—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA
SNIFF-SNUFF-SNUFFLE
We’re making the rounds this morning,
September riffing a cool breeze to autumn.
Loki comes along, riding shotgun.
Last stop, thrift store. I handle stuff,
buy nothing. Back in the car, Loki vacuums
me with her nose, as if she were reading
the newspaper, discovering places
of wild possibility; meeting strangers
by proxy—shoppers and aproned workers—
sniffing traces of hand-me-downs
from closets, attics, generations. History
of plain-view items I’ll never know with my
human nose. A scent-novel full of characters
who live through hundreds of pages—
all collected on my T-shirt, arms, hair, hands.
CAN’T YOU SEE HER?
She’s the one in black shadow
long past midnight, 7 a.m. Upper Broadway
waking to traffic.
She’s the dark where sun’s absorbed
just keeping warm. Equinox dawns are chilly,
though glass-magnified in a shop-door
alcove where she sits unnoticed
unmoving as a mannequin.
Mannequins needn’t eat nor worry
they’ll be rousted out of whatever shelter
they might find, free living-breathing space.
GARDEN DECOR
There among the rows
over the disheveled vines—
tomatoes bird-pecked,
pumpkin gnawed by ground-squirrels—
one disconsolate scarecrow.
STONE HISTORY
They say, before written records of this place,
someone cleared the fields—kidnapped
native stone that pushes up everywhere like bones
of the land—hauled it off to build a house.
When that settler at last shipped out,
or became bones under the hill, someone else
used his house-stones to build a granary
where someone found the scrap of a drawing
lying under scrim of dust and chaff
on granary floor—pencil portrait of a plain-faced
woman, maybe someone’s long-gone mother—
what’s left now among stones.
OVERLAYS
Successions of people lived this land chipping stone to arrowhead, percussion of axe on heartwood, making music of bird-bone whistle and cedar slab, doing laundry-work with that rusty fluter in the farmhouse kitchen, a hang-over from the last century. The property’s mazed with old roads through berry bramble and willow. Here and there, a park bench— modern addition. Behind a shed lies the boneyard—not where the wrong or right people lie under earth, but aboveground scraps of leftover fencing, mis-cut lumber, extra hinges for fixing what goes wrong.
redbud and willow
woven to baskets, willows
erasing the roads
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
Just off the trail, what I missed so many times climbing this hill…. an iron stake almost hidden by summer-dry grass. One of many grave markers made from spokes and rims of old wagons. There’s a number pressed into rusted iron, matching a number in the role of dead; book lost in a fire when the hospital for indigents burned long ago. Iron digits so weathered I can’t make out the number.
rusty iron stake
dark against gold of dead grass
its history hidden
Today’s LittleNip:
RESIDENT, TRANSIENT
—Taylor Graham
Deck frogs, garden frogs,
deer who visit in the night,
bear who leaves black scat,
turkeys who dig under oaks
allow us to live here too.
_____________________
Whispers from the past echo through Taylor Graham’s poems today, and our thanks for that, as she writes about our recent Seed of the Week: Hidden in Plain Sight. (Love those wee frogs who are allowing us to live here, too…)
Wellspring Women’s Writing Group meets today at 11:30am in the Wellspring Women’s Center on 4th Av. in Sacramento. And Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe and Juice Bar meets at 8pm tonight with featured readers and open mic, 1414 16th St., also Sacramento. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Medusa, celebrating the poetry left among the stones...
Gate to the Secret Garden? (Hidden in Plain Sight)
—Photo by Taylor Graham
—Photo by Taylor Graham
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