Sister 1909-1995

she worked here
learning retired repository
studying stacks of education
filed ever so carefully among
dusty dewey decimal systems,
among stacks of volunteers-
acquiescent acceptance

pharmacy manuals,
people smiling in glossy pulp pages
childless South American radio frequency lives,
nephew travel tales
exposes in foreign tongue lands
falling off cruise ship deck into blue sky dreams

passions planted among dusty exotic shores of recognition
laughing with a box of simple crackers at Christmas

caught in choice's web
wearing threadbare depression taught clothing
ideas, attitudes
afraid of change and spending and laughing and trusting
instincts
a bird trapped in cage
becoming of age. ancient, wise

trusting her brother's decisions,
guidance where it mattered

late at night her watercolor brushes glistened
she explored exploded
delicate soft spoken nature parameters
where searching expectations
led her past solitary confinement
bleeding water and color on her life's palette

at 86 her heart stopped while
she was rolling along

Circle

I was early for my cleaning.

“Go outside and practice then,” said a woman with her head buried in a glossy fashion magazine. “I’ll call you when they’re ready.”

A girl got up, fixed me with her steel gray eyes, shrugged and went out. Spring air rushed in as the door closed.

“They’ve made me wait for an hour,” the said glancing up. “Do you know how hard it is when you have children?” Her thin hands pulled a cell phone out of a shiny jet black leather bag. “Maybe I should call him and tell him I’ll be late. This always happens to me.”

I watched her daughter doing cartwheels on the lawn. Her silver shoes reflected bright sun.

“I don’t have kids.”
“You don’t want them, believe you me.”
“Yes, I imagine the pain and sacrifice is unbearable.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”

A young boy paced the waiting room.

“Then they told me they couldn’t take care of my child. They wouldn’t look at her cavities immediately.”

The boy had a plastic bag over his shoulder.

“What do you have in your bag?”
“Stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Oh, lot’s of things.”
“May I see what you have?”

He pulled out a thick pen with notches and swirling colors and handed it to me.

“How does this work?” I asked.
“Push the button there,” he said, “and it will turn on.”
“What does it do?” I asked, pushing the button — it started vibrating.

I thought of a dentist’s drill. The more you drill the more you bill. I looked into his green eyes under his baseball cap with an embroidered wizard holding an 8—ball and pool cue surrounded by lightning.

“Do you have any paper?” I asked.
“Sure, right here.”

“I have my Moleskine,” I said reaching into my satchel.
“You are well prepared,” his mother said.
“Inspiration doesn’t wait.”

I doodled away in blue color. The pen danced on the page.

“Thank you for sharing this wonderful pen with me,” I said when the assistant called me for my appointment. Her son accepted his pen, put it in his bag with the rest of his stuff and started playing with his toy cars.

I turned to the boy’s mother. “I’m sorry you had a bad experience here. Take a deep breath and relax when you release your anger.”

“All I know is this has been a complete waste of time.”

Play in the water

After work as she waited for her ride they sat talking in his car, sharing a love for literature at dusk in the shadow of Camelback Mountain, Arizona. She was a young tough beautiful woman from Alaska.

“I haven’t even had one,” she said.
“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know, it’s just that I think too much, you know, about if I’m doing the right thing.”
“What do your partners say?”

“Oh, they always say it’s ok but still, I get pretty frustrated.”
“Maybe you need a lover who is more patient, kind and understanding. Someone gentle.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You know,” she said, “I even get embarrassed at the thought of taking a shower with someone else.”

“Why’s that?” He was smiling, remembering lovers and hot showers - the heat, soap, vapor, bodies, laughter.

“I don’t know,” she replied sarcastically, “there’s nothing to do. It seems boring - I can’t stand to even have someone touch me.”

“Oh it’s great fun! Think of it as two kids playing in water.”

“Yeah. That’s a new way to see it.”

Daylight faded west past a praying monk rock formation. Her ride came.

“Enjoy your book,” he said as they laughed.

She got out and slammed the door.

At the border

He cleared customs, his throat and spent shell casings. He exchanged one denomination of printed paper money for another undetermined valued added currency with a malnourished homeless child.

The child's wearing blood red ragged shorts and broken sandals. He's sticking a needle into his scrawny arm standing in the gutter of his broken down existence full of suffering and futile hope in Dhaka, Bangladesh near a sacred bull wallowing in dust.

One million starving people swarmed around my pedicab beating on fractured windows pleading for help.

They screamed, “We want charity and love. We are afraid to die, to be abandoned by our friends and family. This is our karma. We have no home, no food. We are refugees from the country. We have lost hope. We are desperate and alone.”

His heart trembles, feeling a deep sadness witnessing their poverty, suffering and pain. His karma is to absorb this horror. He is not rich. He cannot save everyone. What can one person do in this world? He swallows particles of inherited dust.

He looks at ALL the beauty and cruelty without hope or fear.

Wild Horses

“Look hard. What do you see. What do you want to see?”

“Can you feel your eyeballs exploding from the heat?”

“I am afraid to tell you what you are afraid to hear.”

Always in a programmed circle, merry go round horses always in a fashion bobbing up and down on shining steel shafts, oiled and greased and well lubricated by sexual assault in wide country where there are no boundaries, no fences, gates, impediments or ticket takers. Risk takers survived.

Wild mind horses in rhythm as the electric current flows and follows rainbows across the sky. Their desert world is blood red, mottled browns littered with sage, dry washes, discarded skins. Some horses need another coat of paint, some have worn down ball bearings and cry out for forgiveness through their pain and torture.

As if on cue they break free of coated molds rear and gallop away through the park to the amusement and horror of patrons relaxing on a day when everything is quiet and taken with a grain of salt. Salt is traded for gold. Commodities. To market we go.

They stampeded their thunder warnings to the shadows as hoofs flashed lightning bolts sending people cowering into corners. Humans were frozen mesmerized in one motion. All is still as stallions with silk coats glistened and paraded past fearful human eyeballs.

Horses remained free and find their way out of the enclosure. They take no hostages, make no unreasonable demands and are allowed to remain free on their own recognizance.

The merry-go-round operator scratches his head in wonder and surveys empty poles. His eyes follow tracks left in damp soil and he knows they are gone forever. They are shadows. He is chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of his eyes.