in Ferguson
we did our homework in Ferguson, thinking life was
fair.
If we didn’t do our homework we might get a U—
Unsatisfactory.
Your dad says you didn’t even get to see the rest of the world yet.
I’ve seen too much of the world and don’t know
how to absorb this—a girl shot through a wall—
U! U! U!
I’d give you some of my years if I could—
you should not have died that night—
there was absolutely no reason for you to die.
I’d like to be standing in a sprinkler with you,
the way we used to do, kids before air-conditioning,
safe with our friends in the drenching of cool,
safe with our shrieks, summer shorts, and happy hair.
Where can we go without thinking of you now?
Did you know there was a time Ferguson
was all a farm?
It fed St. Louis . . . giant meadows of corn,
sweet potatoes,
laden blackberry bushes, perfect tomatoes in crates,
and everything was shovels and hoes, and each life,
even the little tendril of a vine, mattered,
and you did your homework and got an S for Satisfactory, Super,
instead of the S of Sorrow
now stamped on our hands.
Your Answering Machine,
After Your Death
Picks up after four rings
And the hopeful lilt in your voice,
“I’ll call you back as soon as I can,”
gives no clue
this will never happen
Under leaning gray-green trees
doves stirring syllables at dawn
something unfinished
ripples its long wave—
opera of air unfurling daily light
shining on calendars
yours still
pinned to the wall
Ring
A letter survives.
The stamp has been ripped from the envelope—
my grandfather Carl collected stamps.
This may have been one of the few letters
loitering in his sad last room
up north under towering trees.
Safe from cities and strangers—
unfortunately he was not safe
from the condescending words
of his teenaged granddaughter.
I wrote to him as if speaking to a dog.
Have you missed me? I’m sure you did not.
Sorry to be so silent but I have been traveling,
was on a happy horse ranch, at a conference
for global enlightenment, with my friends,
in my full delicious life.
He had written me a critical letter
about studying religion in college—
I wanted to set him straight.
The final paragraph blazes with
indignity—silly Grandpa, the world
cannot stay narrow anymore. We are
building bridges among religions, no one true path,
opening our minds . . . who was I?
Vivid youth, so full of myself
and my conviction, I could not bear
his smallness. Did he reply? My guess
would be no. But all these years
I have worn the last thing he gave me,
the only thing, a ring with one black stone.
Hummingbird
“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
—John Muir
Lyda Rose asked, “Are you a grown-up?”
The most flattering question of my adult life.
She darted around me like a hummingbird,
knotted in gauzy pink scarves,
braiding thyme into my hair.
There, on the brink of summer,
all summers blurred.
“No,” I said.
“I don’t think so.
I don’t want to be.”
“What are you then?”
Her dog snored by the couch,
little sister dozed on a pillow.
When her mom came home, we’d drink hot tea,
talk about our dead fathers, and cry.
“I think I’m a turtle,” I said. “Hibernating.”
“And a mouse in the moss.
And sometimes a hummingbird like you.”
She jumped on my stomach then.
Asked if I’d ever worn a tutu
like the frayed pink one
she favored the whole spring.
No, not that.
“I have a shovel though,” I said.
“For digging in the garden every night
before dark. And a small piano like yours
that pretends to be a harpsichord.
And I really love my broom.”
Next Time Ask More Questions
Before leaping into something, remember
the span of time is long and gracious.
No one perches dangerously on any cliff
till you reply. Is there a pouch of rain
desperately thirsty people wait to drink from
if you say yes or no? I don’t think so.
Never embrace “crucial” or “urgent”—maybe for them?
Those are not your words.
Hold your horses and your mania and these
Hong Kong dollar coins in your pocket.
I’m not a corner or a critical turning page.
Wait. I’ll think about it.
This pressure you share is a fantasy,
a misplaced hinge.
Maybe I’m already where I need to be.
In Transit
I mailed a package to myself, it never arrived.
Months later, wondering what it contained . . .
the package was oversized, I paid extra.
Mailed it from a place under trees. Surely shade
and sunlight was in the package. Mailed it
from a place compassionate to refugees.
Unopened envelopes inside the package,
poems from kind students hoping for response.
How do we answer without knowing
who they were or what they said?
This is why you must smile at everyone,
living and dead, everywhere you go.
You have no idea what has been lost
in transit.
Zen Boy
Why do you have
only one bowl?
I asked our son
helping him arrange
new kitchen cabinets
three plates
three mugs
three glasses
one bowl
a red oatmeal-
sized bowl
He smiled
I like
having only one bowl
Where Do Poets Find Images?
Giant stone turtle on a beach at Nansha, China.
Tired-looking father sits on the turtle,
gripping a child’s striped jacket.
Toddlers scrabble in sand at his feet.
You will never be able to talk to him,
but can imagine something about him.
He lifts his eyes to you, but doesn’t nod.
Or the tree with starry pink flowers
outside the classroom window.
Nobody knows its name, but the trunk has thorns,
everyone has a story involving the thorns.
It has always been this way—more nearby
than anyone could recall or describe.
M. C. Richards, who wrote Centering, said,
It takes a long time to learn that nothing is wasted.
She also said, Poets are not the only poets.
Here, a few glittering bits on a table.
What’s on your table?
Tiny camel that travels thousands of miles
What can’t you explain?
That motorized monkey with a scary face
pulling a child’s rickshaw at the Fun Park.
Whose fun? The child looks terrified.
What surprised you lately?
Everything. Walking by water at sunset.
Remembering, I’m in China.
Evening ferry setting off for Hong Kong.
Cell Phone Tower Disguised as a Tree
Nansha, China
Spiky white tip at the top, the give-away.
Women kneel in gardens nearby, plucking weeds,
triangular straw hats on their heads,
rakes propped against real trees.
Do they feel a sizzling in the air?
Next to the tower, its false needles
a deeper piney green, real trees seem pale.
Invisible cobras burrow and slither
in the underbrush. “Be careful,” kids say.
“They see you before you see them.”
Guangdong Province,
“the most industrialized region on earth,”
gray skyscrapers pinned in line on horizons.
Everything IKEA sells is made here.
Easy to imagine the apartments’ modestly sized
interiors,
bathroom drains, steel sinks, kitchen stools,
bunks, modest light wood shelving, and the people
far from their home villages calling one another,
any way they can, between working hours,
from balconies, cupping weary hands over the phones,
calling through the tree.
Before I Was a Gazan
I was a boy
and my homework was missing,
paper with numbers on it,
stacked and lined,
I was looking for my piece of paper,
proud of this plus that, then multiplied,
not remembering if I had left it
on the table after showing to my uncle
or the shelf after combing my hair
but it was still somewhere
and I was going to find it and turn it in,
make my teacher happy,
make her say my name to the whole class,
before everything got subtracted
in a minute
even my uncle
even my teacher
even the best math student and his baby sister
who couldn’t talk yet.
And now I would do anything
for a problem I could solve.
Morning Ablution
Such luxury—
we select a cup.
What power, politics?
We have a house.
Dry ground cracks
in multiple patterns.
Even if you can’t fix everything
you can fix something.
I am allowed
to leave my country.
No one moves in
while I am gone.
What about moving in
while we are still here?
O Palestine!
If you plant something,
it might grow.
What Do Palestinians Want?
A man in the Lake District, England, asked me . . .
The pleasure of tending, tending
something that will not be taken away.
A family, a tree, growing for so long,
finally fruiting olives, the benevolence of branch,
and not to find a chopped trunk upon return.
Confidence in a threshold. A little green.
And quite a modest green untouched by drama.
Or a mound of calico coverlets stuffed with wool,
from one’s own sheep, piled in a cupboard.
To find them still piled. Is that too much?
Not to dominate. Never to say we are the only people who count,
or to be the only victims,
the chosen, more holy or precious.
No. Just to be ones who matter
as much as any other, in a common way, as you might prefer.
Stones and books and daily freedom.
A little neighborly respect.
Arabs in Finland
Their language rolls out,
soft carpet in front of them.
They stroll beneath trees,
women in scarves,
men in white shirts,
belts, baggy trousers.
What they left to be here,
in the cold country,
where winter lasts forever,
haunts them in the dark—
golden hue of souk in sunlight,
gentle calling through streets that said,
Brother, Sister, sit with me a minute,
on the small stool
with the steaming glass of tea.
Sit with me.
We belong together.
Ladders in Repose
1
Glorious resting folded.
Humans with no desire for achievement beyond
apprehension of one clear moment after another
may appreciate you, not for what
you would help us do,
but—your neat rungs, calm radiance.
Against the side of the shed, all summer you shone.
I could have trimmed a tree.
Your silver song of waiting filled me.
2
Sometimes while driving far out among fields,
dry dead ruined fields, crisped by oil madness
and spill,
or the parched corn rows of August,
in the ditch by the road, a ladder.
You know it must have flown off a truck,
someone later missed it. Lying horizontal
among overgrown weeds, disappearing
nearly abandoned vertical dreams.
The Gift
Our neighbor Mrs. Esquivel
insists I haul her giant cactus away.
It’s planted in a bucket.
Gives you thorns
when you barely brush past it.
Me no like it, please take, please help me,
she says again and again.
Me old. No good. Too big. It bites.
She’s busy hanging four white socks
on her clothesline.
I return
with our green wheelbarrow.
The cactus tips over a lot
traveling to our house.
It’s a cumbersome cactus.
Skin on fire. This cactus has a bad attitude.
Me no like it either but now
it’s mine mine mine.
Voodoo Spoons
When her father the old man died
I was called to witness, to say
Yes, he really seems dead, and I knew
we were entering another phase.
No more would he raise his hand to me
from the porch across the park.
No more asking what I knew, begging for a hug,
thanking me for pie.
Now I had to hide from his daughter
whenever she came dragging a branch
or box down the sidewalk,
orange scarf tied under her chin.
The way she screamed my name
like a horror movie.
I had to dash inside
as if I hadn’t heard, otherwise
doomed to many minutes of mad chat—
not one scrap of sense.
But I couldn’t stop leaving things on her porch,
as I had done with her father for years . . .
it was my habit,
never guessing she would think
they came from a spirit on the other side,
a hawk, or a bat. Antique spoons in a bundle,
nubbly vintage suit with golden buttons,
holy card with glowing heart of wings.
He’d always known t
his meant, I’m thinking of you.
But she thought—they’re watching,
I’m circled by eyes,
if I don’t drink pomegranate juice, I’m doomed!
Barbershop
For Mary Endo, written about in the Honolulu Star Advertiser
Mary of Kalihi is closing down.
Today her last after sixty-two years of trimming hair,
soaping necks, Mary with the pink-and-white
candy-striped awning,
who gives an opinion, no topic taboo.
A man is quoted, “She was the one person
in my life I could always talk to.”
Mary you could count on,
sixty-two years hardly a drop in the shaving mug,
bring her a thank you bigger than Honolulu,
bring her a hug, your whole life she was in here—
now banished by a landlord
you would personally like to shear.
What else will they build in this spot?
It’s just a little shop.
Mary at ninety-one is taking it in stride.
She’ll get dressed
next Monday as usual,
but “doesn’t know where she’ll go.”
When you swing the door,
she’s cutting a guy’s hair
on her last day, wearing a ruffled pink apron,
her own hair perfectly styled.
She looks quizzical when you hand over
the newspaper feature
and one giant red rose.
Guy says, “See, Mary,
everybody loves you, even strangers!”
Four chairs of people waiting,
regulars lined up for a last conversation,
last clip. What is the size of this farewell?
Mary, Mary, you have such a strong grip.
Getaway Car, United States, 2017
Deep grooves of dust atop the books in our shelves.
Anyone else feel a constant need to apologize?
What happened in our nation? The only person
in our family who could translate is dead.
When I close my eyes, someone hopeful
cups a hand over a candle. This shadow has no face.
Weather, soon to deteriorate—I love how people
say that. Right now we find little refuge inside a room.
Old Highway 90 heading west through Castroville . . .
a bakery offers square cheese pockets,
unsweet palm-sized delectable treats.
Maybe that’s what we need.