Hang On To Those Bags!

Kate Campbell

MODESTY
      (For Ashley’s 13th Birthday)
—Kate Campbell, Sacramento

My mother kept buds on rose bushes in her front yard.
She snipped and sprayed, planted sweet alyssum
at their feet, and never gathered a bouquet.

Considering that a waste, when I grew up
I picked buds in their prime and put them in
a vase on the window sill above my sink.

She told me I was wrong to take the sweet,
tight buds from my yard and press them into
service for my own selfish whims.

My mother said she liked to watch her buds open
in the sun, spread into full bloom, because
unfolding is the purpose of a rose.

Buds are like young girls, I said, just before their
first period, pink and curled, innocent of the
push to womanhood that will come.

I told her I could not stand fragrant virginity,
waving vulgarly at strangers on the street.
I cut buds for the sake of modesty.

Before spent blooms formed knobby hips,
my mother would slice them cleanly from their
thorny stems. She said roses like it rough for
flowering and I shouldn’t fear for the vulnerable.

_____________________

Thanks, Kate! Kate Campbell is a journalist, photographer, editor and creative writer. She grew up in San Francisco, but has lived throughout California and the West. She is the single mother of two sons and has supported her family for more than 30 years through her writing and art. She is the recipient of many awards for writing and reporting. Her work has appeared in major daily newspapers and in regional magazines. Her photography has been widely published and exhibited. She lives in Sacramento and is grudgingly coming to grips with the clay soil in her garden and the ever-present dust on her furniture. See more of Kate's work in the current issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF, available free at The Book Collector in Sacramento.

_____________________

MY COUNTING BONES
—Kate Campbell

I’m always there, tough and chewy,
gristle against the bone, narrow eyes
trained for radial sight, seeing all—
the spittle spray, salsa dribble down
your clothes, hanging threads, runny
nose, dangling hairs from frayed lapels,
scabby ankles in torn hose.

I watch you floundering in the foam,
you who cannot swim. I find pleasure
in your struggle, smirk, stroke the notches
of my sternum, as you’re sucked into the
hole, where my righteousness need not go.

You see the surface of my face, my very
skin and bones. From my outward glinting
light you think you guess my turn of mind,
the workings of my soul.

You do not get too deep with me, down
to where my judgment makes its bones,
where your every flaw is analyzed
and cataloged, tallied against my norm.

I’m always watching with my lizard eyes,
smiling, licking my teeth, cracking my knuckles,
popping my back, clacking my ivory bones
like dominoes and keeping score.

______________________

KEEP YOUR BAGGAGE
—Kate Campbell

Due to moments beyond our
control, your life is not secure.
White zones are for loading
and unloading passengers.
Unattended vehicles will be
Towed without notice.

This is a security announcement:
Keep your bags with you at all times.
Report all suspicious activities.
Use the white security phones.

No scissors,
no clippers,
no lighters,
no knives
allowed.

Talking about bombs is not a joke,
it’s a federal crime. You will be
prosecuted. Have your ID ready.

Shoes off.
Step forward.
Arms up.
Arms down.
Please exit.

Now loading at Gate 14A,
show your boarding pass.
Find a seat, enjoy
100-calorie snack packs.
Cocktails $4 and we’ll
keep the change.

Put trays in the upright, locked position.
Turn off electronic devices.
Don’t stand in the forward portion
of the aircraft. Fasten seat belts.

El asiento es para flotar,
use for a water landing.

Flying on September 11, waiting, bottoms
cupped in plastic seats, legs cross, uncross.
News headlines offer: “Seared Memories,”
“3,000 lives lost and all we’ve got is a hole in the ground.”

Names of the dead read out loud. Drop by drop,
on airport monitors. Crying kids, wilted flowers, bells toll,
rain spatters. Cross winds. Rough landing.
Welcome to Baltimore!

Check overhead bins.
Take all your belongings.
Women and children first.

Don’t push.
Don’t shove.
Don’t forget your umbrellas.

We know you have many choices
when you fly. Thanks for choosing us.
Have a nice day and see you—next time.

This is a security announcement:
White zones are for the loading
and unloading of passengers.
Keep your bags with you at all times.

_____________________

FIGHT WITH FALL
—Kate Campbell

The waffle press of summer heat
crisped the edges in my yard. Now
singed leaves dangle and drop,
on syrupy breezes. Parched
blossoms shrivel and withdraw.

I watch sweet summer turn to fall
From my kitchen window,
Above the steam of washing dishes,
I sense the season’s battle draw.

Powdery mildew chokes Mexican sage,
Its purple flowers defeated. Fruit
rats raid my pomegranate tree, gnaw
tough flesh to suck hot, red juice.

Mushrooms push aside green blades
of grass, sprout fleshy helmets filled with
spores. Puffs on dandelions release
dainty bombs for next year’s scourge

while aphids huddle on the cherry tree.
They pucker leaves, damp the shoots.
Tent caterpillars set up in the oranges,
prepare for winter's siege.

Soldier ants begin to march, wild grapes
tighten their grip and berry canes, they
brandish thorns. Wild grasses spread evil
seed to ambush spring—when it arrives.

Insidious, deceitful season.
Cusp of death on velvet breeze,
transition on an egg-dried fork.
I scrub the tines, hungry for this garden fight.
I fling wide my kitchen door, gird myself with
rubber gloves, spray gun by my side,
spoiling for a fight with fall.

______________________

i don’ like my dad
—Kate Campbell

From a child’s lost homework
found in the bushes in my front yard:

i’m malaysia, malaysia malone, an
i don’ like when my dad don’ call
to see if we’re doin’ good in school.

my dad he gived me my name,
he said i’m smooth like china sea
but he hurts my feelin’s a lot.
my dad is a dead b dad.

on fridays he don’ call.
fridays is the day my dad’s
sposed to come, but
he don’ no more.

my sister, we sit outside.
we wait. we tie kicks. we sing songs.
i’m almost six. my dad don’ come
no more.

my dad make me feel like i don’
wanna to talk to my dad no more.

my mom she yell. she say
my daddy a fool. i don’ know
bout that stuff. bout how he
do his time and mess with
rocks an other wimens.

i don’ like when my dad
don’ want me and my sister.
she’s burmese.
she’s littler an me.
my dad he’d say she
Burmese if y’all please.
he squeezed her knees.

i don’ like when my dad
don’ want us in his house.
i don’ like when my
dad don’ have a house.

i don’ like when
i don’ like my dad.

______________________

FULLY FLEDGED
—Kate Campbell

Four walls could not hold you,
         could not keep you in the nest.
                 You walked away and left us,
                            your room a major mess.

The door is closed, like my heart
         but sometimes, it opens, just a crack.
                 The smell of you is there, your dirty
                            clothes piled on a chair, waiting.

Run-down sneakers, baseball cards,
         twisted gum wrappers on the floor,
                 posters of Al Pacino and Bob Marley,
                            guardians of memories behind the door.

Things of your childhood clutter
        the room from which you fledged
                 and I go in sometimes to feel the
                            downy feathers shed before your flight.

______________________

MOURNING FROST
—Kate Campbell

In morning frost before coffee brews
and orange trees warm their blossoms
we speak of Nisei, of generations come to stay
in a land breathing bees and broccoli, analyze

red cherries and parasols, the whole empire,
before breakfast, before sun. And whisper
the pebbled patio smooth with talk about
implied racism, about Enola Gay, about the day

and we resolve this glimpse of war that blasted our
morning with memories of scorched seeds, burnt skin,
powdered bones, seared fields, a target selected for
maximum cruelty, to force a nation’s surrender

and, we part then to speak no more of Hiroshima,
a quarter million people gone, while here our Nisei
farmers had tilled fields and suffered internment.
Such a bitter taste this mourning frost.

_______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

...inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

—Brenda Ueland

______________________

—Medusa

Photo by D.R. Wagner

Smooth Stone, Beating Heart

Maggie Frost read at the open mic at 

Red Night Poetry last night in Sacramento

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

[for more photos from last night, see

the Medusa's Kitchen on Facebook]

family album
—Charles Mariano, Sacramento

dysfunction
is this generation’s
most overused word
and black sheep
covers
just about all of us

when prompted
recently
to express glowing memories
glossy photos
or faded
black and whites,

i found fields of cactus,
not flowers,

no one escapes
the evil eye

so i’m not surprised
that the word, dysfunction,
in our family,
starts at the top

grandpa Augustine
flatout kidnapped, raped
grandma Socorro
at thirteen

made her his slave,
a baby-making machine,
then beat the hell outta her
daily

not saying
he was the devil
in coke-bottle glasses,
he had plenty company,

just don’t go digging up
my backyard

______________________

EVERYBODY’S DOING IT

and I don’t mean the Turkey Trot
said the old lady to her grandson
unless you’re talking about Wild Turkey
and I’ve had a nip or two of that
in my time

my son’s in rehab
your brother’s in rehab
my father died before he could go
to rehab
my two grandfathers should have been
in rehab

then there was old Grandpa Charlie
who was arrested for public drunkenness
in 1792
he wrote in his Bible margin
I will drink abroad no more
so from then on
he did all his drinking at home
enhanced his fortune
by selling booze created from
his corn patch
up there in the hills

oh, the old lady added,
he lived to the age of 90!


—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

_____________________

OUTRUNNING THE ALBATROSS
—Katy Brown, Davis

The weekend sailor squandered
his eyesight in dimly-lit workrooms—
moving other men’s money to make even more.
He’d rather have spent years on the ocean
sooner than sailing his desk in the corner.

The high-rolling men in his office
made fun of him. He was too cautious
for them to respect. He wasn’t a gambler;
he wasn’t a player; he just didn’t fit
with the country club set. They gave him
a luncheon, a watch, and a pension—
not nearly enough for all that he’d done.
Now, he sails in his dingy out on tame water,
keeps watch for the albatross following him.

______________________

REFLECTED LIGHT
—Katy Brown

Fading snapshot of a birthday party
on the back patio: Aunt Mary, proud
of her cake—a ring of squirming children,
blurred in motion—and Uncle Johnny,
looking away.

The camera caught him
visiting the past, again.
His was not the War To End All War;
he landed at Normandy for the next one.

There were so many who
did not come back—either time.
They were buried in reflected light, in stands
of yew and hemlock. They were
other children’s uncles, other parents’ sons.
Johnny brought them home with him.
He brought a few to every party.

Every time children laughed, every time
we lit candles, my uncle called them forth.
Summoned by this haunted man, his
fallen comrades appeared as flares of sunlight
or shadows no one could recall.

My family’s snapshots are full of memories:
events and places in the past—
some farther away than any of us could remember.

_____________________

MINER'S LIGHT
                for John Harris (1820-1884)
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Every morning he lined up with the others,
pasty in his lunch-box, Cornish hard-rock miner
trading daylight for small coin; breaking mountains
from the inside. Candles nooked along the tunnel
walls, but the God of Gloom was boss.

He survived by mining words—verse written
on grocery wrappers, or scratched on rock.
Words that rang in cadence to the work.

At last he climbed back up and kept on walking—
into the God of Light's halls all open-air.
Winds unwinding into sails, flowers splitting
crevices of rock; birdsong. He wrote
the words in whatever language they're sung.

____________________

WONDERLAND OF ROCKS
—Taylor Graham

Waking up far away from everything
familiar—5 a.m., a maze of sandy draws
through heaps of sandstone boulders.

Sun just coming up. And looking down
at me from a cliff-top, Bighorn
ram, spiral horns translucent, dawn-lit.

No camera, no photographic proof.
Call it a dream. How could I transcribe
the wild language of his eye?

____________________

BREAKING THE MOUNTAIN
—Taylor Graham

Seven thousand years since Noah's flood—
but who knows the time-line for
world's end? Maria's mother, formed
of the very cement of this place,
and almost as old as Noah, believes
the end will come when Dove Mountain
is no more. The cement company
worked on it for a long time. What's left
of the mountain stands like a half-
bulldozed Ararat. Maria's neighbor
(whose husband's out of work
since the plant shut down) sold her home.
No, she let the bank foreclose.
Who needs a house after world's end?
Cement-works gone, wind and rain
will have their say. Still, the half-
mountain stands, a stub on the horizon.
Monument to what man does.
Standing as long as the world stands.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

THE PERFECT POEM
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

In the perfect poem there are no seams.
Each word flows effortlessly
Into the poem and carries the meaning
Smoothly with great refinement,
Polished, surfaces of such stability
That all parts are invisible
As if it had always been this way,

As if there were no matrix, only
A simple fusion of language
And meaning delivered to us
As a perfectly smooth stone
Might be, a perfectly smooth
stone, with a beating heart.

______________________ 

—Medusa

 Photo by Katy Brown

Out Of The Swamp-Jell

Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

WATER PLANET
(from Berkeley Hills)
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole

Light years ago
land mass anchored cells
which evolved from
swamp-jell, chance
and circumstance:

homo sapiens
gifted with a thumb
a reasoning brain
reached out,
took hold, held on

made temples,
constitutions, war,
mansions, shanties,
zoos and laws, built
churches and jails...

We lie on a hilltop,
watch cloud-islands
move together
and apart
on the ocean we float upon
mere moments.

______________________

LET THE FAMILY ALBUM SIGNIFY A PARTHENON
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Delicately you slipped one slim photo
free of the family album, one vignette

glittering like albumen silver, heirloom
photo varnished by surrendering decades.

And it’s here on your fingertips: you hold it
up for me to admire. If Praxiteles could see

you, bride of the white skirts leaning cheeksoft
into my shoulder, he’d never carve ivory-and-gold

Athena the old way. Long spine. A bit lofty
for us demotics? Imperial postures!

Where’s a goddess approachable enough
we may proffer her a brimming fig basket?

Charred meat smoke! Lend me your
slender bend and we will sculpt a new statue

in the parthenon of lightly scented brides,
your temple Doric with pillars of applewood,

the boughs still fruit-bent upon them.

______________________

RELATIVE TO THE SPEED OF THE PAST
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

My mother’s twin brother was killed
At Normandy Beach while hanging
A telephone line from a pole. Never
Saw it coming. Came back in the
Late summer. The funeral was at home.

He was a handsome man, young and
Beautiful with a kind voice and a bright
Future. There were so many who did
Not come back. Every small town had
Some kind of board listing their dead sons.

Faster than that his nephews and nieces
Were growing old and laughing at how
They looked in the nineteen sixties, how
Long their hair was, how idealistic they were.

Even younger, their children are showing
Off their new babies and are being fussed
Over by relatives. There is still a war. It
Is much more informal these days. No

Boards with names on them in elementary
Schools. Now there are national monuments
With names on them. One must go to Washington
D.C. or the state capitol to see who these people were.
They still gave the same thing as their relatives,
Their lives. It isn’t legal, or barely so, to show
The boxes of the dead coming home.

The speed of the past is wildly furious.
Soon it will be lost again as it always is.
Soon we will stand in the fields of dead
And not one name will carry us away.
We will know nothing once again, implicitly.

______________________

FRONT STEPS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

In this old photo, 1959, Mom
is smiling, but I'll bet she can't wait
to get back to the kitchen and her
new aluminum mixing bowl.
Cousin Émile looks like he just
stepped off the night-train
from Paris, with one small suitcase
and packed with a change
of English.
Dad may be guessing dinner—
red snapper a la Veracruzana?—
can't hold a flashlight
to fresh-caught rainbow trout.
I'm improvising from some poet:
a secret spot above
a hemlock trail, full moon
to hide hills and woods, the river,
and the heaven in pure, reflected
light. What the camera
caught is the four of us, lined up
staring at the lens,
thought-worlds apart.

____________________

CURIOSITY
—Taylor Graham

Cousin Jim, who's worked
at JPL forever, sends me news
of Spirit rover, and today, Curiosity.
Will it get off the launch-pad
and land safe on Mars?
What will it discover there?
Human curiosity, to find out things
we didn't know before.
This curious family I come from.
Curious: rooted in “care,” fastidious/
accurate (as in scientific?) and
nosy. Ben Franklin used his cache
of curiosities to get him invited
to fine houses. This rover, a little bit
like Ben, knocking at exclusive
doors. Curiosity might ask
the red planet, “anybody home?”
Now, this Curiosity has my name
on it; Cousin Jim's got me
on a micro-chip to Mars.
I'm curious to know who's there
to read it.

____________________

CHECKPOINTS: Mid-June, 2010
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

Never seen
he never made it
into the part of the red-brown
must-pollinated photo album
we kids were allowed to see.

Great Great Uncle Percy
on Mom's side
had to moved from Missouri
and Arkansas
simultaneously and rapidly
since he took one wife
and then another
going from north to south.

Would have probably hit Louisiana next
if John L
the vigilant legal man
was not hounding
Percy's clodhoppered steps
and after that
maybe three in Texas
such a big state you know.

The olden adults
always seemed
to bring him up
those stolid nurses,
secretaries, newspaper men
and auto workers
while we kids
found his escapades
disgusting—
oldens talking
about sex
in any permutation
was pariah to us.

And it still is
when I mention him
to my youngens
especially the twin boys,
Derek and Dominic.

"Goin' be heart-breakers
those two,"
Aunt Druscilla
at ninety
told me nearly a year ago.

"For their sakes, I hope not" I replied,
after putting down the laser-hot pen
after sealing the envelope
cradling the fifth child support payment.

_____________________

UNCLE PRUFROCK & ME
—Kevin Jones, Fair Oaks

There were two black sheep
In my family.
One was Uncle Prufrock
(Changed his name when
He decided to be a writer),
Who once actually sold
A script to Sanford & Son,
Who probably bought it
Just so he’d go away.

He did. Bought a beret
And a penile implant,
Left his wife and went
To Paris, France.

First night there,
He got rolled, robbed
And stripped (Left him
His beret though).

Turned up at the
American embassy
The next morning.
Marine guards
Wondering why
This naked man
In the black hat
Was so happy
To see them.

They gave him clothes,
And a trip home. His
Wife took him back,
And he never wandered
Quite so far again.

The other black sheep?
Me.
For telling his story.

_______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Wild peonies
Now at their peak in glorious full bloom:
Too precious to pick
Too precious not to pick.

                    —Ryokan

_______________________

—Medusa (with thanks to today's contributors, including Pat Pashby for the LittleNip. This week we're talking about your "Family Album", but send poems and pix on ANY subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 726, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline on SOWs.)

And be sure to check Medusa's Kitchen on Facebook for our latest album, "The Last Round-Up", featuring Katy Brown's pix of our last rattle-read one week ago today.

Pinata Festival, 2011

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

What If Someone Changes The Arrow?

Path of Light

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

THE ARROW HOUSE
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

They live in the arrow house. They have
pointy ways. When you come up their walk
you follow the chalk-drawn arrows
around the wet lawn to the door.

Their eyes smile in arrows;
framed arrows point down to chairs;
a furry one leads to the closet;
a dark hallway one to the bathroom door.

On the polished end tables,
suggestions of arrows stare at ashtrays
and coasters. Their rug is a large coiled oval
to center the conversation.

Nothing can confuse them;
they have put two diagonal barbs
on the end of every straight line
to mark every instance of themselves.

On the days of the calendar
they have made a tour of their lives
with little midnight arrows
making precise divisions between the days.

Never make jokes to them about getting lost
or taking little impulsive detours.
They would be offended—
these have no arrows.

_____________________

DIRECTION
—Joyce Odam

We would make trip after trip
in the wrong direction;
no one would be waiting;
we would not write home.

We would make trip after trip
for somewhere else to be—never
finding. Here we are—in a place
among places. Where are we?


first published in Lines Against Death
(Mini-Chap) by Joyce Odam

_____________________

FERAL
—Joyce Odam

the midnight cat slinks
through the yellow moonlight
trailing its enormous shadow
                ~
the white fence gleams
where the lane curves
the stars inspect the gravel
                ~
the late night warns
the sounds crunch
the slow moon loses its yellow
                ~
night smudges its dark,
rustles its leaves,
muffles the sounds that follow
                ~
the hushed leaves listen
the cat returns
dragging its ragged shadow

______________________

TO BE SET ADRIFT
—Joyce Odam

To be set adrift in the boat,
the water lapping at the sides
and the companion sitting at the other end
comparing me all this time to its own silence . . .

and the thought of land, and the thought of sky,
and the turbulent depth—and to learn the motion
and sense of direction, and learn the patience
it takes, and never ask where we are going.

______________________

JUST WHERE THE WISH LIES
—Joyce Odam

in the shallow well
with all the bright pennies
and nickels
all year
with the laughter of sunlight
and the glower of winter shadows
the wish lies
with its potential
with its curious direction
and is
or is not granted

______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

THE TAMPERING OF DIRECTION
—Joyce Odam

What if
someone changes
the arrow—stealing our
direction, while we ask, Which way?
Which way?

(first published in Poets Forum Magazine)

______________________

—Medusa

Our Seed of the Week is "Family Album". 

What's in YOUR family album? Uncle Ed the horse thief? 

Crystal, who had an abortion at 15? 

You, with your quirky poet's ways? 

Send your poems about your family album to 

kathykieth@hotmail.com or 

P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. 

No deadline on SOWs.

The Lions Cough

Pat Grizzell: Every poet needs a booklight!

(Pat will be reading at Red Night Poetry

this coming Wed., June 15. See Medusa's

Bulletin Board for details!)
—Photo by Trina Drotar, Sacramento

WHO SAYS?
—Dillon Shaw, Davis

Who says the key to happiness?
                                Is success
I've never seen a warlord
                                happier
than a stoner
Who says the key to happiness?
                                Is wealth
I've seen lovers who have
                                everything
in each other
Who says the key to happiness?
                                Is love
I've never seen anything
Hurt
as much as
                      love
Who says the key to happiness?
                                Is knowledge
It certainly wasn't anyone
                                who has
it
Who says the key to happiness?
                                Is happiness
I feel quite content with my
misery

____________________

DREAM ROMANCE
—Dillon Shaw

I'm dreaming of a girl
I
            kissed
                        once
                        in
            another
dream
and I'm! Ambushed
by a girl I do not know
who
            kisses
                        me
                        and
            holds
me                   what
                        is
                        her
                        name?
And I see my love and I kiss her
I tell her          “        I        ”
                       love her
and she says  “no no               ”
                       you're doing it
                       all wrong
her lover appears and says
           “these”
           walls
           are
           paper
           thin
           you
           know                “sorry”
she says
and
they kiss

_______________________

MAYBE MORE POLITICAL THAN POETICAL
(A Trilogy)
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento


The Economy

We were in a new town
called Prosperity, USA
so we hailed a cab
and the taxi driver
took the longer route
and made some wrong turns
all for his own benefit.

Now we are trying to
get back to Status Quo
back to where we can
once again see a balanced budget
and we have a new driver…
will he get us there?

                  ***

The Election

Our problems are portrayed
as open wounds demanding
instantaneous, direct action.

The candidates line up like
a lynch mob:
results now, justify later
cut out the cancerous tumor
spontaneous gratification
long live the industrial titans

People are disposable…
as long as the numbers balance.

                ***

Moving On

It is the bitter, gritty pain
of a felony hit and run.

Bury the dead and move on
dismissed with the cavalier air
of dealing a new hand of solitaire.

Inspired to start over…
emboldened by the promise
of better cards.

______________________

BREAKING MOUNTAINS:
Trinity County, 1900
—Katy Brown, Davis

My grandfather rode the ore bucket up the side
of Callahan Mountain. He’d set the charge, then run
to save his life back down the narrow trail.
His job: to bring the mountain down; to blast
the rock—to unlock gold from quartz—and live.
He loved the risk, the high-stakes game with death.
When I was small, I couldn’t picture this:
the bowlegged Irishman with thinning hair
and boxer’s nose from far too many fights.
A smallish man with gravel in his voice.
One gold nugget locked in quartz was all
he kept to mark those days he played with death.
When mining barons stripped the land and thrived
my grandfather broke mountains and survived.


[Katy Brown writes: "The miner in Taylor's poem sparked memories of stories about my grandfather. My grandfather and grandmother were married back in the 1890s. My mom was born in 1908 and spent time with her grandparents (my grandmother's family) on a huge, remote cattle ranch in Trinity county. (This is partly why the wagon train was so impressive to me the other day.) When my mother was little, my grandfather apparently worked for a mining company and blasted ore for processing. One day my mother snuck up the trail to see what he was doing and nearly got blown up at the top when the charge went off. When she didn't actually die from the blast, my grandfather wanted to kill her for putting several of them at risk to save her. They put her in the bucket to ride back down the mountain (which was all she really wanted, anyway)."]

_____________________

A CHRONICLE OF BIRDS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Her journal is a journey of flight and song.
Glossy Ibis in a salt marsh, Cedar Waxwing
in conifers. Oak Titmouse. By cliff-
dweller ruins, she might have listened
for Anasazi ghosts in the high chambers
of sandstone and mud; but what she recorded
was Gray-crowned Rosy Finch. Life
is not the bone, but the feather, moving trace
of hawk (Northern Harrier) across her
vision. Eyesight migratory as ancient peoples,
as birds. A closing and opening.
Turning of journal pages where she might see
Red-shafted Flicker or a floater (species:
Retinal Detachment). Sight is not forever.
Birds fly, as she will, specks in the great Eye.

_____________________

SAILING: HANDLING THE ROYALS*
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

Tonight you are in my heart.
I can feel you inside me
Touching the walls as they expand and contract.
And you will take my dreams,

Bending the fetters that bind them.
They have taken the ladder and lowered
It down to where you are
But you are not interested in relieving yourself
With a higher view.

The lions cough from the cliffs.
The driest of winds unwinds like a snake
Into deserts of sand. The storm
Lasts for days, the “darkness
That can be felt” obscures everything.

They bring the children out to the cemetery
To watch the dead men move from their deep confines.
There are parades of them.
Birds in the air tumble over one
Another, exclaiming as they would
At a fire or the shaking of the earth.

The treasures are uncovered.
My heart has its own fossils.
There is a creaking in the masts
As the winds thread the sails
And the sails beg for reefing.

I do not know how long
You will be here. Desperate,
I find my way back to the simple
Things of the day, wash and
Dress myself, extend my hand
To greet someone and pretend
These feelings no longer come
As they do, and they do,
And push myself to see me through.


*a sail generally used in very light breezes;
it is just above the topgallant on square rigged ships.

_____________________

LANDSCAPE WITH BLUE LIGHTS
—D.R. Wagner

I’m not going to watch this.
I’m not going to stand alone.
I’m reaching the edge of town soon
And I can’t recall why I ever came here

And what it looks like
When you’re falling in love.

Everything that I know
Has changed all its clothes.
The places I visit become new
Once again and I can walk
Through them at twilight when
They turn on the lights.
I can see the big wheels
Roll up to the sky where people
Are kissing, where laughter is right,
When it mixes with meaning
When it brings on new life.

I’m seeing you everywhere. I wear
Out your name. Every flower
Has meaning, every tree can explain.

There we are sleeping. Now here
We are gone. I’m living on essence.
I’m drinking up songs.

Here the sounds can expire.
The road still goes on. It’s not
Blacktop or concrete. It’s dirt
Just like me. I’m going to make
Me a fire, rub my horse down
And read. The stars become
Blue lights that twinkle back on.
I think I’ll sit here till morning.
I think I’ll wait till it's gone.

____________________

LULLABIES
—D.R. Wagner

I’m listening to a recording
Of lullabies from foreign
Countries tonight. I’ve decided
To sleep far away from everything
With which I am familiar.

Perhaps I will wake up near
A river I do not know
The name of, or high on a
Mountain with Dall sheep
Looking down at me from
A cliff top.

I will humble myself
Before the music and just
Let it do all the work.
That’s what lullabies are supposed
To do anyway and the voices
Are so sweet, whatever language
In which they are sung.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

THERE IS MORE
—Maggie Frost, Sacramento

There is more to us then the worst act of our lives;
The whole is bigger then the sum—each … one.

To be bitter, to hate, to shrivel up and die inside;
Rather to say no to yes to life to love?

To human spirit—however stained with blood letting;
To focus on the narrow path of love

Not stepping off the path
Where the soft shoulder of hate
Can be so easy.

Focus on doing as this path
Is made by walking … and
Resources come (to you).

Transform the formation
of self … and keep walking.


(Inspired From a Talk by Sister Helen Prejean and her reflections on the film, Dead Man Walking, which occurred at Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento on January 17, 2000.)

_________________________ 

—Medusa

White Sun

—Photo by n.ciano, Davis

Even The Grass

Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

SILENCE AND METAPHOR
—William Bronk

Here is the silence; it is everywhere.
Because it has always been, there is no time.

No need, then, to wait for the time: 

it comes always in the sense it was always here.

Noise is here but never any sound.

We listen for sound; it is as if we were deaf

Under the noise, silence is what we hear:

final, always, wherever. Silence is all.

Grass, I thought to keep you, would have stayed;

and you, trees, water, gone too.

___________________ 

—Medusa

Ghost-Wood

62nd Annual Wagon Train

—Photo by Katy Brown

THE GUIDES
—D.R. Wagner

The guides have all perished.
We must continue on our way
Not knowing so many things:

The names of birds (there seem
To be so many). We continue
To live with them and note their
Songs, their screaming, the way
They grip the branches in the fabric
Of oak and conifers, dart and keen
Their way between light and shadow,
Alone or in great numbers called flocks.

The purpose of so many buildings.
Some fall and crumble releasing ghosts,
Demanding attention in porticos and tired
Arches. Surely something profound
Happened here. There are so many.
They cluster near the rivers and group
themselves in smaller ruins high in
The mountains, announcing disarray.

Mostly, the trails. We will not know
Which of them to take or where
They may lead. Yes, we will leave
Our words to tell the others what
It is we have seen, what our challenges
Have been, but it will mean little and others
May never reach these far places.

Here we will ford the river and proceed
Toward the plains those same guides
Spoke of around the fires we built to keep
The night at bay. What powers there be
Protect us, for we are but specks in the great
Eye that sees all that moves in this dark
Toward what destination, still much unknown.

_____________________

THE RISKY WAY
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Who dares follow a miner into these
old hills? Too near the fall, a miner
after gold. He'll leave the switchback
trail and find a way where goats go
between cliff and drop-off, as the river
grinds below. He'll hear the owl
and never think it calls his name. He'll
outfox the summer for a motherlode.
But even rock goes the way of river,
no matter how much gold it holds.
Don't dare look down from such high
hopes. If that's a boat against the bank,
it's ghost-wood made, and manned
by a spirit waiting in the shade.

_______________________

LIKE THE SHADOW OF A HAWK
—Katy Brown, Davis

Not the transportation homeward;
not our homes or granite workplace;
not achievements or our failures;
not our bones or songs about us;
not the stone they place upon us.
Like the moving trace of hawkflight,
we are shadows on the hillside.

_____________________

DETOUR
—Patricia A. Pashby, Sacramento

Orange cones up ahead.
She takes the long way around—
vineyards, fields freshly planted,
a faded farmhouse.
A brown big-eared hare heads home.

She drives along
sweeping up the loose ends
by the side of the unfamiliar road.
Quietude replaces anxiety,
creativity replaces fragmentation.
But how do you fuel the sun
or feed the wind or hug the stars?

_____________________

ILL CITY
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

Here I am
dressed like
a preppy
gone to extreme,
blue/white saddle shoes
blue blazer and light blue dress shirt
beige pleated slacks,
navy blue socks

just to avoid
the supervisor's eye
of cold comfort
and disapproval.

The real me
is atop
the hill with jacarandas
pepper trees
and old WW II era bunkers
where illicity
occurs quite naturally.

An ercued crane
sails by
having a whopping
grand time.

The yellow and blue
subtle-patterned tie
holds me down
a gravity both earth
and fabric
unflinchingly evoke
to all
but what
goes on inside
in spite of Newton
and Archimedes.


(This poem was posted yesterday, but the last line was inadvertently left off. Sorry, Michael!)

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Any idea, person or object can be a Medicine Wheel, a mirror for man. The tiniest flower can be such a mirror, as can a wolf, a story, a touch, a religion, or a mountaintop.

—Hyemeyohsts Storm

_____________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Katy Brown

[For more of Katy's photos of the Wagon Train,

go to "Medusa's Kitchen" on Facebook]