CANDYLAND RUN, BICYCLE RACE

Sonoma Valley, Summer 1990

Ducky and I hop on our bikes,
Pedaling like we're in the Tour de France.
We have to get to the creek, the one
That is nearly dry.
The sky is bright as chrome,
My handlebars hot.
Grape gum.
Smell of dry grass.
Baked ground crunching under our wheels.
The trail looks like the sound of parched corn
Rustling. Sara Elizabeth Shea and Duk Sook
Josephine Kuhry-Haeuser are racing through
Maxwell Regional Park.
We hate riding like this,
It's so unfeminine.
Sonoma Valley, the Valley of the Moon.
Is it shaped like the moon,
Or does it hold the moon?
It is filled to its trendy brim
With vineyards and tourists.
We are nerds trying to be cool,
Knowing if we stuff our tied shirts enough,
We'll wake up with breasts and be
Hella bitchin like dem hos
Who drink forties n' rock da beat.
At the creek, the jealous eyes of friendship flash
As we compare candy: warheads, ring pops, pixie stix,
Gum cigarettes, lemon drops. Ducky inhales the powdered
Sugar smoke, and now knows all about sex.
Sarie looks on and feels too young, too goody-goody,
Too afraid to admit she really doesn't want to play this game.
In a few more months Duk Sook will discover actual sex,
Become a woman at twelve, and disappear in a flurry
Of coke & booze, leaving Sara to wonder for ten years
What the foosh happened.
Ducky, holding the false butt,
Stands with nervous assurance,
Commanding silence.
For now, the riverbed is safe,
We are grown-up, we are twenty-five,
We do not know we are strangers.
Las chicas juegan como las mujeres,
Hablando sobre los novios y los pechos y
Cuando van a "hacerlo." Puedes hacerlo?
Las chicas buenas nunca hacen las cosas sucias.
The sun warns us of the late hour,
The shadows and the trees accuse.
We pedal fast, trying to win a race
Whose rules we do not yet fully know.

Breathing

Kate looks me straight in the eye,
Takes a breath,
Asks me if I love her.
I take a drag off my cigarette,
Breathe in the acrid smoke.
She is my best friend.

I remember a story she told me,
About the first time she knew
She loved me:
We were seven years old
On a Sassarini Elementary field trip
To the planetarium.
On the yellow bus
The vinyl seats chafe our legs.
We hold hands,
Giggling and cuddling
Like little girls do
And she is breathing
In my smell:
“Orange mint,”
She says,
Trying to breathe me in too.
She doesn’t tell me until we are sixteen.

My first cigarette was
Stolen from her mother’s purse.
We sat on the rotting rock wall
Down the street from my father’s law
Office, watching the red horses
Run through the dry, golden field.
The first breath was easy
Doesn’t make us gag.
We thought we breathed in adulthood,
Each insistent breath making us dizzy
Like little girls spinning
In circles in the backyard
Until they drop to their knees
Laughing.

We sat quietly at her dining
Room table during Passover,
Her family amazed the Catholic girl
Knows what Seder is.
I breathe in the smell
Of the matzo ball soup
We made earlier,
The bitter parsley,
The sweet minced apples,
The gifiltefish no one touches,
The dry, unleavened bread.
I am breathing in their Jewishness,
Reciting along with them,
Why is this night different
From all other nights?
Under my breath.
Later, the youngest children
Seek the hidden matzo cracker,
While Kate and I sneak
Outside for a smoke
Hold hands
Certain her parents don’t know.

Kate skipped school with me
To attend Good Friday Service,
The only day of the year
Without mass.
She crinkled her nose:
It’s only incense,
But she breathed deep
The sweet, spicy air.
I sat close,
My breath tickled her ear
As I whispered the Stations of the Cross.
She giggled.
To the Jews, Jesus was just
A really nice guy
But nobody important.
Our hands are held tight.
After church we smoke a whole pack of cigarettes.

We shared our first joint
With Chris and JB
At the creek behind the high school,
Thinking we should breathe
Like we are smoking cigarettes.
Soon we were cutting class
To “meet Mary Jane,”
Practicing our new technique:
Breathe deep,
Breathe deeper,
Hold your breath
For one…two…three…four…
Try not to choke
As we breathe thick
Smoke that tastes like grassy socks.
I find it hard to breathe
When stoned.

I woke up
In the middle of the flannel night,
Gasping for air,
My lungs taut and hurting.
I picked up the phone
Before it rang
Knowing she was crying:
Her folks found her cigarettes.

Kate played trombone,
I played flute.
I taught her piano,
She taught me guitar.
We were gonna start a band.
As I played Moonlight Sonata,
She sat next to me on the piano bench,
Pointing out that I held
My breath and breathed out
As if I was playing my flute.
She breathed with me
As I kept time in my lungs.

I breathe, breathe, breathe,
Have to sit down,
My hands tremble,
I can barely hold my cigarette.
Worst fight we ever had
It’s my fault
She went driving in the hills
Crying in the rain.
Here I am
Sitting and shaking
On Kate’s front porch
Racked with sobs
Afraid to see my best friend
Bruised, broken, bleeding.
I climb in bed beside her,
Can’t hold her bandaged hands.
Her face is swollen,
Her breathing gruff, labored
Like an old woman.
She’s not supposed to,
But I sneak her smokes
And trace the scars on her shaved skull,
Her mangled hands
Devastated at the thought
Of losing her.

Kate is my best friend
The first girl I’ve kissed
Taken ecstasy with.
We are sisters, I think,
We have a solid bond
Forged from purest gold.

“I don’t love you like that,”
I finally manage to breathe out,
Lighting another cigarette,
Watching her cherry cheeks ignite
Like burning paper.
There is nothing else to say.
She is breathing
As if taking
Her last breath.

Boat Builder's Chant

Which wood? I use cedar,
Each plank planed by hand.
My chiseled osprey eyes
Follow the flowing grains,
Hunting prey.
My arms are steady,
My wrists, tense attention.
I sing, I shave with rhythm.
My best blades know
The surging soul of the boat,
Whose clear curves come from
This steamed, yellow moon.
I’ve seen moonboats alter tides,
Felt my blood change
Like the swelling grain.

Bantu

A child whispering prayers.
The soughing of pine trees.


The distance of the moon.
The depth of the color blue.


A squirrel hiding an acorn.
The rustle of a turning page.


A girl brushing her hair.
The sheen of melted chocolate.


The sound of the sea in a shell.
The hush of a waiting audience.


The first bite of pie.
The crisp colors of fall.


The recognition of the horizon.
Tiny blue forget-me-nots in a green field.


The spines of a pineapple.
The gossip of teenage girls.

Bag

HERE IS a sliver of sunlight
Through blue curtains,
The crisp red skin of an apple,
Dust on forgotten on books.

Here is the rustle of a turning page,
The squeak of snow underfoot,
The dull tines of a fork.

Here are the spines of a pineapple,
The flesh of a nectarine,
The swish of a satin skirt.

Here is the soughing of pine trees,
Water filling a bathtub,
The cigar shop at dusk.

Here are dishes left in the sink,
The height of a redwood tree,
Toes tapping on tile.

Here is the sting of saltwater in the nose,
The searing beam of a lighthouse,
The tart taste of tangerine.

Here is a hissing teakettle,
The smell of baking bread,
The crack of thunder.

Here too is the smell of wild licorice,
The tough rind of a cantaloupe,
The sheen of melted chocolate.

So?

This bag is full,
Too heavy for my shoulders,
So I drag it behind me,
Collecting smells, sounds, scenes.
I always over pack,
But I cannot leave them behind.
These are things I see all the time,
These are things you need for dreams.

Organic Poems

At the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
When the wall is a wordless blank,
He stepped into the hailstorm
In a slice of concentration
Because the hail ricocheted off lemontrees.



The first warm day,
And by midafternoon
Something is calling to me.
The grass leans this way and that in discussion
The smell of the earth floods over the roads.
The wind’s an old man
Beginning to turn in the sun.
His ear is thick with fur and silence.
When swallows fly low, skimming the earth,
He’ll sit there pretending to read.



The moon in the window
So sure of its life
That it peacefully opens its wings.
The winter night curves round the legs of the trees
They are old lovers and know love starts gently.
You can feel the great joy of the trees
Flashing like storms in the picture window,
Like the sparks of redwing blackbirds,
As unexpected as a tulip.
The moon covers her eyes with a cloud.
How simple, how perfect it seems: the darkness.
Now there is nothing to see.
My life is a moon
In the frail blue branches
Of my veins
The blue, high altitude hallway of age.