lifting

Color gets better with age. Someone said that some time last autumn -- I wrote it in the cheater's notebook I carry almost every where I go.

It was with me way back when my father found it easy to talk while driving the gravel roads. We were on the road to Sullivan, a place no longer on the map. He thought if he drove his children there we'd remember the way even though it's gone. But, along the way: there, a red barn in a grove of trees--once an opera house for the orphans growing up in a remote Montana valley.  I am barely amazed, one of us had murmured.

Of course this would be where our great-grandmother grew up. Such verve, such resiliency. Back in the frontier days, when men lost their wives, their children were sent to this orphanage. Wasn't she the one, we asked after heading back to town, who wore purple and orange together when all the other grandmothers were wearing black?

Was she the one, I wonder now, who told us whenever you've got something to say-- say it red. (?) My first lifted quote.

three tracks

Once you know the back roads, you don't have to read the newspaper. He tells me this as we drive along a washboard road. We are not on our way to watch the  Bald Eagles return to the stream to feast on Kokanee Salmon. It's spawning season, the newspaper reports, a great time to spot a large gathering of Bald Eagles. 

But he knows a far-off meadow and how to park so the sun can't cause reflections. And we both know how to fall quiet.

Alongside us -- miles of barbed-wire fencing. Every six feet, the wire is stapled to the short trunk of sagebrush or juniper. And up ahead, soaking up the sun are six teenaged Bald Eagles roosting on six different posts.

We watch without breathing. If you think of all the times you've wasted your breath, he whispers, you realize you can breathe in  later.

The eagles spread their wings and we think- oh, they are taking off. But no, they stretch their wings and hold them wingtip to wingtip six times over. A tremor runs through their feathers and finds it way to my sneakers. And the inside of my elbows. Afterwards, he tells me this is the way eagles rid their feathers of mites and other unwanted varmints. The feathers get too hot from the sun, the mites and such find it too unpleasant and escape their feathered hideouts.

**

He knows all the lyrics to Cielito Lindo and would have sung them for her, but she didn't follow him far enough. Down and around the way from where the wide subway platform narrows, a trio of Mexican musicians were taking a smoke break. Had a train come by, it would have been scary business, what with how narrow and dark the passageway was. Elbow to elbow in the confined shadows, he shared a stick of gum with the accordion player. She thought of dark evil and furry creatures and stayed in the safety of the wider platform; he thought Canta y no llores.

Sing, but do not cry.

**

Somehow my mother thinks a bee can fly 5,280 miles in one day. This is her answer to the trivia game we are playing at her kitchen table. A grandson challenges us to consider, then, the sound of a bee flying 220 miles per hour. Mom doesn't really think this is possible, but because she's imagined and written it on the whiteboard, she's made it possible for her children and grandchildren to imagine so much more.

One of my brothers fixes a plate of raspberries and yogurt. He can make the shortest bee buzz of all of us. That's because he knows something we don't know, he admits after we declare him victor.

Last fall when the beekeepers were moving their hives from Montana to California for the winter, one of the semi-trucks stopped outside his office. Come outside, the driver hollered. And so my brother did -- just in time to witness the heat wave rising from the back of the flatbed truck. What the . .? he wanted to ask. The driver nodded back. The bees are beating their wings to keep their queen warm. It's a long way to California.

curls

she barely makes a ripple

driving home to work to home.

radio off, eating the same burger king
one dollar special, noting who says
thank you, who says do you want that
in a combo. she wakes she sleeps she stays
on her side of the bed. one pillow dented
one blanket untwisted. when he loves her
he loves her for how easy
she complies, the way she curls and how
she chooses coil over curtsy. he's sure
he understands, thinking coil
as in circled rolls of cinnamon
and brown sugar -- not curry-
comb, bull snake, the rap
of a thirty-thirty.
 
 
 
Previously published by Soundzine. Click here to listen to Kate Connover's powerful reading of this poem.
 
 
**
 
I was going to share this poem yesterday, as my anti-valentine poem. But then, I didn't. It was a lot of fun to write. I love the way Kate Connover read this. (PS- Soundzine published this long before I became its poetry editor.)

juneberry pie warming on the dash

In the ebb and flow of trying to fly back home from Washington, DC a friend sent a link to a news article to read while I waited at Gate 22. Across the ocean and underneath one of the oldest cities in Europe, a network of underground caves holds that city up. It's illegal to crawl around in that depth of centuries-old-murky-history, but there are those who do it anyway.  And why? Because they've discovered that coming to terms with whatever it is underneath the ground you stand on can make you strong.

My connections from Point A to Potential Point B to Possibly Point C to Hometown Point D were scrambled. At one point I had a collection of four different boarding passes, in case Plan B fell through, Delta had arranged for Plan C and D for me. I was beginning to forget what home could feel like.

Home is my solid ground. I should take it with me wherever I go, right?  Home is when a brother sends a text:  Do you have a four-mile walk in you today? 

The weather is blustery when he shows up. Inside the cab of his pickup, the defroster is humming and keeping ice off the windshield. Two red-lidded tupperware bowls are warming on the dash. Juneberry pie from the Hutterrites. For later- after we've finished our brisk walk.

We start out in gopher heaven. Only a few grandfather gophers are out. Between here and there we weave through squirrel country and shallow platters of frozen ponds. Can we find the ice that cracks beneath our step? The ice that gives good glide? And what is this -- a scattering of feathers?

i could not bring myself to take a photo of the fluff.

I stop to examine every find, every feather. My brother has been here before. He doesn't look down; he looks up and points. Ahead and towering over the railroad tracks are the grain elevators. Remember the Murphy kid? - he asks: He shoveled grain in the silos during high school. Murphy wasn't afraid to climb the ladders to the top.

And at the top of the silos are tracks of sticky tape roosting pigeons  get stuck to. The grain company cannot risk having pigeon droppings mixing with the grain. Murphy's job was to collect the pigeons in a cage to be delivered to the trap and shoot club.

But the baby pigeons? My brother pauses and gestures to the downy fluff frozen to the ground near the tip of my boot. Those are their feathers, he says quietly. Baby pigeons cannot fly.

flight

I didn't expect this much space, this much time to myself. I didn't plan to get lost.  My reference point for which way is back home has been missing. Where was the sun when I needed it pointing west? But still and all . . .The geese were a welcome sight.



soundzine issue 12 goes live!

I'm headed to DC early in the morning but wanted to direct your attention to Soundzine's Issue 12 - the first issue with yours truly as the poetry editor.  I hope you have time to stroll through the art-decked halls and stop to listen to each poetry recording. Almost all our poets recorded their poems for us- what a treat! When you listen to the poet read his/her poem, the poem takes on new meaning.

Come on over - click here for fun in poetry, art, and videopoetry!