WATER IS LIFE

I wrote this elegy for a beautiful friend, while listening to If It's Magic from Stevie Wonder's album Songs In the Key of Life. https://youtu.be/fX36mGEqfw4


WATER IS LIFE

I.

Feral man Zach I met as the most willing 
to climb a giant tree in search of bird
 sign. 

A year later at the rookery you were able 
to see seventeen active nests in under a
minute.

Who does that?! That's got to be years 
of study and skills to be able to see all 
of that.

And Fruitvale Bridge last June: you rescued  
the fledging falcon in traffic with your shirt
off.

Your black Jeep: before I did not see them  
around until then I met you and now they are 
every- where.


II.

What if we each gather together our tears

collect them by drops in small glass jars 

that we empty into a silver metal bucket 

in the center of our circle?  What if we 

carry the bucket down the road to the coast

where we create a tidal influenced lagoon? 

What if?! Would otters come? Herons and 

egrets?  Would a northern harrier pair?


III.

WATER  IS  LIFE

Because last month Gloria Ushigua Santi said her 
people in Ecuador - the Amazon forest Indigenous 
people did not know cancer until Chevron showed up. 
Divest from fossil fuels for major contributing factors
from capitalist extraction and white supremacy disease. 

Wildcat Canyon is the foothills above oil refineries where 
you spent your evenings in this special acquaintance
with the great horned owls. You were on the ridge
where western bluebirds know how to hover from 
the kestrels and kites.


IV.

Eagle calls hawk 
                            to mountain 

because we really 
                                miss you.

I aspire to emulate 
                                   how you

were so gentle 
                             and soothing

with my stumbles 
                                and errors.

I aspire to emulate
                                 your 

tenderness.



Here's another song Love's In Need of Love Today from the most awesome Stevie Wonder's album Songs In the Key of Life: https://youtu.be/FGZYWSfiYbM



Cockroaches

...an old poem of mine that I shared last month at the annual Western Women's Tracking Conference (in Cuyama Valley high desert) and it had them laughing, so I'm sharing it here now.


Cockroaches


First I am going to pretend they're really not there on the floor -

maybe two or three to clean the crusted oatmeal off the stove,

but I don't want to think what the dozens do in the food pantry

at night - like what's with that funky taste in the ground corn?!


I declare war on the fuckers. I'll kill each one with my bare

hands, or do it real nasty and bomb the place to hell. Or run

and hide. Or refuse to touch anything near them. Tomorrow

I'll make plans to sterilize and disinfect under the fridge...


I'll try a metaphysical approach and live in harmony with all

creatures since aren't they cute with their little grasshopper

heads? Or wonder if those tales are true about that magic

where their carcasses alert others? Fuck. The story may be


science from Africa discovered millennials ago and it's true

the Mayans have never dealt with such obscenities before,

before, fuckers: it's the United States government. See I live

on the wrong side of town and what would my family think?


I saw the photos of the slave quarters in New Orleans, the ones 

with the roaches in their long haul up the wall with the dead

rodent. Fuckers. They make me think of nuclear disaster.

Fuckers. I live for the time they turn on the masters.

marooned

An erasure poem from a page in M. Moore's classic: 
Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West.
                  


Rumex crispus 
Yellow dock



                   alternate


whole


even    in   the   snow


ditches   and   sumps

                                 
                  roadsides


and                streams


drier          meadows


                         thick

roots


boil        in       water


                   consume


after

                    
marooned


by         a         pond