My Hair Falls Out No Faster Than It Ever Did

My mother was always frustrated

by the long strands that tangled

around the base of the toilet,

on the edge of door and floor.  

Sneaking onto the kitchen counter

wrapping around soup ladles

and frying pan handles.

Strangling the buttons 

on her sweater.

I couldn’t help it.

When I combed it 

--oh so gently and starting with just a short section from the bottom

and then a little higher and higher

until it was shiny smooth and tangle free--

the loosened strands would float

glinting and serene, only mildly affected by gravity

in their travels through our house.

They would mesh with the cat’s hair

the dog’s hair

until the hall was full of tumbleweedy bundles

that she had to shepherd out the door

with the wide brush of the push broom

we usually used for the garage.

‘It’s a wonder you’re not bald,’ she’d say

around her chewing gum,

and she’d hug the blue broom handle

before she put it away.

We watched as the finches came, two at a time, 

to lift each tender, fluffy jumble-bramble

of canine-feline-girl hair

and flit away, like the birds in Disney’s Cinderella, 

carrying their newest duvet to the nest.

070908, rev 072008, rev 072908, rev 090408

The Size of Tumors

They found a tumor

in Rosa’s head.

A disk the size 

of a baseball

behind her ear.

Rosa’s not the first 

I’ve heard of

with a mass

in her body

that doctors describe as

an ordinary object

Two I knew 

had tumors the size of 

grapefruits in their uterus 

then there are the 

pea-sized ones

in the breast

Melanomas

the size of dimes

If ever I have a tumor

I hope they consider

other objects

more extraordinary

pomegranates 

edamame beans

a 10 thebe piece.

Rosa had a tumor

the size of a

shuttlecock.

091108;091508; 092008

My Mother's Ghost Floats Through Me

I see her hand

in my hand

as I shell peas

her joints ache in my knees

when the skies light up

with fourth of july

I shudder at the bombs

of her childhood

last week we worried about birds

when the men came to fell

the wild trees in my front yard

my mother’s ghost

floats through me

on her way to other places

and at this brief intersection

of our two souls

i see through her eyes

hear through her ears

feel the rough ground

with two soles, tough like mine,

tender like hers.

July 7, 2008; rev 7/14/08

Forensics

Along the sin of the beach debris line

among the finely chopped bones

white driftwood bones

I find perfect blue in a piece of plastic.

A piece of plastic

a shard, with uneven edges, 

flat and anonymous,

well beyond the question

of what it once had been.

Don’t think of all the blue plastic

containers of cleanliness

(All, Swiffer, litter)

or bottles of motor oil

or maybe the last

remaining fragment

of a dollhouse door.

See only the perfect 

blue of memory:

arcing sky

baby eye

jeans and pools

grandmother’s

second best 

teapot.

012109, rev 032309

What a Fireman Would Never Say

Soot gets on your pillow.

Blood gets on your boots. 

Bells clang and wake you from your sleep, 

no cup of fragrant coffee before you start your day.

It’s hard to be a fireman. 

Hoses are so heavy. 

Helmets can be, too. 

Others leap from the burning buildings 

where you have to go.

And when you dream, 

you dream of doleful victims 

in brightly colored muumuus 

having heart attacks 

and spasmed backs. 

Stuck inside their too-big selves 

they rely on you to carry them down 

the cat-stained stairwell. 

Confronted with blazing eyes  

and blistering mouth 

you hang on to compassion. 

Still see each one as she once was 

dancing the boogie-woogie  

with her GI beau 

long ago.

It’s hard to be a fireman. 

Interrupted pot roast dinners 

and interrupted showers 

to rescue imprudent youth 

from overturned decisions.  

Or hope to.

It’s hard to be a fireman 

Soot gets on your pillow. 

Blood gets on your boots.

3/19/08, revised 3/30/08, revised 4/2/08, rev 4/9/08, rev 6/20/08

Missing Syllables

Words are disappearing

like bats or bees

Pollinators of poets

Words.

They’ve dropped out of the sky

too starved to fly

or vanished altogether.

No one knows what’s happened.

Maybe they’re too opulent

too lush and languid.

Those that are left

are overworked

hollowed out

altered toward efficiency

stripped of vowels or of their consonants

then injected with numbers

c u

b4n

04/19/08, 04/21/09

Timing

Fiddling with his camera

setting aperture and speed

aligning the cross hairs again

and yet again

He always took too long

to snap the shutter

so his photographs

were always slightly after the fact.

The girl’s face just turned away

to watch doves rise up from the square.

The candles already smoking

on his mother’s last cake.

His best friend too small to see

waving from the train.

Come now already, his wife would later say,

so she always had pursed lips

her hands grasping their children

they were like two wriggling fish or cats

one looking up, the other down.

But he likes his fine collection of

too-late pictures

who else could have caught that moment

just after the sun disappears

when all that’s left is the sleepy gleam

on the vacant horizon?

04/20/08, rev 08/16/08, rev 04/20/09

Hope and Self-Denial

Buying a peach

is a gamble.

Biting into it

you often find

the dried out fibrous

meat, as if some

alien had come 

to suck out its

juice and flavor

and left only a

stringy container.

Rare is slicing 

into the downy cheek

when you find the

marigolden meat

saturated with

its perfect peachy

essence.

That’s when you’re 

so glad you had 

decided to buy two

rather than just one.

You savor each slice

standing at the kitchen

counter, not even 

pausing to sit down,

and dream of heavy

late summer air

fragrant with ripe fruit

and spent flowers

the buzz of wasps

joyously ominous

the dry grass slick

under your feet.  

It’s hard to save 

the other one for 

breakfast.

09/11/08, revised 09/14/08 and 09/15/08

Driving by My Old Neighborhood

Can you see against 

the rows of narrow houses

ghosts of helpless trees?

And ghosts of fences,

rusty wire stretched between leaning posts

an imperfect trellis 

to rampant blackberries, 

There is the tall white barn,

and the two short ponies

that leaned across the wire

for sugar and carrots.

Haunted, too, by Punky and Laddie,

the old couple, with names

like ponies, who tilled

their garden, slow, 

one short row at a time,

while their flock

scratches and plunders

at least one seed each 

of corn and squash.

But then they vanish

trees, fence, barn, pony

old woman, old man.

No more weeds to pluck.

No more hens to shoo.

02/20/08, rev 04/09/08, rev june 08, rev 080908

Received 5th Honorable Mention in the 

Oregon State Poetry Association's Fall 2008 Contest

Too Much to Carry

This morning I found

the leavings of a hundred lives

storm-strewn ashore.

The usual things

floats in red and white 

or neon colors 

pulsing against the gray

bits of yellow rope

empty water bottles

shaped like floats.

But, then there was the gallon jug of milk--half full--

a jar of spaghetti sauce

and one of instant coffee.

Three light bulbs, one plain 60 watt, 

and two enormous globes from some giant’s lamp.

One tire.

One sturdy gray rubber glove.

One empty tool box.

One shoe.

I turned around when I found

three counterfeit ducks

bobbing in the froth,

looking west and longing.

1/9/08

Published in 2008 Rain Magazine