whom you believed, its blood-red string 

of sunset mountains, she knows this place 

is not your home, this crusted graveyard 

of a once inland sea. “Fly off, sweet friend,”

her heart thrills. “Though, you are no bird. 

No net ensnares you. You are a free

human being with an independent will.”

with thanks to Jane Eyre, our first book, for the final lines

A Party of Pinyon Jays

I wake to dozens of dusty blue pinyon jays laughing nasally

at the feeder hanging on the piñon outside our bedroom window.

They decimate the suet brick in minutes—neither they nor I know

they are going extinct—peck with great lust, share the small feast.

Two orange headed, yellow breasted, black winged western tanagers 

hang back, do without—neither they nor I know they are abundant—

lick remaining grease from the empty basket when the jays go.

I notice I prefer their sunny timidity to the greedy racket of blue. 

On a nearby limb, a magpie watches me mount the stool. Takes off 

to tell its mate. I refill the basket. Wait. Each bird plans a coup.

Muted tanager approaches the feed. Giant magpie drops. She flees. 

I clap. All clear till her return. She nibbles. Flits off. Nuthatch takes a turn.

Late morning, a single jay discovers the suet full again. Scout perched

on a tall piñon, he chortles and cries across miles of chaparral.

Come! Come! Come! Come!      Come! Come! Come! Come! They do.

A recent report on the threatened status of pinyon jays:

“Defenders of Wildlife Seeks Endangered Status for Pinyon Jay,” Albuquerque, NM, April 26, 2022

The Last Cut in Our Limited Series

A shared glance of joie de vivre

then turning back to what we do:

the book, the broom, the pen, the seed,

the plate, the drill, the trail, the moon, 

the sprout, the dog, the tune, the leaf,

the pill, the wash, the snow, the croon,

the call, the pan, the sigh, the cream,

the tea, the cloud, the deer, the room,

the egg, the wine, the bill, the screen,

the sink, the child, the road, the bloom,

the grill, the pine, the hen, the weed,

the wood, the soil, the hand, the shoe,

the fire, the nap, the cat, the creek,

the bowl, the knife, the rib, the coop,

the prayer, the salt, the dome, the peak,

the leg, the rhyme, the fish, the tooth,

the smoke, the time, the rain, the sleep,

adieu, adieu, adieu, adieu.

Past Fifty

Who knew I would feel 

young? Except in 

my bones, poor posture,

parched mornings 

after nights of bottles 

with mountain poets,

patio music, chosen brothers, 

liberated sister-mothers

toasting the post pandemic 

opening of this 

end of the road town.

How can I say it?

I used to run and run.

I know that high.

My body did my bidding.

And so much wanting.

Such a drug. It wanes.

The constant longing

for more than life

can offer a young mother

already rich with children.

Joy and regret.

Strange bedfellows.

All of that in me today

in the quiet, and my love

dozing here on the sofa,

his long legs draped across

my lap, hands folded

on his belly, head tilted up

on a pillow, beautiful

in that awful pose.

We both and all of us

are for the pyre.

It’s not a metaphor.

We’ve watched it burn.

Absorbed its warmth.

But now! We are alive, 

my love and I, these bones,

turning to look at each other

from time to time,

my writing arm in the sun.

Fish Heads

after Raymond Carver

Ted Fish made heads out of clay.

He was known for it, loved.

These heads are all over Salida.

Pinch lipped busts in shop windows. 

Bobbing ornaments in dead trees. 

One, a skinless, meat-red monolith 

sits on a bank among boulders, 

casting the line of its low gaze 

over the Arkansas, a marker 

for boaters to measure depth.

I never knew him except through

others’ grief. He died a few 

weeks before I moved there.

On the table. Under the knife. 

His heart.

Two heads came into my hands

in round about ways. One

from a new friend, fellow artist

and co-worker, Ben, whose

eyes teared up when he handed 

it to me, a porcelain, grimacing, 

two-faced thing with a hole 

clear through the crown to

the throat, passage for some jute 

rope I’ve planned for years to string

with fat, glass beads the color

of Caribbean swells. Maybe  

I’ll finally get to it. After a story,

Barbara, poet who refuses

public farewells and left his funeral 

early, gave me the other: a black face— 

blue edged, sort of grinning—emerging

from white porcelain slab. The whole 

thing attached to a small black canvas

with two long copper wire stitches.

I placed it on the piano where sheet 

music should perch. The piano 

is always out of tune, but my son 

plays it anyway. Two nights ago, 

on a stop as he was driving through,

the tiny head rang, watery

with my son’s invented song.

When I hugged him hello

and later goodbye, hard, I felt him

tremble, quaking in the core, a dark

face pressing through his body

into mine. In the kitchen, he talked

in low, steady tones, like there

was earth under his feet, said 

when he gets back he’s drying out, 

going to stop filling the hole

with every dead sailor in the sea.

“You can do it,” I said, “change karma,

consequence.” Which was too much,

another hole. You can do it is all I meant, 

but saying less is hard for me. He knows. 

“Thank you,” he said, and for a second, 

soft eyed, lost himself among crumbs 

on the counter. Then raised his head.

Affording Sugar

On mother’s day I’m up early,

peeking in on my child,

wiping up cat vomit, sharing

yesterday’s beet scraps

with five chickens in the run,

feeding two dogs who never tire

of my touch. My husband 

and youngest son, who arrived  

last night while I slept,

are still asleep, bless them,

giant men whose lives happen

above my head, witnessing

the dusty tops of fridges

everywhere they go. They know.

I’m down here, whisking matcha,

marveling at cedar shadows

quaking across dusty windows,

a sun rising through smoke

over the Sangres, boiling

four parts water to one part

sugar for the hummingbird

we heard zipping about this week,

looking for our sweet life, the one 

my grandmother gave me

growing my sweet mother inside, 

whose tiny body already cradled

all the eggs she’d ever release,

including me, so lucky.

The night before I turned 51

I dreamed my father next to me

holding my hand through a parking lot,

his full cheeked smile held inside

those radiating parentheses reaching

out like endless arms from his eyes—

like mine in the brightest sunlight,

caught laughing in a rearview mirror.

(I learned to love my smile by loving his.)

We walked like this toward some store

I wanted to avoid, so he wouldn’t feel

he had to buy me something, the coat

I wanted, or some other ephemeral

thready thing to make up for a lifetime

of missing him, missing him, missing him.

I rehearsed in my mind what I wanted

him to know: I forgive you every day.

I woke before I said it, distracted by

a gallery of Japanese woodcut prints,

one of them a curious face watching us

pass as I noticed us drift across glass.

Building

A couple walks 
into a house and knows 
it is the one.
For years they 
will bend it 
and each other 
toward 
the life they want. 

Around beds
of irises and echinacea
her gully rocks doze.
His callouses raise
walls for chickens, 
basil, arugula,
pour a foundation,
puzzle together a dome.

Her toddler task: 
hand up
triangular panes
of glass one by one 
and wait
until he is done 
with other 
buildings paying
bills, feeding children.

Their silent fights 
could fell a pine,
peel a porch,
invent new words.
Their tenderness
could birth a 
sutra, decades,
this church.

New Pecking Order

It is hard to abide
the cruelty of chickens
raised from chicks.
You give the Easter Eggers
names that curse them, 
like Curious Georgia, the gentle
smart, blond one who always 
looked up from the litter,
eyeing you like a giant god
whose hand giveth,
or let a little girl name one
something edible like Brownie,
or your ironic teenage son
dub the tan one Sweet and Sour.
Worst of all, you yourself
name three Plymouth Barred Rocks 
you can’t tell apart The Morrigan, 
after the Irish triple goddess of war. 
You even learn and then forget
how to pronounce their Gaelic names:
Macha, Nemain, Badb. 
All but one of six are tattered now,
more or less plucked.
Curious Georgia? back bald 
and bloody rumped! 
The fully feathered one, 
maybe Macha, you snatch and lock  
in chicken jail just inside the run, 
watch Curious Georgia’s
tail feathers re-grow as she struts 
and shits across the chicken wire 
roof of her tormentor who paces
frantically below, looking up.

KCRT Radio Interview

Enjoy this radio interview with Eli Debono of KCRT 99.3, based in Trinidad, Colorado, a few days before my reading for Corazon de Trinidad, hosted by the wonderful Hilary Depolo.