ANTHOLOGIZED

Update 12/9/14: "Wipe-out" from the new M.A.R.S. anthology is the ninth poem on this page and includes the Mavericks painting by Marco Antonio Rosales Shaw that inspired it.

Since I like accessing poems online, and maybe you do too, I've added these eight poems that have appeared in the paper publications shown:

Al’s Frog

Carquinez Waterfront Lunch

Glassblower

In the Portland Airport

Leaving Sweet City

Tsundoku

Weather Watch

Welcomed Back

Wipe-out

AL'S FROG

after seeing An Inconvenient Truth

Walls and furniture emanate heat, as if just pressed

by a hot iron; yet the sun set hours ago. Unlit candles

melt in abalone shells, pooling like small oceans.

Plants wilt as the ticking fridge tries to freeze the ice

I need. My Brita pitcher filters faucet water, running

tepid from the cold spigot. Two fans blow oven air.

The bay breeze we count on is down for the count.

This is northern California, not the sizzling Las Vegas

I left 17 summers ago, assured by my about-to-be

husband, "We have no more than ten hot days a year

here," a happy truth then, well before Al Gore's graphs

showing heat's inconvenient momentum. Tonight

I am the frog, waiting for Al's hand to reach in

and rescue me from a rising pool of perspiration.

(Peter Bray’s Taproot, March 2007)

CARQUINEZ WATERFRONT LUNCH

I enter our booth, succumb to its spell --

morning weariness lightens and leaves.

The strait’s pillowed whitecaps jostle and swell,

sloshing sex in a temperate breeze.

While waiting for you, I watch a bird preen.

His beak tweaks slick feathers apart.

He works on himself. He looks very clean.

Soft neck fluff blows back. He departs.

A shiver of waves makes the salt surface jump.

The bay bird recedes in an uplift of wind.

You tousle my hair as you slide in for lunch.

Goose bumps rise. Your eyes smile. We begin.

(Benicia’s Every First Tuesday Anthology 2006)

GLASSBLOWER

The glassblower stoops over

his long pipe's glob

of hot molasses glass

that looks ready to drip

and it does

into a bucket

in front of

his orange cavern,

an oven so blazingly fired,

sunglasses or shades are required.

I squint behind my tinted lenses,

amazed as he rolls what's left into a vase,

an upside-down red bell

kept at massive, hell-like temperatures

of more than two thousand degrees.

The glowing flows

from the blowing artist.

Carpal-tunneled by drawn-out days

at his trade, he twirls and spins

his long, slender, bulb-tipped pipe.

Neither sclerotic nor inflamed

by heat and use,

it receives his breath.

A second later the hollow wand emits

a fresh sample of his dazzling craft

in the beautifully colored glass

that he briskly cuts from his tubular shaft

and stores in his oven

to cool by degrees over days

like glistening, unbroken bread

created in heaven.

(Crockett Signal, March 2002)

IN THE PORTLAND AIRPORT

It’s a body that wants nourishment.

It’s a mind that chooses chocolate.

It’s a tongue that caresses a candy bar.

It’s eyes that check the calorie count.

It’s fingers that break off the fourth bite

when only one was intended.

It’s a man in the chair to my left that looks up,

then quickly down, offended.

It’s a couple to my right so connected

that their profiled eyebrows are one long curvy dark line

like the chocolate going down my gullet near my spine.

It’s his hand under the dark hair at the nape of her neck giving me

chills

in a shudder of pleasure remembered.

It’s a security guy pulling five empty wheelchairs tethered, supine,

as I get up to go through the X-ray machine,

stand in line,

and wonder which sins will be exposed this time.

(Crazy Child Scribbler, 2002)

LEAVING SWEET CITY

We exit Crockett like ants

on a pulled taffy onramp.

Scurrying up the curve to I-80 West,

we could be ensconced

in a Wayne Thiebaud sweet,

tracing the swirl

of one of his lollipops,

but where the cliffside blacktop

of Vista del Rio Street

meets the Carquinez hills

and their sparse splatter

of country abodes,

the angle is so impossible

that I’m in a landscape painting,

eyes scaling

a "Leaving Crockett" canvas,

also by Thiebaud.

(Benicia’s Every First Tuesday anthology, 2006, and Crockett Signal, Issue 342, November 2020)

TSUNDOKU

Too many books,

newspapers, and magazines,

purchased or subscribed to

that one day very soon

I intend to read or reread,

have a name in Japanese:

tsundoku.

Neatly filed on living room shelves,

spread out on kitchen table and chairs,

lying beside the bed, or piled behind a door,

these objects taunt me.

Will I get to them when not grabbed

by the latest fad

on the screen of my desktop or iPad?

Not if the genes that I deplore

compel me to ignore

reams of print

already paid for

while I shop at a digital store

for more.

(A Word for All Seasons, Anthology 5, Benicia First Tuesday Poets, 2014; February 2021 Crockett Signal)

WEATHER WATCH

On one of those freaky afternoons

where weather is everywhere,

and everywhere not the same,

sun shines through a profile

of cloud, a yellow eye

watching the rain.

One downpour asks for notice

and gets a clap of thunder,

unaware of nearby competition,

or is it a form of cooperation?

Sun and rain choreograph a collision

of white light against wet slate

while another part of the Carquinez Strait

nonchalantly meanders under mist

as if its surroundings were always like this.

(Benicia’s Windows & Skylights anthology, 2010)

WELCOMED BACK

So happy

are my plants to see me

that they green

before I water them.

The photographed faces

on the fridge smile wider,

and after a shower

that calibrates its pressure

and temperature

to suit me,

the bed arranges its silky

pillows to greet me.

The next morning

both slices of bread

somersault from the toaster,

and the scrambled eggs

fluff their salty selves and gleam.

I am welcomed back from my getaway

by everything in the apartment

we shared

before you crossed

into death.

Your absence in the midst

of such dot-and-dash bliss

is like Morse code for what I wish

were here, not lost. You

are what I most miss.

(From Benicia with Love, Accent Digital Publishing, 2013, Producer/Editor: Don Peery)

WIPE-OUT

after Mavericks by Marco Antonio Rosales Shaw

On our beach walk, master,

when I escaped you

and leapt leashless into

a tumbling tent of water,

a shock of salt spray

invaded me, and a stray

shark grayed my world

to dark disaster.

In a barking din

my life was undone.

You witnessed

the wipe-out

of my canine self

that was for both of us

a wrenching departure.

Alone, left spent

and stunned,

you can’t know

that my soul

has already begun

another lent life.

This time I’ll be smaller.

A kitten in welcoming sun,

I've just arrived

as part of a feline litter

whose owner lives inland

on a grand estate

you might appreciate,

even though

it's far from water.