15 Friday Aug 2014
Machinery grinds, an elevator
descends and comes to a stop;
doors open onto a forest
and a woman gets off; the elevator
goes up and vanishes.
She walks into the forest,
among the oaks, among the sycamores,
taking off her clothes as she goes;
mirrors with ornate frames
hang from the branches,
they don’t show her reflection;
she sings, her voice harmonizing
with the murmur of the stream
and the whisper of the wind
in the trees.
02 Saturday Aug 2014
Tags
Albuquerque, death, dreams, emotions, ice cream, Love, New Mexico
California and Utah, 2009
Photo: Albuquerque, NM, 1948 or 49,
me on far left, Lynelle on far right
My cousin Lynelle was dying,
I heard; remembering when we were children,
her big green eyes, smile sweet,
a bit crooked from a bad delivery,
five years older, so kind
to three-year-old me I thought
she was an angel;
that night I visited her in a dream,
in her hospital room in Utah,
kissed her cheek, told her I loved her;
standing all around, next to the walls,
my mother, Lynelle’s parents,
our grandmother,
Aunt Zulema and Auntie Irene,
all departed years before,
there to welcome, console, help,
I didn’t know which;
later on, Lynelle’s daughter wrote me
that the next day her mother was fading
in and out, but one time
she opened her eyes,
gestured at the empty room,
and told her daughter, as though the time
had come for the highlight of the picnic,
“Get ice cream for everyone!”
03 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Ancient ways, Dreams, Nature, Poetry, Spirituality
Painting by Henri Rousseau, The Dream
Moon in the deepening dusk
awakens a vision of harmony,
each separate thing
part of the whole,
one with nature
and the mystery:
lions, elephant, snake,
bright-feathered birds
unmoving yet vibrant, alive;
plants growing before my eyes,
flowers fed by moonlight;
woman, strong, sensual, gleaming,
listening to the black man
play an endless melody
sent from the stars.
22 Sunday Jun 2014
Tags
Washington. DC, 1945, Los Angeles, CA, 1958
Alameda, CA, 2014
Their clothing, exuberant Technicolor
reds and greens and yellows,
mother, father, three children
boarding a streetcar in San Francisco,
old friends of my parents,
unseen for fifty years
until this dream.
Smiling, laughing, they wave and call to us:
my parents, long-dead, my sister, and me,
all young.
Guilt caught my heart, stopped my breath,
when I heard, age twelve, that their first,
a daughter my age, had died in her crib,
while I had lived. Two more came to them;
the first left behind.
We moved to L. A. that year,
visited them; not a swimmer,
I stood in their small, tree-shadowed
pool and wondered,
unhappy thought of the unloved,
if they hated me for breathing.
But there she was last night,
tartan skirt, red sweater,
taller than the other two,
caught up at last.
20 Friday Jun 2014
Posted in Dreams, Past Lives, Poetry
Two swans glided across the water
and I felt bereft:
my last memory
of a forgotten life.
29 Thursday May 2014
Posted in Dreams, Love, Poetry, Relationships
I banished you from my mind, because you never
came over the bridge anymore. You took
my furniture, even the light
from each room, in my dream this morning
(your eyes looked dead); you said the furniture
would go to our new home,
across the bridge over the water, but you left;
you left and never told me where. A fragile plant,
broken by the hazards
of the world, I hid in a ramshackle greenhouse
among the pots. Then I saw your heart was empty,
bitter, dying, so now I send love
over the water to you, a bridge between our hearts,
(the I Ching says my life and fate are now aligned),
and you bloom, not knowing why.
08 Thursday May 2014
Posted in Dreams
I am tired of being brave, tired
of facing the world with a brave face,
tired of sitting on the throne, carved
from stone, on the small balcony
overlooking the formal garden,
where everyone laughs and talks
as they stroll on gravel pathways.
Today, by my order, the throne
has been turned and now faces
the double doors that lead inside.
The blood on the throne is mine.
My mother harangues me for being
a coward, but I turn away.
A Life in Poems 