For My Husband On His Death

and so I
dance alone
again
waltzing to the sound
the faint melody
of your breath
the voice in my head
that says
it's ok darling
but here
in the quiet night
the darkness
no longer
a stranger
I peel off my body
slipping out
circling over
waiting for your soul
spiraling
downward
to hold out
the unseen hand
and bring me home

Chains

"I can still hear you saying you will never break the chain...." Fleetwood Mac

The clouds move in and the day moves on into the late afternoon. There is little going on at the moment, and I am left to the company of my thoughts. I am traveling in my mind back, as I always do, to the beach. I need to walk the cool sands and feel the wind wash my body of the anxiety and stress of the week. The green grey water is thundering up to the cliffs and the foam washed over the rocks and sand. I sit crosslegged on the cement-pitted platform at the Sutro ruins and pull my sweather-coat tighter around me, head bowed into a big, wooly buddha ball. There are grains of sand blowing past me, tumbling like tiny boulders into the cracks and valleys of the damaged concrete. Rust bleeds out from the the old rebar and bolts that held the girders in place at the old bath house. It runs done the bones of the concrete, spilling out onto the rocks below. The wind is picking up, howling now at the sandstone to the left of me, wearing away the packed sand wall and tiny caves with it's watery breath. The sea spray flies carrying the gulls that are crying out the message of rough water and the arrival of the first storm of autumn. Part of me breaks away and cries with them, keening.

Here is the next task. I am at my desk once more, back from my mental hiatus. The need to go to the place as a child runs to it's mother for safety and comfort. I've done it for decades now...more times than I can possibly count. In this time, I let the sand slip through my fingers in the wind. It's time to say good-bye.

Sutro and the Past

Walking the Fog

We walked the fog

weaving patterns within

the tall grasses and dill

looking for bits of glass

bits of brick in the rubble

of my father's dream.

We walked

on narrow walls of concrete

rust forming jagged teeth

framed in skeletal jaws

bathe in sea water and silt

Sea birds screamed against the rising tide

raising memories

my father telling me

gulls were the souls of the dead...

Today

I believed it.

We walked the ruins

old Sutro's past glories

whipping up the mists

bathing our faces with that same water

that fed in from the tides

moving

through the tunnels

pulling and pulsing

arteries of the huge pools

pumping millions

of gallons

of sea water

still

filling the tanks

during the day

and then

into the long

chilled

lonely nights.

The ghosts walk

slipping through the green depths

gliding past the pump house

unseen

holding a brittle hand to your face

catching warm breath

in cold fingers

as you pass by the brick stairs

leading to no where.

We walked

the dark

the mist waiting

lurking

for us

at tunnels end

the booming

of the surf

pounding rock walls

crashing on the staircase

washing brick and sand

down cliff faces

pummeling our hearts

with its heart beat.

We walked the fog.....

San Francisco, CA

Monday, Auugust 11, 2008

Copyright 2008

Walking the Fog

At first glimpse, the pool seems to be moving, but it isn't. The tide at Sutro was very low...so low you could easily walk out to the rock where a tightrope walker used to walk from Sutro to the rock and back while the waves rolled beneath him.

If you know the history of Sutro, you soon begin to realize that what you are looking at is the five individual swimming pools that were encased within Sutro' glass walls. The water was low enough that you could disinctly make out all of them just below the surface, murky and deep green with algae.

Today you could easily count all five from the warm dining room at Louis' above. We were seated in the coveted corner booth because of it's gorgeous view of the ruins below. There were maybe only three or four people inside, which was mostly staff.

Louis' has been there since before the Baths burned. They experienced the changes of seeing the Baths turn into "the Tropics" with indoor sandy beaches to the ice skating rink in its later years. It has stood in the same place watching the tides, trends in cars and hemlines.

We ate fish and chips and burgers, all the while looking down through the moing mist that was floating in from the ocean, adding an etherial touch to the scene below. People wandered down the paths. Three teenagers roamed over the remains of the grand staircase, occasionally crouching to look at something or staring up at the tall tower of cement.

Do You?

Dark. Muggy and no clouds in sight. Languid, but tranquil in the dusky light as I lay across the sofa.

Thoughts of the wind and the rain and the water. Always the rain and the green grey sky of a September afternoon from years ago. Wind howling and the lightening scattering like cat scratches across the dark and troubled sky. You remember...

remember it like it was yesterday...moments ago and the thoughts pour down just like the rain did that dry day...we hadn't had rain for months and were praying for it....

Ocean waves, the muted green silk frothed with water lace rippling on the rocks at the back of the Sutro cave rippling as my skin in the cold of the fog splintering my nerves on tiny skewers. The shell, pink and white and oh, so fragile, lay in your hand as you thought in the dry, white heat of the desert....you couldn't say a word...not to anyone...but I knew....

knew like the lines that cross my palm or the hunger at the end of the day...hunger coming in waves...the heat of the day rising in mirage from the asphalt...making you think...

wonder.....

why the spirit dances in the dead of night when no one but the stars see...whirling under the branches to the scent of roses and leaves crisping in the summer heat...you are a voyeur, aren't you ...I've said that before , but it's true...like it or not.....yards of cloth sway in breezes and body movements that leave you drunk with desire and longing to touch...you won't...won't allow yourself to do that...and she knows...can feel your breath on her neck down her arms...the breath that is the wind carrying her in the dance...your heartbeat marking the tune as her feet glide and she twirls leaf-like in your heart...is alone and will be so through time...so close you can feel her, smell her scent but never touch her...make her yours...she pulls off the veil to reveal your own face looking back at you and you flinch and then realize she is a mirror and you are the mask...forever hiding from yourself and from her....and you believe in your safety and you believe you are untouched by your desire.....alone in a confessional the little panel slides back to reveal...what?

...staring at the screen only shadows beyond and you still won't reveal it...won't tell you the truth until finally the desperation drives you dizzily down the wire and YOU tell her what you have longed for...what you wish and what you fear...and there is silence greeting you...is she listening...eavesdropping to what is said between the lines...and she softly tells you to light a candle for her soul and say 3 Hail Marys..because surely you are driving her to a hell of your...her own creation clawing at the bedsheets and howling into the dark...unheard

what is this thing that makes you think

you are so civilized?

Your Own Version and Mine

A thorn sticks in my finger and it penetrates right into my brain. There are times when I am afraid of my thoughts...scared of what my mind will conjure up for it's own enjoyment or torture.

I have been writing since 5 this morning. Unable to sleep, the poems, no, the emotions ran over in my mind ceaselessly. If I purgue this, will it leave me alone? How many times do I have to purgue it? It drones on and on as a nun over her rosary.

rerun....

change the channel

twilight zone and they are all the same show.

popcorn for breakfast with oatmeal and a dash of brown sugar with my tea. Okay, let's see where this leads me.

Where it leads you.

There is a dark side to me...glittering, knife-edged and very, very sharp. I am throwing it all up on paper, so to speak...the beautiful, bold, insecure and bizarre.

...the smell of snuffed out candles in the evening air and church confessions banging my head against the dark, on the wood confessional and the words of someone anonymous giving me meaningless absolution for sins I haven't even thought of committing.....wouldn't in a million years.

I count candles and rain drops, and tears that were shed over trivialities and nonesense whose intense meaning in my past look absurd in the now. I keep counting them. Collecting them as scattered beads on the ground, something precious to be put away until I have the patience to re-string them and turn them into something truly beautiful.

The night is young and the spirit is believing in the wax and lighted string and wisps of smoke tangled up in prayers so intimate and unspoken aloud . The silence within me echos up and the choir screams. The spirit boils.

Do you see it? Do you understand ?

So much I pick up and see. So much that goes unnoticed in everyday hurrying to work.

People pass by the building fascade and never stop and REALLY see it. They don't know about the beautiful tiles and the rococo. They don't see the gargoyal sitting placid and ready to spout water during the rainfall. The see the piece of yesterday's newspaper and dog crap by the doric column and have no idea there is a sky above. Eyes to the pavement. Attention to the bits of litter and trash.

I see it, too. I just have the nerve to raise my head. That makes me dangerous. That makes me know too much.

Laying down at Sutro gate is a cement lion. He waits and watches the decades roll by with the fog from the Pacific Ocean. He is covered in sun, covered in dew, cloaked in rain. His roar is frozen. He is wise and aware of everything that has passed before him in the stream of traffic and time that has flowed down the hill over looking the ruins of ghosts and laughter and dancing in the dark to the orchestra after oysters and champagne. Dancing on the floors of a building that you can't see above the ruins and the tunnel and the boom of the waves at high tide when the spirits run with your candle through the darkness and snuff it out on the rocks and water at the end of cave. Dancing with their ghost lights and dreaming of us as a fantasy in their mind.

Madness, you whisper.

Silent. So much is.