My mother subscribed to Vogue
and I buy it for my daughter, Willow
Their sense of fashion
skipped a generation when it came to me.
I got into ripped jeans during protests in college
and never got out of them.
But just look at this fine woman leader
on the cover of Vogue.
Tennis shoes and pink satin.
She’s game
Game on!
It makes you weak in the knees
and proud as a peacock.
Here we go!
Having lost the charts of the rugged coast
this bold lack of navigation
now has us fully lost.
What returns at this late hour
is a song we sang in our youth
on the bow of the Amorita.
It’s a sailors lament
about running out of whiskey.
“And I scarcely think that I’ll get a drink till I get to Buffalo”
Between then and now
who can really say what happened.
A life is so big.
She’s ok where she is
tucked into a hospital bed
foggy with not knowing.
She’d like to lay low
and just let the hull rust.
But we, her family,
screech like gulls
shouting Up, Get Up
We want another day.
I’ll do me
and you do you
and together
we will create
wants needed
for the whole of life
to thrive!
Jan3, 2021 Love Sally
I called my sister today.
She’s been in a nursing home
over the holidays.
I have not been sleeping well.
When she answers the phone
I rest back in my chair
it’s the soft tone of her voice, an instant pleasure,
my first love, my beloved.
I am myself because of you.
Love a small boat, it leaks and has seen better days
It’s a tenuous sistuation
we tip with the slightest movement.
But even if we fall out
cast into the cold water
I will reach for your hand
and I will find it.
You wanted to tell me something funny,
“They have a all purpose soap, you said
and I washed my hair with it today,
and when I looked in the mirror
my hair lay limp and thin and flat to my face
I looked twenty years older, I looked like mom
I looked just like Annie, remember her hair?
I laughed so completely and we had ourselves a bit of fun.
Our time has run out
no more sand in the upside down clock.
Mother Earth is calling to you
where your no longer warm body
will rest.
Her timing is impeccable,
neither of us could continue.
Me cleaning up after you
and you so very ill.
Our final act of love
is being with each other at the end.
So brave So true So impossible!
My brother and I
are from a long line of burglars.
It’s an unconscious profession,
an undisclosed mythos
a trade passed down by generations.
If we could just admit the truth
( our love of thievery)
my brother steals from me
and I steal from him.
This acceptance is Love
freed from it’s box,
the horded treasure
can return to source.
The End!
I am water,
only because you are the ocean.
We are here
only because old leaves have been falling.
A mutching of memories folding
into buried hands.
The cliffs we learn to edge
The tree truck hollowed, humming.
I am a tongue
only because you are the body
planting stories with thumb.
Soil clings to your knees
Small stacks of empty clay pots dreaming.
I am the milky fish eye, only
because it’s your favorite.
A slipper is lost in the yard.
A haku lei is chilling in the icebox.
I am a cup of feathers,only
because you want to fill the hours.
I am a turning wrist, only
because you left the hose on.
Heliconias are singing underwater
Beetles are floating across the yard.
(A poem by Donovan Kuhio Colleps
Entitled Kissing the Opelu.)
I am in so many spirit walks
that I’ve lost track of them all….
walking with my sister whose been looking at the other side
walking with a new baby coming in and her wild journey to get here.
Walking with my brother’s move to Hawaii.
It’s too far away to suit me
but then he is always in the “dog house”
(according to me.)
Walking with myself and my inability to change.
Feeling the sweetness of love
coming from the beyond
where my sister and my mother and my father are
my grandmother too.
This place is a spirit walk.
I contemplated my friend’s joy
in the middle of the night when I was not sleeping.
How can her joy not be diminished by pain?
There is no be doorway into joy,
If I have to look for it I will not find it.
Guilt likes to keep in seeking
and not finding.
The idea of finding the door was a misdirection!
Can I go to the flip and claim my responsibility
for the entire pain of the world
that way guilt has no wiggle room
and something peaceful like joy is here instead.
These are my thoughts this Thanksgiving.
Thanks Charlie!
Just like Mr Banks
I want to lift my leg
and piss on the high grass
for whoever passes by.
That’s why I write
It’s primal.
I want you to get a whiff of me,
my essence discovered
I want to be available
in our two way communication.
A kiss, a love letter,
the wave of the hand.
We can either do rituals from our hearts
where we sing and know our true name
or lame duck rituals, like watching the evening news.
We are performative creatures
beings of two worlds.
Rituals are connecting experiences
where we claim our partnership
in the dance
both as lover and as hero
as a being and a doer.
Like standing stones in a circle
that dance under the moon light
when no one is looking.
