POSTCARD POEMS, OR WRITES OF AUGUST, WEEK 4

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(Note to readers: If you want to view the cards in order, you need to scroll down to week 1)


For some reason rhyme slipped into a couple of this week's offerings. Rhyme's like that, I've found. Shows up when you least expect it, hangs around for a while, buggers off again. Perhaps I was inspired by Kim Bridgford's lovely poem, "Faith", where she responds to the image of the inside of a church in Iceland with "The curves of worship/are tilted up like prayers./The awe you feel can/take you unawares,..."

Already I miss the anticipation of going to the mailbox to see what came in. Communication has changed so much, just in my lifetime. I remember when you picked up the phone and someone—always a woman—said, "Number, please", when the idea of email was the stuff of science fiction, when mail was the only reasonable means of staying in touch with distant friends and relations. My grandmother, for example, received the letter telling her of her mother's death back in Ireland, some four weeks after it happened. Now, thanks to the magic of the Internet, we may find things out before they've made the news.

It's not better. It's not worse. It's just different.

Huge thanks to everyone who wrote, whether it arrived or not, and a special nod to Paul and Lana who got this rolling and then got out of the way.


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MEA CULPA, MOTHER EARTH

I first polluted the air
when it filled my newborn lungs
and I expelled it with a howl
that shook the world like butterfly wings.
Mea culpa, Mother Earth:
I’ve cut trees so I could
festoon them with gaiety
for a week or two
then toss them out the door,
I’ve let water run for no reason,
I’ve put plastic bags in the landfill
and gone for groceries
leaving the cloth bags in the car.
The car—oh yes,
isn’t that what got us here?
Should have bottled that newborn breath
and pumped it into my bicycle tires,
should have stopped, now and then,
to think.

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What is there to cheer about
after a death? The one who’s gone
will never have to mourn us, I suppose.

After a death we ought
to invite cheerleaders
to orchestrate our grieving.

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BORDER TALK

Last time the dollar was this high
a trip across the border for a meal
or a night out
was no big deal. Now you can arrive with every
document you own— driver’s licence, passport,
birth certificate, marriage licence, sworn affadavit
that the kids are yours, and still you may be denied.

“Prosperity and Security” the buzz these days
“They go hand and hand,” says George,
or was it Stephen? George, the media reports,
has finally stopped calling him Steve.
What a relief they’ve cleared that up.

What to do about the fire that jumped the border
at Pend D’oreille without any declaration at all,
apparently trying to head south for the winter.

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ODE TO BLUE COUGARS ON 69 CENT U.S. STAMPS

All month you’ve been stalking me
throwing words at my feet
amber eyes fierce, unblinking
ready to pounce.
Is it better to be stuck in a cage
or on a stamp?
You’d rather be roaming the hills,
fording streams, traversing scree
in search of your next kill.
Some choice you’ve got.
I’d be blue, too.

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hand finds curve
in the bowl of a ladle
feet tap time
to the rhythm of the wheel
whispers in the room
echo voices of the ancients
telling of a history
so fantastic yet so real

she spins yarn
from the wool she’s carding
he drops shavings
on the just-swept floor
old way—best way
secrets they are guarding
light shines softly
through the kitchen door

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YELLOW-JELLO MOON

cougar eyes
road lies
ribbon light
devil night
cloud song
nothing wrong
burned hill
road kill
coyote yip
rose hip
caddis fly
blink of eye
winter soon
yellow-jello moon

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Lay me down
on a bed of thorns
make no promises
for the coming days
soon the eclipsed moon
will rise and illuminate
the distant sky

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What begins as a trickle
soon grows to a steady stream of words
adjectives falter on slippery rocks,
go under, then bob to the surface
gasping while eddies of nouns
float on fat verbs.
Let it end with a river
the moon waning in the cooler nights
Orion calling you home.

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POSTCARD POEMS, OR WRITES OF AUGUST, WEEK 3

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By the third week I was comfortable with the rhythm of cards in/cards out. Twice, I was away for a few days and had to do catch-up mini-marathons when I got home. Which image to which person? And even, what stamp?

A poem from Texas poet, Janet McCann, about a lost dog from childhood makes me cry. "...is not his leap the image/you keep in your heart's pocket?"

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Found some of those stickers you put on the back of a 4"x6" photo and it turns into a postcard. This is a picture of a bowl Ted turned out of a birch at my sister's place. The birch here all seem to be dying.


One by one they sicken,
drop widow-maker branches
the way they used to shake off leaves,
old birch that grew for decades
now wracked with a thirst
they cannot quench
while we, custodians of the land,
whine about pine beetle kill
and who’s going to get our water,
as if it’s really ours to give.
Perhaps the bowl remembers.

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As a child, I tried to follow my cousins
through the cave only to find the taste
of primal fear. The looming walls,
the hot almost-slime underfoot repulsed me,
and I’d heard someone once died in there.

Years later, my own child waded
into the cave, a tiny Cortez off to see
the world, my fear trumped
by mother love, I followed him through.

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This went back to John Davis, who sent me the nine line short story poem. One good tale deserves another! Besides, the thing with the paper was too weird. And I loved the image (by Andreas Pittinger, 2006) called "Casa de Coco Bongo".

BONGO SYNCHRONICITY

What are the odds
the waiters who carry the pineapple and turkey
are brothers, and the pink pigs in duck floats
poised by the fuchsia brick lined pool
with its rainbow inner tubes are cousins?

Alligator munches corn-on-the-cob
birds nest on the umbrella
coconuts survey the horizon
look for clouds to trampoline on
drinks slither up straws
never to be seen again.

From the depths of the pool
a frieze of orange flowers
surrounded by curlicue suns
floats to the surface and you understand
at last what drew you to this crazy bongo world
as you rummage the very table you write on,
make books on, find the slip of paper you cut
for surface decoration only to have it disappear,
then turn up again in the pool where Yosemite Sam
and Nefertiti’s dad contemplate the meaning of life.

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MRS. CALABASH’S DAUGHTER BECOMES A CHEERLEADER

radiant girl, with your red saddle shoes,
skirt swirling round your knees
and T for Texaco tits,
no postcard poem anti-freeze
to get you ready for winter
cheer, radiant girl, for the chrome-fin car
cheer for all 48 states
cheer for the big red star
cheer for Jimmy Durante
wherever you are

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August’s flowers unfurl
with a flourish
there’s a nip to the air
night arrives early, stays late
hummingbirds disappear
peaches ripen on the tree
small this year, but oh so sweet
last week someone drove
onto the Kinnaird Bridge
stopped, got out, and jumped
tonight the moon,
a sliver away from full,
remembers

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Writing from Bovina, New York, Holly Anderson wrote how "clumps of golden rod/dip and bow/their frowsy, furzy heads...". Frowsy. Furzy. Yum! And I HAD just noticed ours as I passed them on the way to get the mail.


a trip to the mailbox
yields a poem of golden rod
I noticed ours as I left the yard
how happy it is to know
its New York cousins
are on the job
tossing their frowsy heads
in the wind
wondering what’s for lunch

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Lord Ganesh
God of Knowledge
Lord of Success
Remover of Obstacles
Destroyer of Pride
I call on you to push this pen
when it slows to a scrawl
chase these words
when they stray from the page
open this heart
when it falters with fatigue
that I may glimpse the way
the world can be
and put it in writing

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POSTCARD POEMS, OR WRITES OF AUGUST, WEEK 2

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Week two, and now there's a Facebook group were about 30 of us are posting some cards and writing notes. The excitement around this project is growing every day. Halfway through the week I get three cards, and the next day, four, after several days of nothing. It's like having a cold drink of water on a hot day (and these were, in fact, hot days).

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BOUNTY

August preens with spring-sewn bounty
basil in a deck pot spreads green fingers
nibbled by grasshoppers whose good taste
can only be acknowledged
by sending them back
to the yellow sea of a yard
no exaggerated watering here
the green will return soon enough
when the wind sends clouds
when the sky remembers how to rain.

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This one went out to Auburn, Washington poet, Brendan McBreen.


My mother would say Brendan?
He’s Irish, then, this last not
a question, but pure, irrefutable
fact. To her. I was nine
the first time she made me so mad
I wanted to hit her, but she
was pregnant, see, and besides,
we really didn’t hit in my family.
Now she gazes out from under
Paul Nelson’s hat—I have no idea
how that came to be—and I
send the picture to my sisters,
with whom she was pregnant
the time I was angry
when I was nine.

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Who’s to say
what will be the last dance
the last song sung in a foreign tongue
last walk to the mailbox
last trip to the mall
or the hot springs
last ride on a merry-go-round
last Cherries Jubilee
last pilgrimage to anywhere…
and who’s to say it won’t
start all over again
who’s to say

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The "lake with many secrets" is Kokanee Lake, where Michel Trudeau died in an avalanche in November, 1998. His body has never been recovered.


THE CHILDREN OF WINTER

A freefall line of trees
snapped off like frozen twigs
looms across from the boulders
you clamber on above the lake
with many secrets hidden in its depths.
You test each step the way a guide
tests snow for stability,
usually you get it right,
not like the children of winter
who died here, doing what they loved,
leaving behind a legacy of memory.
Quiet now.
They’ll hear you.

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She passes him the towel
as if it was the book she wrote
just before she took out her curlers
and smoothed her hands over her bob,
just after she stitched the appliquéd
poppy down the skirt of her dress.
She returns to the laundry room
turns on the wringer washer
cold water only, good for her whites,
good, too, to hear him scream
when the hot water hits him.

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THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

You escape into a corner
pull out some cards
and begin to write.
Then someone wants to know
what on earth you’re doing
that for, a twitter of disbelief
flitters round the room
where people come and go
talking of vanishing glaciers
and pink snow.
If the door opened right this moment
and an elephant walked in
it would probably cause
less of a fuss.

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This is one of mine that didn't get to where it was going. It has no excuse. It was addressed correctly. It wore the right amount of postage. Was it something I said?

A FEAST FOR PAUL

At 6340 feet we sip wine poured from plastic bottles
that look like the real thing, something to consider
next time you decide to whack someone with one.
Less of a dent on the head
less of a dent in the wallet
(although maybe not as satisfying)
While we’re at it we drool over chocolate fondue
in which we dip bananas, oranges, strawberries,
nectarines, plums that somehow survived
in someone’s pack on the back-crunching
slog up the mountain. No dandelion soy latté
here, but oh—the Indian Paintbrush. If pain was
too good for him, what was good enough?

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GENERATION DANCE

My father lost his mind
but not his hair.
His father was bald as a fire-ravished
hillside, but his mind was sharp, precise.

My hair has thinned a little,
I forget things, these days my son’s
hair looks more like mine than
my own.

Look into a mirror—
they’re all there,
their heads, at least,
unruly
looking for their owners.

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POSTCARD POEMS, OR WRITES OF AUGUST, WEEK 1

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Poems and postcards. They go together like August and peaches, summer and smoke...name your own cliché, I'm fresh out of fresh. Passing poems around in this fashion is hardly new, but this summer Washington poets Paul E. Nelson and Lana Hechtman Ayers came up with the idea of collecting addresses of poets from all over the place and then providing each of us with a list of names so we could write a poem on a postcard and send it to someone on the list every day for the month. Subject matter was completely open. We could respond to the image on the card, or, once they began to arrive, someone's card to you. Or we could take inspiration from an incoming card and write from there. Thirty little poems out, thirty little poems in, at least in theory. In my case I received 22, and I know of at least one of mine that somehow lost its way and has yet to show up at its destination. I did, however, write and send 30, and I'm posting them here, a week's worth at a time.



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CONFLUENCE

Let it begin with a river,
one that passes gracefully
between two countries as different as planets,

Let it be decorated with dams,
alive with rapids,

Let it slake the thirst of all creatures
that find their way to its edge,

Let it flow like words
finding their way to fertile ground,

Let it begin with a river.



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SWELTER

a word you shake out in summer
when a cold lake offers the only relief.
I go from room to room
turning out lights, hiding
from the latest bloom of caddis flies
determined to dash the last of their sticky lives
against my lamp, and when the last of these
is extinguished, my pillow.

Sometime after two a.m., coyotes yip and yell,
celebrate their latest kill.
I flick a caddis fly off my arm,
watch it hit the floor,
and want to cry my victory, too.



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hummingbirds compete for
feeder time
with paper wasps,
small, striped bandits
out for last call
in the slow dusk










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Ah ha! They've begun to arrive. Two from Seattle, one from Julene Tripp Weaver with an image of Powell's Books, and a delightful poem that's really a short story in nine lines entitled "The Gig", from John Davis.

FIRE SEASON SURFACING

Smoke hangs sleepy in the air,
enters your pores like some demon lover.

You head for the beach,
stop first for beer,
then for the mail
where you discover words
of sad sax, words
of books hidden on shelves.

You dive into all of this
and ponder as you
come up for air.




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EARLY DAYS

I buy some postcards for the pictures,
don’t look on the back
where this guy named Dick
has used up to a third of the space
for messages to ramble on
about his photograph,
ignoring apostrophes here,
vague pronoun references there,
misspelling Blaylocks while I
try to jam a poem
into the space that remains.
What a dick!



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“Looks like a cave in here”
says a friend, nodding at
the closed drapes and blinds,
even the skylight is shuttered
against the relentless heat
that lasts but a moment
in the pastiched weather
of a year.
August arrives in a blaze of smoke and ashes—
time for the annual trek
into the mountains.







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This one was inspired by a quartet of anagrams of Teck Cominco I got from Michael Dylan Welch.





ON RECEIVING A POSTCARD OF ANAGRAMS

who’s sad…
an anagram for shadows

next door cat hides in the long grass
beside the trailer

you only notice him
because you saw him lie down

his ears are shadows
who’s sad now?




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