potential Hydrogen

The calico Shubunkin goldfish hovered motionless

over water lily gravel.

Two days later, I touched his side with my finger.

He was not startled.

I promised myself to tend to him, listless child’s hand,

after a full night of sleep

and dreamed him as anglerfish, huge, blood red

with bulging eyes.

Come morning, I found him floating on his side,

a wilted quarter moon,

desperate, sucking the surface of the pond,

upper gill working

like a blinking eye. Why? Starvation?  Smaller

than the other

more aggressive fish, always last to eat,

if at all. Disease?

If so, I thought to scoop him out at once to save

the school, but, cautious,

read it could be simply water chemistry. Hard to believe.

Four days ago,

pH was perfect. I quickly fumbled out a test tube,

filled it,

dropped five drops and shook. It turned blue, a nine,

far too alkaline.

Shit Shit Shit. Was it decaying leaves? Maybe. Ammonia?

No. The drop in heat?

I turned on air stones, poured in the necessary powders,

feared over-correction,

my specialty, a wild swing toward acidity that could shock

and kill all four gorgeous fish,

more important to me now than dill, tomatoes, carrots,

beets, kale, basil,

merlot lettuce. I stirred the pond with a net

and prayerless prayer

measured pH once more, pleased it had already dropped

to seven. Balanced

on my knees on a six-inch board bridging the length

of the almond-shaped pond,

I set my fingernails upon the yellowed leaves of water lettuce

and trailing nasturtium

mimicking lily pads. Driven, I pinched off leaf after leaf,

each disintegrating,

fish-killing culprit. Then, in my peripheral vision, a swish!

The fish—what?—stood up,

so to speak, righted himself, whirled into the depths

from the brink.

I named him Lazarus. I am no Jesus walking on water,

healing the sick,

raising the dead. This was no miracle—simply the power,

the potential

of hydrogen and hope to orchestrate breath.

The Children’s Highway

they are calling it

as if a romantic name

and convenience

can ease the blight

of the long hard gash

the shock of shins

on white concrete

through a green belt

where my feet

prefer the parallel

sandy path

that breathes

and gives beneath me

Ways and Windows

There is a way to do dishes

              a way to make a bed for friends

              a way to play ukulele

              a way to feed birds beyond a window

There is a way to be stolen

              a way to stroke black glass

              a way to starve a lover

              a way to get lost in little windows

There is a way to hold a first grandson

              a way to sing him soft

              a way to wave from far away

              a way to be a cracked, smiling window

There is a way to write a thousand poems

              a way to move the pen

              a way to give the voice a bed

              a way to backspace across windows

There is a way to walk a sandy trail to town

a way to crack a piñon nut with teeth

a way to notice autumn mist

a way to not reflect upon a window

Crestone Poetry Festival is around the corner…

The Poemfest 2024 schedule and registration is live! Get ready for an unforgettable weekend packed with featured readers, live music open mics, poetry playshops, probing panels and unique, immersive experiences. We're pulling out all the stops to deliver a fun, creative, and magical time: a true party of poets! Best of all, registration is free to all events except for poetry playshops. Register for them here.

Goldie

The footlong goldfish belonged to a fashion designer who died last year of an aneurysm                    now it swims in our thousand gallon metal pond in the dark                       solitary as it ever was but in cleaner water                  after three weeks it still hasn’t come to the surface to eat                it swims in the middle depth gold glimmer swishing elegantly through greenish water               ignores aquatic floating plants        fledgling lily pads inches beneath the surface                too deep for the right amount of light                   colored pinches of flakes I drop to entice it simply float and disintegrate                  contribute organic matter to the dance of pH                     I tell Rosemerry the fashion designer’s young granddaughters told me the fish’s name is Goldie                     I scoff at the awful cliché of it                   she says We had a fish named Goldie once!                of course you did I laugh                   she pulls up an old video album from 12 years ago                   in which her living son narrates the lives of his two fish, Goldie and Food                       his boyish voice remarks upon their particular talent for searching sparkly blue rocks                   for pausing time to time to look in the mirror which they seem to enjoy                     between clips my friend had slipped in field trip footage of a large aquarium shark                          its teeth jagged and close                   swimming its own tank                   looking back at us through glass                   duhdun duhdun duhdun              spliced in for comic effect                 what boy doesn’t thrill at a shark                 I laugh at her clever production full of post-prescient dread and love               the soundtrack of its life approaching ours

Surrogates

After they all left home I started

making altars of their favorite childhood books

beloved things charged with small fingers

innocent curiosity, and little gifts

they gave me: silver Ganesha pendant

wire-wrapped and naked stones

Mercury dime to replace the one

I found in the garden years ago

that one of the boys lost.

Altars because I couldn’t hold them,

daily behold them, couldn’t protect them

from wanting to die inside their minds.

Through shrines I slowly learned

to banish fear, the illusion of control

from my bones, shoulders, nerves, gut

like a Catholic with her rosary and saints

like a witch with amulets and milk spells.

I perched their weathered books,

spines draped in rinpoches’ red strings

upon the cliffs of my own bookshelf

their covers theatrical backdrops

for miniature, plasticized thangkas

of loving mother deities, placid

and sharp-toothed, wild-eyed mothers

alongside family heirlooms

from the boys’ paternal grandfather

who entrusted me with antique relics—

little clay and brass buddhas from

his tour in Thailand, my favorite

the one with a bone inside you can hear

when you shake it like a rattle, that bone

some kind of promise. It’s the kind of thing

you might laugh and shake your head

about when I’m not around, or dead

or until you have adults of your own.

You can laugh. But know: I’ve seen what praying

with too many words and worry has done

to my mother’s nerves and night dreams

as if she thinks, falling asleep on her knees

her God needs a mother, a reminding, a litany

to help him log her children’s trials, the help we need.

My style is silence and effigy. Let the altars

do their thing, like clay proxies propped

in ancient Mesopotamian temples

their robbed, disproportionately large eye sockets

empty or, incredibly, full of alabaster with black

limestone or lapis pupils, pinpoints sipping

a confounding light, Goya eyes unblinking

before the gods of tragedy, hands folded

across their chests or abdomens

in surrogate supplication while their humans

went about their little lives, too fragile to rise

from bed, to work and worry at the same time.

Reading “Walk” with Leo

In 2019, to advertise the Crestone Poetry Festival, our posse of poet planners enjoyed being recorded reading by a local videographer, Bennie, for his series Crestone Now. This one captures a reading I did with our late dog, Leo, who very much stole the show.

Scoot to 6:52 in the video to see me reading “Walk” and Leo at his best.

Here’s another reading leading up to 2019’s Poemfest, outside Bob’s Diner, which we all wish would open again soon.

“Christmas Soup” starts at the 9:20 mark. Apologies to my vegetarian friends. You’ve been warned.

Re(media)tion

Colonized by news cycles

I uninstall the Times and Instagram again

My restless mind, my hand— two grey jays

Squawking at the empty basket

Variation on a Ritual at Eight Weeks

Done with your breast, milk drunk, eyes rove

in a dream. Trust yourself to leave. Trust his father,

also asleep. Drive to the water. Undress to skin, neoprene.

You practiced for this. Walk in to your chin, your eyes,

the top of your head. Curled like a fetus, sink. Dare to open

your eyes. Black water. Listen long to the gurgling body of night.

Let the stony muck cooly cradle you, grow you hot for breath.

Inexorable, explode off the dark, barnacled fundus of the Sound.

Let the memory rise of two jumping feet inside.

Head free, inhale. Tread. Take in the sparkling surface.

Find the moon. Tread. Swim back to the edge.

From hands and knees, lift yourself to ancient feet. Stretch.

Shiver. Towel off this new creature. Drive home.

Lie down between them. Wet haired, salt-clean.

The way your salty child was clean, wearing you.

To the Large Old Man in the Button-Up Trump Shirt on the 4th of July

The posters said fireworks at 9:30, after the band.

You slipped in at dusk, to the center of the crowd—

TRUMP in full caps sans serif vertical font climbing

your right torso, front and back, huge blue stars

bedazzling your left side, where a heart beats.

What were you thinking when the night went

off-schedule and the Santana cover band, Santa Rios,

jammed on, overlapping fireworks, its sonic encore

of Latin-rock-n-roll-Afro-Cuban-jazz joy moving our feet,

churning hips, shaking out tight shoulders and necks,

opening our chests, smiling us—mostly white folks

and more, proudly groping at Spanish, “Oye cómo va /

Mi ritmo /Bueno pa’ gozar, Mulata.” Listen to how it goes,

my rhythm! Come and enjoy it, you beautiful human fusion.

But you just sat there, parked on amphitheater bench,

hands on your thighs, feet planted, spine stiff,

shoulders rigid, stoic—some kind of anti-Buddha

immune to your community dancing around you,

celebrating independence, interdependence,

honoring the gifts of Carlos Santana, brilliant

Mexican immigrant whose musical descendants

ended the evening smoothly crooning,

“You’ve got to change your evil ways, baby”

Did you notice it tap, your toe, did you feel

your simple cells—mutinous—trying to move you?

Enjoy this article on Santana adopting Puente’s “Oye Como Va.”

Also, here is another article that examines the lyrics and term, “Mulata,” in the original and evolving cultural context of this song.