Sydney Cast in Shadow

Sydney Cast in Shadow


The garden stroll before a matinee ballet
birds of paradise gawking these palms this lushness
this pristine park dustless alley
these streakfree storefront windows
this cloudless painless blue this skyline
etched with geometric concrete waves
jutting saucer tower arcing bridge
sailboat-speckled placid harbor this paper bag
soaked in grease from fish and chips

Me too far away to see
my blurred face bare legs fingers tugging skirt hem
neverending steps the opera house
perched at cresting point behind me

This map too small in scale its cartoon skyscrapers
outlandish fountain dozen golden arches architecture
arc and angles exaggerated too whimsical
to accommodate the shadowed blocks we walked
cabs we didn't wave sweaty footprints pressed to sidewalks
heels in hand this vast gap between where we were
and where we hoped to be.

Easter Saturdays

Easter Saturdays (tentative title because I stink at titles)


Cars full of people split the swamp where my creek flows.
They must not ponder, pause, stare at hollowed logs,
branchless trunks and wonder about the end of winter,
spring still a whisper in the trickle of cold water through the culvert.

What does all this dying mean, this surrender
after striving for three seasons? Grasses have been shedding
locks for decades, climbing out of caskets, grow and grow
over all their flawed history. We are all eating ourselves,

regurgitating what we thought was digested,
disposed and left behind. But it heaves back,
the crunch of gravel chip and seal, the steady rain falling
after having traveled the culvert just yesterday,

when I straddled the guard rail, cold metal creasing my thighs,
watching every season of my life die and be reborn.

In Our Backyard

... a tentative title... and, as all poems go with April PAD, a work in progress. It was time for a poem about my brothers :)

In Our Backyard


In our backyard, we were always digging.
We needed to practice the art
of going deeper, how best to slant
the shovel, step, jump – open up the earth,
dump and sift larger granules for finer grains

of sand. We used the tools of our father –
placed our child-sized hands on the back
of dump trucks and crawled, knees
soaking up damp sand. It was important
to be close to the ground.

Mountains moved in our backyard
as we built castles, buried Matchbox cars,
redirected rivers with the water
from our garden hose, our landscape
slowly eroding down into the valley.

We excavated sea floor fossils
from limestone in the driveway,
gathered up bones, stacked each stone –
miniature monuments to our family’s
land, quarrel, eternal sweat.

Excavating runs in blood –
it is all the same trade, really –
one brother digs holes to unearth
impossible boulders, negotiate roots,
measure depth and drainage.

The other takes what is broken,
welds it together, knows metal
is stronger at the point of fracture,
shapes steel into custom framework.
We grow out of the same tilled soil;

we are trying to give order to chaos,
make sense of brokenness, create
something from the ground beneath us,
exhume the passions of a childhood
buried in a backyard sandbox.

Cascade Valley

Look, my daughter, the pine tree
dropped its seeds, and here
a fragile sapling braves the forest floor.
This used to be a birch tree
but maybe lightning sliced it,
wind heaved its heavy breath against it
and now the trunk is rust.
Sticks used to flirt, flare
their skirts of springtime buds,

but now we throw the broken limbs
into the rushing floodwaters to see
how quickly we could be carried away.
We are always a hair too close
to the edge, send pebbles skittering
into the river. Let's find our way back
from this spring rage, out of the valley
that catches what used to cling above.

Climb this mountain with its muddy paths,
deer trails, tread marks, hoof prints,
decomposing oaks - we are not the first
to grow and fall. But see the way the leaves
return to earth, the way the dust collects.
Crocus blades emerge from crumbling stumps
as if this growth does not take more than soil,
light, and rain. Reach down, my child,
bring a pine cone home to show
how miraculously we are carried.

Psalm 40

Boots
Psalm 40


These boots by the door are still caked
with hardened clay, their leather darkened
by water, still swelling, absorbing,
the flannel lining damp and pungent.
Clumps of mud stick to the kitchen floor,
discarded here and there from the field
that pulled and sucked until I was stuck.
I will not use the broom - I like the imprints
left behind, the way that visitors trip
on my oversized steel-toed boots and gasp –
how high the line of mud rides up,
how great the crumbs of dust.

Let me tell you about these boots,
I will say, about the field, the mire, the muck,
the slow, steady suction, the way I reached
for branches, the way the grasses bent and broke
when I pulled. Let me tell you again how I trembled,
how my hands hung idle, how a farmer
saw me, bent down to loosen my laces,
stretched out his hand, how I stepped from the sludge
in just my socks, mud oozing between my toes,
found a protruding rock, breathed deep,
“Thank God you came by when you did.”
I leave them here to remember the swale.

(Companion piece to The Swale)

The Swale

Roving feet get suctioned in the swale.
Mud leaches between laces and leather
before you see the depression coming.

The valley looked drier, but spring rain
and winter melt had no time to evaporate
or seep deeper into the earth, harmless.

This land rises up in such a way that dips
are unpredictable. Perhaps shallow cavities
will always be damp, hollows I dare not tread,

not even during the hottest drought.
Some swales will never drain enough
to step unburdened. The hiker

is swallowed, boots sucking heavy in muck.
Anxious hands quiver for help, unable
to reach down and untie my own shoes.

Saturdays

Lately, I have had the great joy of spending all day with my kids on the weekends. At least it feels like that - maybe it hasn't been that way for long, but I LOVE this exhaustion from a day well spent. We squeezed out every ounce of good times from each available minute today, and my feet have much to say in response. It was good.

Saturdays are Pancake Days -- occasionally Sundays are also Pancake Days -- which sets the day into gear. Today, after pancakes, we putzed around the house for a little while and then went to the grocery store for apple cider and a few additional odds and ends. Then we swung through a few garage sales, first by car and then by foot (BIG mistake - long walk - Elvis fell asleep in his race car and Lydia tired out 1/4 of the way back to the house, but everyone slept well this afternoon!), and then back to the house for a lunch of leftovers. Elvis had a hard time falling asleep but once he did, he slept until a little after 3. Lydia went down at 1 and slept until 3:30. She was pooped.

After the kids fell asleep this afternoon, I took a shower since that didn't really happen this morning, and then I made something I am dying to taste - Pumpkin Streudel Squares. mmmm they sure look and smell yummy. They are in the fridge right now, and I'm debating, first, why I made them, and second, when I'm going to eat them. There was an initial motivation behind baking these that has since passed. I don't remember what it was. I'll probably save them for small group tomorrow night.

Once the kiddies woke up, we had a snack and lounged around a few minutes and then went to feed/terrorize Lisa's cats. Mission accomplished, we ran through the ATM at the bank to deposit a check and then drove the few minutes' ride out to our friends' farm for a fall festival (ffffff). It was... fun! :) We had a blast, to be completely honest -- playing with other kids, meeting more great people and finding a kindred writer spirit, carving a pumpkin, eating hot dogs, taking a hay ride -- it was a grand affair. We are all thoroughly exhausted, I think. Here's hoping the kids sleep in (yeah right).

The weather is amazing this weekend, too. It is so nice to be outside - I feel as if it is a necessity to get outdoors as much as possible before the days get shorter and the temperatures drop even more. The kids (and I) love to be outside and take walks, and I will miss it a lot when the snow starts to fall. I get a cold nose and dry hands just thinking about the freeze.

I think tonight is the perfect night to veg out in front of a good, predictable movie I've seen a hundred times. And then fall asleep on the couch, probably.