Poetry
AUTUMN RAIN
You left me in this storybook village on the coast of Maine.
“Stay, make your home with me. You’ll love it there.”
You crooned as we lay in our love wrapped sheets.
“You’ll love my land, the smell of the sea, the seasons arriving
on fast moving air. I will hold you close until you feel safe.”
I believed you, so I said goodbye to my beloved saguaros, mesas and scrub,
and went with you to that rocky coast.
But you left me where autumn brings no balmy end of summer,
no sweet reminders of golden light. Only the sound of my footsteps
on sleeted stone.
My western boots and denim jacket are poor covers for this
autumn rain. In my desert, cloudbursts brig instant life,
violent storms soak then disappear, like a mirage.
Nourishing the earth’s soul.
Ah, I remember that sun-washed room where we first loved,
and long for our bed, in that other world where you were mine.
I push on, my hands stuffed deep in my pockets, my fists balled
for warmth and clenched anger.
A whisper haunts me, “mija, mija”. A word from long ago,
from the Grandmothers.
I walk faster now head bent against this tortuous wind.
Straining to hear them. I cannot, and I howl my pain
into the agonized gale.
What was it that brought me? Oh yes, your reveries of Indian summer days
in your beloved Maine. Of long walks past rows of orange pumpkins
and along cranberry marshes.
Your world, populated with pretty, polite, pastel people.
No great hugs to warm their greeting, just quiet, soft handshakes,
revealing nothing. I feel clumsy and raw like an untumbled stone,
finding no comfortable setting here in this marble polished world.
“Keep your paints off my papers. And take out those damned braids.”
Poisonous words that brand my spirit. My essence which tantalized you before,
is a burden to you now. There are no more long liquid nights
tunneling into candle-lit ecstasy, and I cannot bear it.
“Get away, get away from here, from the killer of your spirit, mija”.
My Gradmother’s voice clear now. Reaching out across time to
remind me who I am, that the women who bore me made the
wind with their breath, painted the desert with their blood ad filled lakes with
their tears.
“Remember us. We loved you when you were just a thought,
You are made from the sun’s rays and the earth’s ocher.
Let no one silence the passion of the land that’s
part of you. Be the wild creature you are and a
worthy love will catch you.
GO HOME”.
WAVING GOODBYE
Each generation rising joining power with vitality
foaming in mandala shapes, displays of protests and
peace sins. Still dancing with a partner.
In my wave the world was black and white
with rabbit ear antennae. Jacket and tie stadium outings
Skirts with poodles applied. Sweater sets.
DC-7’s locked heading in lock-step constellations.
Sparkling ripples joining together, swelling, growing
in new found power, independence and camaraderie.
A salty wind picks up and quickens the pulse as
ominous rumblings from the deep pushes us up.
Rising, rising, energizing. Aquarius rising.
A heady exuberance from youthful knowing.
All of it focused on power of people’s rights,
assassination, sex, drugs and rock and roll.
A new sense of justice seasoned with power fueled us.
We raged against our father’s ballot box.
We banged against the ceiling. We beat our chests in
our indignation and grabbed the world and made it our own.
Goodbye, Glen Miller, Hello Elvis, Beatles, Stones and
Giant Zeppelins of Lead.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
In a flash the world was ours. Our time, our morals, our
dreams generating culture, ideas, actions, economy,
families, values. We snatched the planet from our
mothers and fathers. We dug in greedily to remold
the stale clay of our world. OUR WORLD!
We looked ahead and never looked back. We frothed and
foamed and lived by a sword of our own making.
Drugs turned deadly.
Sex turned deadly, rock and roll turned deadly.
Somehow the world we held so tightly, was slipping’
upside down in our steel-fingered grip.
Somewhere the crest of the wave of our generation
missed the biggest joke of all.
We didn’t see the ripples behind us moving in grim
determination. The next wave thinks it has to wrest
the world from us.
It is the dance of the waves. It will happen in its time
and eah wave finds out too late. We are all tied
together in the ocean’s deep, and we rise and
shimmer, crest and fall.
Finally giving way, as all waves before us, and
all waves after us break and disappear on the shore.