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Earth Waits

Earth is waiting patiently
To take back
All the minerals
all the fibres
of this body
That were borrowed
On a contract
limited in time.
An arrangement
with the force of gravity
To yield up just enough
to let it rhyme
And move about
within its mighty field
leaving little trace
While earth continues
quietly to rest
Within its calm
embrace.

And meanwhile, air
has silently agreed
To pass through
this funny thing,
the nose
and be drawn
into these stretching lungs
Which then pass on
that precious gas
To mingle once again
with earth
and thus allow
The magic dance of life
to continue
for a space.

And water runs
as is its will
With grace
where it’s allowed.
And fire fuels the dance
to keep the whole dang thing
in spinning motion
While what I may call I
continues in its race
To understand its place
Before earth and water
Air and fire
Let go
of such a notion.

 

 

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A Sip of Wine

Damn! What about
those birds that fly
Through the tops of the palm tree
there in front
of the neighbor’s house
Just at that moment when
The descending afternoon sun
Shines for a moment through
The layer of grey clouds
over the mountains.
How can they glint so golden
Flashing here and there
Through the dark pointed fronds?

It shouldn’t be possible
In this ordinary world
But there it is.
I saw it.

Just like that moment
When my mother,
the teetotaler desceded
from the Jewish schetles,
then having come to the great age
Of ninety six,
Sat before me in the restaurant
By the salt water
of the Pacific
On the opposite side
of the huge country
From all that she had known
for that entire lifetime
On the far side of everything.
The boats of the marina,
Bobbing in the pink water,
And my mother’s cheek
bathed in the warm orange light
Of the setting sun.


She had just asked,
“Can I have a sip
of that lovely white wine
you’re drinking?
It’s glowing with the light.”

And of course I said yes
and she took the glass
offered across the table
And sipped, savoring fully
a moment,
her focus turned within,
her head tipped slightly back
And her dark, crinkled eyes
then suddenly
bright with joy.

Subsiding back into her chair,
With a smile
that transformed the world
her hand still balancing the glass
that had turned into a goblet of
the most exquisite
chartreuse glow
Saying,

“Ah!
What an incredible
burst of flavor
Just there in the cupping
of my tongue!
Like the scent of lemon blossoms
and the taste of warm sun!
I never knew wine could be like that.
I will savor it forever”

Then taking in
a long breath of joy
She looked at me with
The love beyond even
that of a mother for her child
and said,
“There are still wonders
To discover every day,
something new
and extraordinary,
unexpected
Even after all these years
of living on this earth
there are things
I’ve never seen!
There’s reason to live
still another moment
to taste it here together.”

And perhaps
we will continue
for one more breath
Or two
Just to see
another.

 

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The River Walk

Walking along the muddy path

by the sparkling,

flowing river

Boots squelch down

in puddles

that lie in wait for me

like small and

hungry swamps.

 

Water mixed with earth

and brown swirls

left by cows

Trampled by the heavy feet

of hunters after pigs,

and men and women–

skidding now and then

on patches

of that treacherous clay–

after the bright reflections

of their own

inner peace.

 

The river so high in winter

with sun that shows itself

just here and there

in vast surpassing blue

Gleaming through

the darkening clouds

Shining far into

that deep green

massive water

lined with reaching trees.

 

Through all the canals

And waterways,

Weirs and water gates

still direct its flow

Even since abandoned

after those that built

and tended them

Over many hundred years

have wandered off

and left them

to live some other kinds

of lives,

More and more complex.

 

The ingenuity of mills and

The wonders of knowing

how to use the force

of all that flow.

Creating and maintaining;

Streaming human wealth

from that ever-changing river

forging down those mountains.

Lives given to the grinding of grain,

The sawing of logs

And finally

the weaving of cloth.

 

And I am here

seeking forgiveness

From the trees

And finally finding

That it is there

Flowing fast and strong

Through us all

As those humans

who fashioned all this artifice

must have known

In the quiet of their souls,

pretending with their faith

their will would reign supreme

to direct what cannot

ever be turned back,

And will never be denied.

 

And I turn my face

To the force of

All that water

As it batters

Through my walls.

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The Changing Weather

Part One

There is a rain
that falls through air
and lights it
with the glow of water.

It comes everywhere
at some time,
Even in the deserts
Where once
there were oceans
And in the oceans
where once
were green forests.

There is no time.
We know this now.
There is no separation of
molecules one
from another.
There is only some chance
that one of the smallest particles
is present now
In any given notch
in the myriad
of universes.

We know that when we look out
From a window
That it is not a window
outside us
Nor is the outside
not the inside.
We know this.

Feel it!
Practice the feel of it
With every breath you remember
Until the music of it
Vibrates everywhere
All at once.

Part Two

The eggman in the market
who observes his hens
Says they’re now running inside
And outside of their chicken house
With all the changing weather,

With the warm, then the cold
Then the wind, then the rain.

They do not like the rain
On their feathers.
The governments of the world,
he says, are changing
Like the chickens running
in and out
With all this variation
In the weather.

“Governments are driven by the weather
Like the hens”
he says,
In his accented French
of the Occitane.

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Pearl at Butchart Gardens

At the age of ninety-three, her now sparse hair had been dyed metallic-red by accident. Pearl was bent but not broken. Her memory was true only for the years of her childhood and youth in Brooklyn. Everything else came and went like fireflies floating through her mind. But my mother was happy.

She was teaching French to one of the nursing assistants at the Residence. She had the Ph.D. she had never completed and became part of her identity when introduced. “I’m Pearl. I have a PhD. Where did you study? ” The other residents were old, not like here, and had no real intellectual interests. But the staff loved her.

Her mind had slowed and took no more of the flights that had occupied it for so many years. She came to live in the present, without that constant worry of what might come to pass at any moment with the people in her circle of love. She laughed often, a heart-felt gusty laugh that sometimes brought tears to her eyes (and mine). We laughed together like high school friends.

She’d flown three thousand miles across the country with me three years before so I could have her near me. After it had become clear she could no longer live alone in her big house, it was sold and I moved her into the Assisted Living in her town, the place where she had planned to go to be with the people she’d know for over fifty years. But she was no longer capable of living as independently as her younger friends and quickly became isolated and depressed. There were emergency calls to me on the other coast when she became stranded in the Emergency Room or when she wouldn’t believe that she had already been given her medications. I felt powerless to help her.

So I found a place near me where professors and their spouses went when they became too old to manage. They were from another culture than Pearl’s, more nordic than ashkenazic, but I thought she might find like-minded intellectuals. When we walked in the front door of the residence after she’d stayed at our house for the night, she grabbed my arm and tried to forcibly turn me back, whispering loudly, “I can’t stay here! These people are all so old!”

But, they were nice to her there and I could go and visit her often since she was near the office where I went every weekday. I could go catch her when she left the residence on one of her walks “Across town to 42nd Street”. She’d forgotten entirely the middle sixty years of her life and oriented solely to Brooklyn and “The City” where she’d lived for the first thirty odd years of her long life.

Saturdays became “Pearl Day”. In the summer, when we had a market stall selling our vegetables, I’d help my partner set up and start the day. Then I’d hop in my car and drive over to the next town where she lived and we’d spend a few hours together. I took her on little excursions to see the mountains or walk by Puget Sound. She loved the novelty of the Pacific Northwest. “The water! The mountains! We don’t have mountains in Brooklyn!”  We’d have a nice lunch in a restaurant or a picnic in good weather.

But it wasn’t enough for her. She needed more real company, more stimulation. I talked to her about hiring someone to take her on outings. She wouldn’t have it. It was too artificial and too expensive.

Then I had a brain storm. I found a lovely woman who had a business providing services to the elderly. She was charming and smart and funny. I told her about my mother and she was game to work it out. I told her about my little subterfuge.

The next day, I called my mother and told her that I’d found a lovely, recently retired woman who was a bit lonely and wanted to have someone to do things with. It even so happened that she wanted to learn French and was excited when she heard my mother was a former French teacher. My mother consented to meet with her and see if they got along.

They got along famously. Her name was Lyle. Even though I continued to pay her for her time as agreed, they became fast friends. They went to the local museums and events. They could be seen walking arm in arm repeating French phrases together, chatting up museum docents and random people they came across on their slow walks and giggling over the antics of children on the boardwalk by the water,

Her memory was increasingly misty. Much of the time, she thought I was her sister. It became more and more difficult for the staff to manage her medication since she couldn’t remember having been given it just a few minutes before. She insisted she had never traveled and became obsessed by making her first trip to Paris (where she had been two or three times before). She began calling travel agents in town,  trying to book tickets. We talked about the difficulties of a long, long plane trip at her age. “But my mind is clear! I feel good. I feel young!” “Yes,” was my response, “but your body is ninety-three years old. It’s a bit fragile.” I had to go to all the travel agents and ask them, please, not to sell tickets to Pearl. They laughed and agreed. She continued to try.

To assuage her, I told her it might be possible for us to go together if she consented to hire a wheelchair once we were there. She categorically refused on grounds of humiliation. I insisted. She insisted.”Okay, I said. Let’s take a trial trip. We’ll go visit Victoria in British Columbia because I know it well. We’ll stay at a B&B I know and we’ll go to Butchart Gardens”.  She consented. LIttle did I know what was in store.

I booked the ground floor room at the B&B where I’d stayed several times with my partner. It was in a lovely old house in a quiet part of town. The hostess had become a friend.

We drove up to Tsawwassen Ferry Landing in British Columbia and had a wonderful ferry trip to Victoria. She was entranced by the beauty of the islands we passed and by being on a ship on the water.

Once we arrived in Victoria, we had a half hour car trip to the B&B. She was tired and chafed at the seat belt, practically crying like a small child. When we arrived, she was charmed by the owner and we settled into the room. We went out to a nice restaurant and returned for an early bedtime. I was exhausted and after I’d gotten her settled for the night I lay down in my own bed and fell asleep immediately.

I was awoken soon after by the noise of my mother getting out of bed, thinking it was morning. I tucked her back in and told her she needed to sleep. A half an hour later, she was up again. Once again, back to bed.

I fell into a deep sleep only to be woken again by some strange sense and a silence from her bed. I called her name. No response. I checked the toilet. No. I went out into the hall. No. But then I saw a light from under the kitchen door and a sound of a dish being put down on the table. Since it was only two thirty in the morning, I knew it wasn’t Lorraine starting to prepare breakfast.

I ran to open the door and there was my mother, raiding the refrigerator. The kitchen was off limits to guests, the private kitchen of the household. Horrified, I told my mother, “I’m sorry. You can’t be here. This isn’t our kitchen. Lorraine would be very upset.” I put the things away carefully, making sure to wipe up any evidence and lead my mother back to bed.

Now, truly exhausted, I put her back to bed and told her sternly to stay there until I told her it was time to wake up. I didn’t dare to sleep soundly, so I heard her get up again twenty minutes later and, drowsy, by the time I’d gotten myself out of bed, she was already headed for the kitchen.

I caught up with her and guided her back to bed. “But I’m hungry,” she said. “It’s time to get up.” “No. it’s three thirty in the morning. We’ll wake the whole household. You have to stay in your bed.”

I tucked her back in and gave her one of the cookies I’d brought. FIve minutes later she was pulling back the covers to get up. Oh God, I thought, No! Like the desperate mother of a naughty three year old, I said,

“If you get up again, I’ll have to spank you.” “You won’t!”, she said. “Oh yes!” I said. “I will!”

Three minutes later, she was up. I pulled back the covers, strode across the room andI smacked her on the bottom.

“No! Stay in bed!” A bit tearful, she got back under the covers.

Shaken by my audacity, I went back to bed and slept fitfully, attentive to any sound. She rolled over and over, but didn’t get up again till 6:30. I helped her dress and took her to the front room to watch the news on the tv while I snoozed on the sofa.

We had a lovely breakfast when Lorraine got up. The other guests at the table were charmed by this woman past ninety who was knew how to engage them in conversation.  It was a lovely fall day. Time for our excursion to Butchart Gardens.

I had been there twice before and knew the layout. It would be much too far for her to walk but they had handy wheelchairs. When we arrived at the parking lot I said “Wait here while I go get a wheelchair for you. It will be a lovely ride through the gardens but too far to walk.” “No wheelchair”, she said. “Okay. We’ll do something else today then”, I replied.

She finally consented. Under duress. We started out on our journey around the gardens where the constant explosions of color and pattern leave you in a state of all-consuming awe. We got to a part of the garden that was quieter and more subdued, a park with a path through. She suddenly said, “You shouldn’t be the one pushing me around. I should be pushing you. “ I laughed and said “Thank you. But I’m fine.” She insisted. She got out of the wheelchair, all fragile ninety pounds, five foot six of her compared to my five foot eleven. I got her to sit again for a few feet, but she started to drag her feet so I couldn’t push. “See. It’s too hard “ she said.

“Okay.” I said. “You can push me.” We changed places on the momentarily deserted path. She tried to push. “You’re dragging your feet!” she said. I lifted my feet so she could see. “Nope.” She tried again and it wouldn’t budge. Just as a father and his little girl came up the path, she started to cry. Oh no! I thought. That father must be thinking, “Right! Elder abuse!” like a good Canadian.

I leaped out of the chair, grabbing the handles so she wouldn’t fall over. I put my other arm around her and said “It’s okay. I understand.’

“I feel so guilty” she said, “that you have to push me. I should take care of you.” I reassured her that this was the way of nature, that the younger eventually have to take care of the older. “But you’re the younger one!” she said. She was still crying softly as I got her back in the chair.

We went to sit on a nearby bench in front of a fountain. I needed to do something to redeem the moment. Her head was hanging in shame.

I said, “You know, I think we can do something together. You feel guilty a lot. More and more. Let’s embrace the guilt! Let’s hug it! Let’s tell it it’s loved. Let’s practice Jewish Buddhism. We replace love with guilt! We’ll start a new religion together! “

I hugged myself. “Oh guilt! I love you! Be big for me! Grow strong!” She looked at me and started to laugh.
“Do it!” I said. And she did.

We both hugged ourselves, kissing the air. “ Oh beautiful guilt! We love you” we chanted. We were both laughing. “More!” I said. We did, more and more, laughing harder and harder until we both had tears streaming down our faces.

We hugged. She got back into the wheelchair. “Where next?” she said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

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Back Home From The Sea

Rain, I want to speak with you

as I watch you fall, 

now drops 

now clouds of  water 

streaming, teaming down.

 

I want to tell you what I know

And as all our cells 

can show.

Your liquid 

Is the essence 

of us all.

 

The sea is filled with you.

Each squall, each stormy night

Of silver falling, falling 

shards of light

Is there within each drop, each puddle

Each muddy hole 

on leafy forest floor

Each flooding river

Crushing all 

within its flowing flight.

 

I want to say to you 

that I have plunged

within your clearest depths

In seas that churn

And bays wherein

the deep of you 

Lies quiet and serene.

 

I have smelled your salt 

With strange desire

And sensed the bodies of your fish

As if my flesh were fins.


I watch you with contentment or

with that anxious anticipation 

of your accumulating threat

From inside rooms

Kept warm with some strange 

element of fire

 

I want to say to you

that your atoms 

know not good nor bad.

No thoughts of hatred nor of  joy

pass through any drop

Yet, your collective force  

Can purify or destroy

Engender peace or strife.

 

Each living cell

Contains the what of you

Not charged with any job

but to be the medium 

for the vibrancy of life.

 

Can you purify our lies?

Can you satisfy our cries 

of thirst for common decency

For knowledge of our ties?

 

I want to talk to you 

of this strange, stark 

state of  wonder 

that you are me 

and I am you

And somehow we are flowing 

Now down,  then under

Through all the streets 

and all the streams

And all your states of being

Back then  to the sea.

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Swiftly

Suddenly, some balance somewhere
Shifted.
The stilling air of afternoon
has filled with swarms of gnats
And the swifts, gone for so long,
Diving now and climbing
swooping in their zigzag flight
Appeared as from a secret niche
Hidden in some silent fold
In time and space
Called by a faint note, unheard
To eat their fill and then return


How quickly the balance scale can tip
And the unexpected be what is.
Soon neither swarming gnats nor swooping birds
Are seen
And the empty air of afternoon
Has changed its light
To suit the movement
Of the clouds
And the rhythm of the stream.

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North Cape Webcam

As I clean up from our dinner

here in a small village in France

Walter tells me

There are eight people 

watching North Cape, Norway’s webcam

at this moment.

And he is one. 

 

I go to see what it’s like 

In the northernmost fishing village in the world

Where the dark nights of September have come

and the streetlights on the edge of the harbor

Make undulating rivers of gold in the water.

 

I am captivated

And It is as quiet as an ancient fishing village would be

After the sun goes down.

There are no lights on in the houses

Everyone in them has gone to sleep.

 

But a big white van pulls out and drives down the road

out of the picture

Its lights for a moment

Reflected in a window.

And then again 

Quiet.

 

I want to see the faces of the

other people 

watching this peace with me.

First seven and

then four more who have joined us.

 

I want to see their eyes, watching calmly

while I feel our heartbeats slowing

and hear our breath going in and out

In bodies that all have lungs

And brains, and hearts to beat.

 

We would not talk,

Even if we could

We would just nod to each other

In kind recognition

Of what it is that drew us here 

And captured us.

 

The love that peace brings

would be carried by the waves of light

Weightless

Like the golden rivers on the water

of a dark harbor.

 

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Summer Evening in a French Garden

How is it we got to talking,
As we sat out the light
Of a summer evening,
About fireflies?
How they danced in the air
Of our childhood
Making little holes of light
All around in our soul
That now dance as we watch them
In the vast darkness of our minds
Together, in the growing dusk
Of the garden?

And that they’re different from
The glowworms of France
Whose little fires sit in ditches
And, in such stillness, signal mates.
No children run
and scoop these into jars
to make those lanterns that will shine
and glitter in the darkness
Of the sleep-night by their beds

Or do they,
The children in France?

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The Summer Visit

That summer, my daughter was just turning nine and my son was four.  My biological parents, Toni and Marvin, were making their first trip out to Washington State together to see us.  Each had  already come separately to give us time to get to know them on their own, these people who were mother and father, grandmother and grandfather who had come into lives already taken shape, like some adventure in a time machine.  It must have been July or August. It was hot and sunny. We were all a bit dizzy with excitement. Our relationship had become a true love affair.

 

We had decided to take them to see the beautiful Oregon coast, a two hour drive away. We’d booked rooms at a lovely inn in the town of Florence, near the Oregon dunes. We got to the inn late in the day, after a leisurely drive down the coast, stopping to show them what had come to be our our favorite spots. They saw the beautiful rocks out in the bay at Cannon Beach where we walked through the tide pools and saw starfish and anemones. We had lunch somewhere in the touristy, quaint seaside town. We stopped to walk a bit along another beautiful beach where the enormity of the Pacific pulled all sense of limitation into the infinity of its waves. We saw the seals and sea lions in LIncoln City. Marvin was paying for everything he could get to first.

 

After we’d settled in our rooms, we walked over to a great seafood restaurant we’d been to once before. The grownups wanted to eat Pacific Coast oysters and King Crab and the kids, hamburgers and fries, and tastes of everything else but the raw oysters we’d order by the dozens.  They’d even eat fresh fish and crab if it were dipped in tartar sauce or melted butter. 

 

It was a late dinner by American standards. By the time we’d finished all that food, washed down with many glasses of Oregon Pinot Gris, the kids had been playing under the table for quite awhile and there was only one other occupied table left. Soon,  the two of them had made beds of all the jackets we’d brought for the evening chill and had closed their eyes while they talked together softly. 

 

The grownups had talked and talked. Marvin was a great story teller. We still had a lot of untold material to fill  the thirty-five year gap between my birth and our reunion.  It was a bit like filling in the constant lover who had recently come into your life. Now we even had a few years of mutual history to draw on.  We didn’t stop until we realized we were the only ones left and the staff were mopping the floor.

 

The summer before, they’d taken my daughter and her cousin, a girl the same age, to England. They’d had a glorious time staying in London and even going as far as Wales where they heard a true Welsh Bard tell stories in an abbey. They’d been to the Tower of London, the Wax Museum and just about every site that kids would enjoy.  The two girls had been fed cream teas until their little stomachs began to swell and their cheeks to fatten. When my daughter got back home after two weeks away, the Official Book from the Wax Museum was shared with her little brother almost every night for months, the two of them delighting in the fright that Jack the Ripper and Frankenstein seem to generate inexhaustibly. 

 

They loved their grandparents even more inexhaustibly with an expansiveness that widened out their lives. In his grandpa, Noah found the man who approved of him with every fiber and loved him more than life. They both called him jokingly “our perfect boy”, with his blond wings of hair, intelligence, love of soccer and sweet nature. He would lean in against his grandpa when they read stories together or when the grownups were just sitting around  talking. This relationship only deepened over the years. As he grew, Marvin became his mentor and firm supporter.  He bought him his first computer at age ten and began teaching him about stock investing soon after.  

 

They doted on my daughter. My younger biological sister, who’s sense of humor even exceeded her father’s, dubbed her “A porcelain doll with a backbone of steel”. She was right on the money. They nurtured her interests, sent her books, spent hours in the garden and on walks and hinged their hearts to hers. She could always talk with them about anything and did, into adulthood.  Their experience and beauties shared gave her a richness that has filled her always.

 

Those moments, lingering over the dinner table with the children dozing at our feet, are one of my warmest memories of that era of life. The next day, we got up, rallied, had a good big breakfast of bacon and eggs with pancakes for the kids and drove off to see the Oregon Dunes. 

 

There we ran up and down the dunes, sliding and laughing for a couple of hours, walking the pathways through the beach grass and standing in awe before the enormity of the rolling hills of sand until we were all exhausted and thoroughly happy. We all seemed to share the same sensibilities.

 

We spent another night somewhere. I can’t remember where. It was a time when we lived a fairy tale with the king and queen of our rediscovered royal kingdom. Everything was filled with the joy of life and reunion. Everything was possible. They had given us the keys.