Living On Salt And Stone \ Straight Bay

Nancy: Under the sod, a record of time and lives past.  Broken bits and even unbroken bottles.  How soon will I be reaching for the liniment, picking the last sprig of tansy?

Living On Salt And Stone

Everywhere I dig,

I find the tools of my predecessors,

harness bits, broken plates.

I suspect that I should listen to these things;

I suspect that men do not lose their tools

while they still hope.  Women do not plant

and leave willingly.  But I am here;

and you have come, and we have plowed, again,

and it seems we will try where they failed,

living on salt and stone,

on love and salt and stone.

Alan: After I joined Nancy at Straight Bay in 1980, my father wrote to say that it sounded like a “good place for poets to meditate upon metaphors.”  I wrote this in response.

Straight Bay

There are no metaphors here.

Only a land and a sea

growing into and out of each other

with the tides and slow breathing

of isostasy.

There are no poems here.

Only the woods and the fields

growing into and out of each other

with the flux of farms, families, fires,

relative yields.

There are no poets here.

Only she and I

growing into and out of each other

in a flow of days listening to earth,

talking to sky.

“Living On Salt And Stone” first appeared in Living On Salt And Stone (Stone Man Press, 1984).  “Straight Bay” first appeared (with the title, “Here”) in Slow Dancer magazine.

Milestone \ Lost In The Scatter Of Light

Nancy: Society has gained so much now that the signposts shown to children no longer point girls down one path, boys down another.  At least I hope not.

Milestone

Little skinny bones girl

sitting there crying on her

birthday,  her Mama just

told her she was gonna

grow up and be a woman

and it settled on her all at once

how life might not be a big

tree stretching up, some branchy

old catalpa or tall oak, but

a long walk counting months,

holding her breath and counting –

and that was the same summer that

the boys took the raft she'd worked

on down to the creek and paddled

it as far as the waterfall

and she heard them talking about it

later.

Alan: Time speaks a foreign language.  I’m left guessing at its meaning in a rough translation.  

Lost In The Scatter Of Light

Time does not pass, it sinks.

Not like traffic passing on the busy street

that runs past the houses of our selves.

Not like the slow-moving freight train

with its endless, intriguing box cars,

mysterious gondolas of days,

passing as we wait, impatient, at the crossing.

Time sinks. We feel it

in the treetops of childhood, easy chairs of old age.

Even when we ignore it we feel it,

busy as we are, as we make ourselves to be.

We sense it sinking away out of sight

like light beams sinking below the surface

of the sea.

Just as a child, staring over the side of a small boat into calm water

watches, fascinated and a little afraid

of the beckoning scatter, we feel ourselves

too, drawn downward

into the dark.

I Never Did Cry \ Marked

Nancy: The deserts of the Southwest have seen so many deaths – even the map warned “Jornada del Muerto” on the contour lines of the land.  It was a place too dry for raindrops or tears. 

I Never Did Cry

I never did cry

there was a window

comings and goings

how do you feel

pain is private

why do the clouds hang on the mountains

leaving the basin dry

they’re waiting

screams are currency here

too many faces

is there anyone to call

dammit I can’t get a vein

the window is

gone

and the lightning flashes over the mountains

they told me

then

one day

when

I never did cry

but it rained, once

outside the window

you could watch the drops

disappear in the dust

Alan: Dystopia enters slowly, through innumerable tiny cracks and fissures, until finally – looking back, looking ahead – too late, we notice.

Marked

Marked from birth – leaf

foot, petal toes

pressed, printed,

tucked away –

if I wandered too soon

from life, my mother

would have at least

this to weep on.

One day we lined up

in class the nice

stranger dressed in blue

blue hat & shiny badge

inked our thumbs.  So if

we went off in the car

of another nice

stranger there would be

this of us left.

Another time I noticed

half-domes bulging

like Sputniks

from the ceilings of the

five-and-ten-cent store

chameleon-eyes watching,

tracking.  I was never

alone again.

Now they are everywhere,

slim swiveling boxes

recording; more – tiny –

hidden in walls, trees,

lights, eyewear, clothing,

under skin.

For a time barcodes

inventoried us like fruit

or dry goods.  QR codes

scanned to our personal

sites & histories.  Clumsy.

Gait, face, demeanor,

voice, iris, and finally

thoughts make everything

public or if not public

known to some.

Once it was enough

to be free or at least

uncaring.  It was that way

in post-war Honolulu

mid-50s Coronado

suburbs made for kids

on bikes, cul-de-sacs

and cut-throughs.

Now I know

how my sister died

and of the sadness

surrounding us.

Now I am secure

and can menace no one.

Now it is better.

They say, watching

and listening over me,

now it is better.

“Marked” is from a work in progress, Annals Of The Nearer Soon (preliminary title).

Just The Word Peas \ The Mummichogs

Nancy: When the women gathered to work on the fruits and vegetables to be canned, I often found a place to sit and a way to be part of it.  There wasn’t a lot of money to spend in the ‘30s, but it was the most social time I can remember.

Just The Word Peas

four generations

my mama my granny my mama's

cousin my granny's aunt

and me

sitting in the shade

shelling peas

shelling peas

our hands busy their voices

rising and falling murmur

question and answer

until someone noticed

and everyone noticed

me.   someone said

"little pitchers have big ears"

and for a minute or two

there was only the dozy drowse

of summer

the soft rustle of peas

that summer afternoon

four women

and me

sitting in the shade

living in my memory

five women shelling peas

Alan: Often, walking our lane where it crosses the edge of the marsh, we’ll see a flash and scatter in the brackish pools left behind by the receding tide.  These are mummichogs, tough little fish that thrive at the margins where salinity, oxygen and temperature swing wildly.

The Mummichogs

The mummichogs came up in the small streams.

In the small streams and tide pools

they lingered when the tide went down,

expert hangers-on,

not minding the fresh or the salt.

When the tide went down, they held on

and when the tide returned, they returned

to the sea again for a time

to feed in the salt grasses.

When the tide came up in the streams –

came up farther than before

on the new moons and fulls –

the mummichogs also came up farther

into the pasture

into the woods

and held on.

The tide came up

and the storms pushed it up

and it came up around the knoll where the house once stood

bearing the mummichogs

to a higher home.

The storms came more often now

and they came up farther,

over the knoll and swirling around the backland beyond

and up around the cliffs

the plucked rock faces

from the last glacier

and the very heights of the land

and the mummichogs came up and found

new streams

new pools

new places to feed and breed and hang on.

Where there had been pasture, and woodland, and a house

and cliffs

the mummichogs found new homes

there, after the people and the other land things had gone.

“The Mummichogs” is from a work in progress, Annals Of The Nearer Soon (preliminary title).