The Beginning and the End

Thus ends the year. Though much has been taken, much abides, to quote Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” and something big begins: My daughter Milo became engaged as autumn turned to winter, to a man we love too. The rainbow photo, taken in the mountains of northern California, is for her, my child who has always loved this symbol of hope.

This final post of 2011 is for love. Love is not blind. With eyes wide open, love sees, bears, believes, forgives, and celebrates. Love does fail, but it can dust its mucky knees and stand again. Its strength is tensile, a bond capable of stretching beyond the reach of human arms.

My daughter said I have never written a poem for her. So I wrote one last night for her and the man she loves, whom we met for the first time at a storage facility where our daughter lived with her best friend in the manager's apartment. With their permission, I share it with you on the last day of a hard year that ends with rejoicing, in love.

My Child’s Freshly Minted Fiancé

We did not have to wade
through an ocean of assholes to reach you;
you, unbidden, appeared,
our Knight,
to claim our daughter’s hand, heart, hazel eyes
laughing as we had never seen her eyes laugh
before
you came.

You, unbidden, appeared,
completely unexpected,
a Knight in a storage yard where junk is gold,
where junk unwanted yet unloosed is locked
behind blank doors
in an undead limbo between lost
and claimed, paid for but
discarded.
You came

unbidden, unexpected,
from that storage yard into our daughter’s heart,
our Knight
in chain-link fencing, your clear eyes kind
and your mind keen, seeing in our daughter
that great beauty
blooming
like a flower in a crack in the asphalt
before
you freed her.

Milo and Kaleb

Love in the Sand

The Theme Thursday prompt today is two cupped hands holding a heart-shaped handful of sand. I'm having one of those days (and one of those nights) when I want to say something, communicate, whatever, but words fail me. So I'll say something about love and sand. More skillful interpretations of the theme will be found on the Theme Thursday blog.

Love on the Shore

We wandered through the garden of the seashore
through the long brown ribbons of kelp
the seaweed strands like purple spaghetti
the seaweed fans like white bones
the stones cast like confetti on the sand.

The tide ebbed and the surf supped on the land.
The lowering sun spilled a broad silver stain
on the surface of the sea so bright our eyes
could not bear it. We walked the wide brown
pathway of hard sand, following the footsteps

of someone who had gone before us down this
deserted, rocky stretch of coast. A woman
I said, in shoes with pointed toes and stacked heels.
No, you said, a cowboy with small feet in boots
and a long, cowboy stride. They vanished round

a bend guarded, like Scylla and Charybdis,
by giant boulders carved of sand turned to stone
by the millennia. There we came upon a dead
body, a seal carcass hidden among the kelp,
with vultures dining sedately like red-faced guests

around a table. It seemed as much a part
of the haven of the shore as driftwood and
shells, travelers all from some other port and
long dead, caressed by the sea and tossed up
as treasures on the sand for visitors like us to find.

We held hands and wandered on. I carved
I love you at the edge of ebbing waves, sure
that it would last until the tide turns and
erases the garden to begin all over again.
My love for you is not a stranger to the tides.

We climbed the bluffs and stood looking out to
sea like garden angels watching over our little
bit of heaven. We joined the other vanished ones,
leaving only footprints on the sand, and proof
that I love you until the tide turns.

Alice Goes to Wonderland

This is my mother posing in front of a favorite barn before she became so bad.

Since the FBI closed down Mom's home, I am stunned and desparately unhappy. Of the half-dozen facilities we visited, all turned Mom down but one, the most expensive 30 miles from home. She didn'' even have to bare her breast to be rejected. She simply had to have occasional outbursts of lucidity.They want TV watchers.

Wednesday night, we went to a local store for a few items for her. She would be staying with me until suitable accommodations could be found. There in the front of the large store, she had a meltdown. She wouldn't follow me, claim any affiliation with me, loudly claimed I had to leave her alone. Reason makes no difference in a meltdown.

I was thankful for the strangers who quietly distracted her while I ran and got my car and drove it onto the sidewalk. Strangers gently walked her to the car and several of us gently pushed her in. I locked the door and we were off, me sobbing and her angry shouting NO! repeatedly. I actually screamed at her. I screamed I hate you! I hate what you've become!

The night was not over. I aimed Mom at the door of the house and walked up the sidewalk with her. My hubby Joe answered and so did the three beagles. Mom began shouting that this was not her place and she had been kidnapped. In an effort to relieve her of her packages, she struck out at one of us, we ducked, and she went down. She landed on the edge of the low bookshelf and ripped a four inch deep gash in her arm. She fought like a banshee. We called 911. They calmed her down.

Now to the ER and its hours and hours of waiting. For some reason, I think to do with her dementia, they decided to keep her overnight at 2 a.m.. They have kept her for five nights. She can't walk, she can't talk coherently, but she can sure eat.

I meanwhile, feed her meals by hand, make calls to care homes, taking her for walks, and manage to burn up some hours doing I don't know what.

I am calling her "Mommy" now. God help us . Make her heart stop. Please.

For the whole story about the FBI raid, see Tuesday's or Wednesday's post. At this point, my brain is a sieve.

******

To Know Peace


It is to walk the dog in the morning silence
on the first day of a new year
when diamonds sparkle on the lawns
as we pass by, and I breathe out clouds
small but white with every exhalation.

Overhead jetliners quietly draw
white lines on blue canvas sky
and the air up there is so still
the crosshatched trails linger
in the passage of the silver jets.

The soft winter morning sun
bathes my upturned face
as I trail the dog whose downturned nose
draws wet lines on the sidewalk
on his jaunt to check what has passed
in the night while he slept.

The crow caws, the robin tweets,
the little finches peep peep peep
as the dog canters beneath the trees
bare of leaves but ripe with berries
and I see the birds, salute them, listening
to their morning quest.

You kissed me this morning very early
when you left, the dog and I
curled in bed before the sunrise
and I heard you say I love you
as you moved away. It is always
so, loving, leaving, coming home.
The leashes are invisible, but resolute.

Mysteries That Are Unsolvable

Here’s a mystery for you:
Why do monarch butterflies return every year to the same couple of trees in a eucalyptus grove in California? How do they find their way to the same itsy-bitsy grove on a speck of land during their thousand-mile migration, with brains no larger than a pinhead?

Here’s another mystery:
Why do some elephant seals stop at the same teensy-weensy stretch of beach on the coast near my home? Is there the equivalent of an ocean off-ramp just for the handful of seals that might care? And how would you know, if you were an elephant seal, where exactly on this coastline you were born?

Americans love mysteries. We spend millions on thrillers every year. We do it for that “Ah-ha!” moment, when our suspicions are laid to rest and we know whodunit and why.
But “Ah-ha!” moments aren’t found only between the covers of a book. If you’re a seeker who asks questions, you can have the “Ah-ha!” experience all the time in real life.

In a week or so, some of us celebrate Epiphany, the date in the Christian church calendar commemorating what you might call the ultimate “Ah-ha!” moment: The Wise Men saw a Star and followed it to a stable in Bethlehem. My pastor calls it the moment when the light bulb goes on.
When my 75-year-old mother was reminded of Epiphany and its “Ah-ha!” moment, she said, “I have those every morning when I wake up.”
I walked around for days afterward trying to visualize what it’s like to say, “Ah-ha!” every day when my conscious mind becomes aware of life again. Hello, here I am again! What a nice way to live.

The Internet makes sleuthing fun, because search engines will pull up literally millions of web sites posing possible answers for any question a person cares to ask.
For example, why does a man pick a particular woman to love and cherish? Ask Jeeves at ask.com and you’ll get 8,486,000 possible answers, although you’ll sift through a boatload of stuff to arrive at books like “Women Men Love, Women Men Leave: Why Men Are Drawn to Women; What Makes Them Want to Stay.”
There are an awful lot of words in that title. No wonder it isn’t on the best-selling lists.

I wonder how many words have been written on the subject of love, or more specifically, on the attempt to explain the inexplicable mystery of why one man happens to love one woman for a very long time.
I asked my husband recently why he has loved me all these years, and he looked at me cockeyed. Then I discovered that he looks at me like I look at a good thriller. I’m a mystery for him to solve, in little bits at a time.

That day, he was taking down the Christmas lights, and at lunchtime I was reminding him of the old salt about HALT—don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. My tongue tripped over the word “angry” and it came out “angle-y”—which must have made the light bulb go off for him.
He threw his arm around my shoulders and observed, “When you get hungry, you get all angle-y, and all your sharp parts stick out. You get real sensitive behind it.”
As I rolled around the driveway laughing, all I could think was: That’s real love, when somebody knows you get angle-y.
Then we shared a meatloaf sandwich, and he packed away the lights, and the real mystery is: Will we find them next Christmas?

Lost Love

I Can Almost Hear You, Love

I cruise the internet looking for you
the voice I need to speak
the words stuck deep
in the throat of the brontosaurus

I find you not but am distracted
by the voices chattering
like so many birds in the pine
outside the house, they shrill

unless I’ve had my morning coffee
and walked the dog and felt
my life unfold, a blanket
keeping in what warmth remains

then the shrill becomes a choir
singing hallelujah I still live
though you do not and while
my throat is stopped yours is not

you speak and sing in some
other place beyond this place
and I can almost hear you, love

***************

The photo is of Tonya, my best pal, planting a spring garden after getting a fatal cancer diagnosis. She would love it that I've written another poem for her. She was over 6-feet tall, fierce and fiercely grateful for life while she had it. She had a story involving a pervert and suicide that was beyond hysterical. I turned it into a poem and someday might post it here if I get the courage. Oh, wait a minute. (Senior moment) I already did! Find it here: How the Pervert Saved Her Life

Here's the first one I wrote for her. This is a two-for-the-price-of-one post.

The Diagnosis

A six-foot Amazon
warrior woman

everything about her is large
Large feet Large breasts (one fake)
Large mouth (fake teeth)

fighter of cancer five times over
never say die

Ferocious as the beast that strikes her again
dammit all to hell

Large heart (broken) Large spirit (tired)

all the fight has gone out of her
for this moment
all the fire gone

She will rise up again and roar/
have faith

Loved Ones

My Husband in the Kitchen


The sight of your broad shoulders
as you whack the pink flesh of chicken
with a mallet is erogenous.
I want to run my hands over their strength
and with my fingers feel the flex of muscle
as you pound chicken into something
that soon will melt in my mouth.

From the other room sitting with my book
open on my lap I watch you move
from surface to surface in the kitchen
a big man in a small space
carefully preparing supper.

I am the space you occupy
as you control your beautiful solidity
and exert your will over flesh and flame.
It is me you grasp with your large hands
with your muscles
flexing

***************

This is my most-requested poem when I'm doing a reading. People seem to like that whacking business. I certainly liked watching my husband do it.

Here are some other faces I love:

My daughter Milo

My niece Allison and Jacob

My daughter Annika

These are a few of the faces I love to look at. There are many more. I see beauty in their eyes. I feel love bloom in my heart. This is a very good life, to contain such fine cadre of beloveds.

Watch Out For the Sword!

When I was three, I owned a sword made of paper. The paper was wrapped around a stick, and when you thrust the stick at someone, the sword came alive with a slithery sound. It hurled out of its hiding place, and it seemed it could reach across the room.
It was made in China and it cost a dollar. I didn’t have a dollar, but my mama did and she bought that sword for me.
With that sword, I attacked the big people in my life. There was my aunt, taking the pictures with her camera. There was my mother, cowering before the sword. There was my grandfather, running away from me and my mighty sword. There were dogs that ran from me.
In the bedroom was the travel DVD player, playing that new movie “Green Eggs and Ham” but I couldn’t care less. I was a warrior with my paper sword. Let me at the big people; let me whack them with my magic sword and make them smaller and less powerful than me.
Oh, it made me laugh to attack with that paper sword. I got the giggles so bad, I almost wet my britches. People hid around corners from me. I made my last stand on the sofa in the sunroom.
My aunt, the photographer, didn’t flinch when I zoomed her with my sword. The dogs ran away, and my grandfather stayed away too. Mama flinched in the corner like a scaredy bird. I won them all, those big people. My paper sword was mightier than all of them.
A story written by Jacob at the age of three, with help from his great-aunt Chris, who is grateful to have him and his mama, Allison, god-daughter and niece, staying at our house, where paper swords rule the day.
Thank God for the simple joys of childhood.

For Jacob

My boy is a sprite, stiff-legged in flight;
in search of a toy, he weaves left and right
smiling a smile chock full of sweet guile.
Without even trying, his actions beguile.

I chase him to save his small body from harm.
I race him and snatch him up in my arms.
He wiggles and squiggles and tries to get down:
He’s fluid with motion, brimming with sound.

I’m tired and wish he’d be still but he won’t.
He loves sticks and stones and really I don’t.
I offer a book or an educational toy,
But he wants my good crystal, my contrary boy.

Every day is discovery for this little man.
The richest of treasures he holds in his hand.
So simple his needs but baffling too.
No matter what happens, each moment is new.

Chris Alba © 2009

Something Is Circling My Head

He said the jet stream is a tubular ribbon
of wind blowing 100 miles per hour
maybe five or six miles over my head,
and I wondered, is that why I hear
that buzzing in my ear when I think
of the black mustache under your
nose which resembles an Apache’s?

He said a cold front is a wave of energy
sweeping away from the core of the storm,
and I felt a white-hot wave of energy
sweep away from the core of my loins
as your black mustache smiles there,
and this I remembered as he said core
and wave and sweep and storm.

He said the jet stream flows like a giant
wave undulating from west to east
for thousands of miles, and I marveled
that my head could contain it all,
the knowledge of your mustache
and your nose like an eagle’s beak,
his speech a buzzing in my ear
and the jet stream of life circling
over my head and under my toes.

Chris Alba (c) 2009

Expectations Run Amok

Have you ever wanted to tell your significant other something important, and he/she listens with only half an ear? Ever had something momentous happen, and the SO just seems intent on getting dinner on the table and watching a game of sports?
Sometimes I want to yell: Just Listen To Me! Stop What You’re Doing and Hear Me! I Want to Be the Most Important Person in Your Life Right Now!
Yelling might get his attention, but I can’t do it since I’m not one for yelling. I like civilized discussions.
So I came in here, my little conservatory-office, and wrote a poem. It doesn’t paint him in a very flattering light, but his response when I read it to him was “That’s wonderful.”
He’s easy to love, even if he is sometimes hard to talk to.

The Wife, Suffering Deep Depression, Goes to the Therapist

I come home to you, my husband of 17 years,
and you pull the chicken out of the oven and say
How was it? while you get the spinach ready
and set out knives and forks and plates.
How was it, that visit with the therapist?
You say, I’m going to eat now; how ’bout you?

I stand in the kitchen like a big crow,
black and shiny and standing in that little kitchen
like I don’t belong there; how am I going to eat
this food on this plate, for instance?
At moments like these, you tell the truth or lie,
so I said It was strange. You were eating
and the Phillies came up with another run.

Strange how? you asked. I didn’t know how.
I sat beside you, not like a crow but like a woman,
and I carefully ate that plateful of chicken & rice.
I had told her I was sick of the cheerleading
that the darkness was too big and I was scared,
that we needed to talk about why I melted down

and had to go to the psychiatric ward and all
the crying and the sense of pain. There were long
lengths of silences that I didn’t bother to fill.
She offered me no answers. I’d have been surprised
if she had. It was strange that I couldn’t connect

with her, and now I can’t connect with you.
I take my five pills, or seven, and hope they fix
whatever is in me that is wrong and so unspeakable.
that the best I can say is I am a crow in the kitchen.


Chris Alba © 2009

How Torture Turned Into Love

Coffee Love
Love has everything to do with coffee in our household. Joe loves me through coffee as thoroughly as he loves me in all the conventional ways.
When I arise in the morning, he has prepared my Mr. Coffee so all I have to do is touch a button. He does this at 4:30 a.m. while he readies for the gym. It is, for him, a loud and clear statement of his cherishing me, as clear as a diamond ring.

I receive that gift each morning when I rise at seven. Most days in my self-centeredness I fail to appreciate the fact that all I need to do is press the Brew button. Only occasionally do I pause and marvel at the love within a simple pot of coffee. For so long has he loved me this way, I forget that love is what fills my coffee cup.

I once thought love was a verbal declaration. If a desirable man spoke it, I pursued that man to the ends of the earth just so I could hear that soul-nourishing phrase again and again.
I repeatedly failed in such pursuits.

The men I tracked hightailed it to the hills for good reason: I pursued a man long after he grew tired of saying the magic phrase, long after I ceased to be the wonderful woman who warranted worship. I think I tried to lay hands on men who wanted miracles, forgiveness of sins, fine meals out of soda crackers, and other suitably godlike acts.

Hungry for love, I was a she-wolf in search of a meal. I thought love was a compulsion to worship and have riotous sex. The words were the nourishment I craved.

It was only through numerous miserable escapades that I became willing to adjust my concept of love. When I met Joe, I learned to recognize both my humanity and his. Our love is a desire to be kind, to accept calluses and farts, to find comfort in one another’s company.
The love expressed in that morning cup of coffee has the freedom of kindness within it. I shake my head in wonder at the love in the man. Then I drink my coffee. I drink it all.



Tracking

Twilight falls on me
belly to cold ground
nose pressed to the
imprint of your foot
searching for the
scent of you.
I am in hot pursuit:

However cold grows your trail
I’ll not abandon it.
I am the shadow
which trails behind.
I shall lay hands on you.



Chris Alba (c) 2009