three mothers

the sun above me /
the earth below me /
the sea before me, behind me, within me /
I am each of them, all of them /
that is why they are my mothers //

earthmother is easiest to love /
she is the closest /
and the steadiest //

starmother easiest to revere /
she is blinding /
only ever above, or absent /
defining time itself //

seamother is the strangest /
at times she may be entirely forgotten /
yet when we are with her how easy to entirely forget the other two /
and even in the driest desert she is most of our living substance /
ubiquitous but hidden /
peaceful but nakedly powerful /
transparent, pure, and singular, but full of who-knows-what /
a one-voiced cacophony /
she divides the world and unites it /
she birthed life, sustains life, is life /
and she takes life back easily, often, and without hesitation /
to the earth she is daughter, sister, mother, lover, friend, and enemy /
her mirror, her sculptor, her assembler, her destroyer, and her defiler /
her disease, her cure, and her very substance /
the two by definition distinct, yet also one in the same /
she was never born but she came from somewhere /
probably from many somewheres, over eons, /
she assembled herself /
where earth is clearly sun's daughter, /
the sea would certainly seem to be a descendent /
but only indirectly /
perhaps ultimately unknowably /
so much of her seems unknowable /
(though of course all my mothers share this trait) /
she asks no questions and gives no answers /
I wonder if she means to put us in that familiar trance /
or just can't help it /
I love her and I don't know why /
I fear her like a night sky full of stars /
her infinitude attracts me, repels me, fills me, and envelopes me /
strange indeed ///

{note}

I don't consider myself a good writer, but I'd like to, so I'm working on it.

goat's foot

Last year was wet. The winter brought the rain I expected, but the spring sent down one shower after another. A drenching by Socal standards, which is an admittedly low standard, but I was happy. About the weather at least. The governor commanded that doors close, some to keep us in, others to keep us out. My home became the sodden ground and the stirrings beneath it. Winter rains primed young roots to anchor in this sandy earth, only an eye-blink past being shallow floor, but fertile enough for goat's foot. Leaves in heart-shaped triplets, often with little spots. Where it was wet a lime colored carpet spread in a few days time. And soon enough little yellow cups on their little yellow stalks, often turning down just at the top, slightly mournfully. This year has been dry. But the goat's feet still came, though the only carpet I've found was on an overwatered lawn. The little yellow cups that close in the dark are sparser. Lovely little invaders nonetheless.

Oxalis pes-caprae

day of no sun (lungs)

not orange not red / 
just no sun at all / 
(i think i see brighter sky to the east? / 
but my eyes have deceived me before) / 
a parting gift on my last day at home / 
our black barbecue speckled grey with ash / 
falling like snow, but too small, too sparse / 
a spider web on a basketball hoop catches white flecks / 
burnt redwood bark from not so far away / 
though the domesticated redwoods here, around me in every direction, / 
they look oddly, poignantly beautiful in this diffuse ecliptical light // 

the street lights went on at 11am / 
yellow sky jaundicing everything / 
some headlights on, i imagine their drivers a little confused / 
a little depressed / 
but not surprised // 

it's quiet / 
still and eery / 
the birds are there, a few at least / 
but hushed / 
maybe for them the dawn never ended // 

i search for the sun / 
i can't find it / 
though i know where it should be / 
a plane flies north descending / 
it flits in and out of existence / 
moving between rolling patches of yellow-grey fog and brown-orange smoke / 
it fades ghostly transparent, then disappears from view / 
its sound remains for half a minute then also fades / 
a strange echo // 

found the sun eventually / 
it's pale orange, though the sky around it distinctly pink / 
it seems weak / 
in a moment it's gone again / 
“until next we meet” // 

i drive south tomorrow / 
to breathe the smoke of different fires / 
hopefully tempered at least a little by pacific air / 
not as bad as these fires / 
but how could they be / 
those are desert fires / 
dessicated jeffrey pines / 
sagebrush and joshua trees / 
not expecting to be burnt like this / 
expectations lie / 
still better than millennia old redwoods / 
my what a guilty thought to think // 

i refresh my various air quality websites / 
bookmarked in a folder named “air“ / 
i criticize my parents for their obsession / 
i criticize myself / 
the indices often don't agree / 
i fall back to my monitor / 
more cheap chinese electronics i didn't need / 
i reload the maps / 
decode the color bars / 
i see the smoke moving south tomorrow / 
i wonder if it's following me / 
maybe if it is at least my parents will get a break / 
but it doesn't look like they will / 
the red particulate drifts with the wind, an uncontrolled hemorrhage / 
what blade could make that wound / 
(i know the answer) / 
i hope the projections are conservative / 
the sensors overcalibrated / 
i know it makes no difference // 

my lungs ache lower left / 
or maybe that’s my heart / 
i imagine burning blood / 
contorted capillaries / 
deflated alveoli / 
filled with gunk / 
my metaphors are a bit much / 
calamity makes us all dramatic types / 
at least those of us privileged to suffer mainly as spectators // 

but it’s too much to imagine fleeing forest denizens / 
hands gripping shirts to mouths / 
poor makeshift substitutes for the masks they forgot / 
or couldn’t find / 
or thought they didn't need / 
or were told were only for “those people” // 

it was already too much to imagine / 
coughing seniors and knee-necked young people / 
115° air stinging throats / 
there are many ways to deprive a pair of lungs / 
as we all have learned / 
and keep re-learning // 

2020: the year of the lung / 
the year of hungry diaphragms, / 
arteries aching for oxygen, / 
unsated air hunger, / 
breaths not taken // 

something’s slipping away as months pass / 
fast looking forward / 
slow looking back // 

i should learn to cope / 
but maybe not / 
i go back and forth / 
as with everything / 
to adapt, or not to forget / 
move on, or stop and stare / 
somehow i think it’s less of a choice than i imagine / 
usually it is // 

i was so full of wisdom in the spring / 
knowledge comes from hardship / 
right? / 
if you’re paying attention / 
but at summer's end it's more muddled / 
for now, just breathe the air you have / 
you never know what fresh hell is on the horizon / 
lungs crushed under fallen timber dislodged by an earthquake / 
lungs iced out by unseasonable cold / 
lungs infected by disease borne on a rushed vaccination / 
lungs exhausted by pointless screaming at empowered cheats / 
lungs with breath depleted by unceasing arguments or crying / 
as it is, it’s hard to hold in mind the ones i know are happening / 
maybe best not to even try / 
they look different when held together / 
and not in a truer way / 
and it’s tiring // 

breathe deep the sorrow-filled air / 
while you can / 
and hope that’s all it’s filled with /// 

last day of august

i have no strong reaction really / 
even if august is my least favorite month / 
though september is my third least favorite / 
(after july) / 
(i’m not fond of summer) / 
walking nonetheless / 
peaceful morning / 
birds are chattering but not in the foreground / 
pleasant background but maybe a bit too quiet / 
like they’re a bit shy perhaps // 

the smoke is there, unmistakable by nose and eye to the sky / 
bathed in too-orange morning light / 
but at least as yet i don’t detect that familiar ache in my occipital lobe / 
and for that give thanks / 
and i guess i’m reassured / 
the year’s rhythms carry on / 
summer is cresting / 
it may yet be hot again, it’s not too late for that / 
but this weather today is what people imagine when they dream of moving to the golden promised land / 
smoke notwithstanding / 
nothing good comes free though / 
the weather you dream of comes hand in hand with clockwork dry spells / 
after all a sunny day is one generally without rain / 
especially out west / 
freak summer thunderstorms notwithstanding // 

i like things a little damper and darker / 
thus full of life / 
but i don’t mind this place either / 
its gnarled oaks and bay-scented tangles, / 
its hills and marshes and of course, / 
the coast with perching cypresses and rock-strewn “beaches” / 
and its silent standing mountain watchers living off fog and sea spray / 
and most of all, their ancient towering guardians / 
now turned sentinels / 
burning as they are / 
spreading soot across the bay to valley, mountains, and high plains / 
and i miss them / 
they are the best part of coming home / 
(other than the people) // 

my day driving up made all the difference for my sanity / 
wandering through the canyons carved through mountains rising straight from the world ocean / 
my eyes up like a tourist in the city / 
my lungs soothed by cool humid air / 
my mind by scraggly dropping branches and meadows studded with familiar jewels, / 
the golden monkeyflowers and purplish morning glories twining up whatever they find before them, / 
giant pendulous pink something-flowers strung between trees a hundred feet up in the air / 
like how did they even get there? / 
and of course, the main attraction, those vines’ and flowers’ pole-straight monarchs / 
the mist-damp redwoods / 
though maybe less an attraction than a chance to stand among wizened elders / 
or maybe it’s just that my particular celebrity fandom is arboreal in nature / 
or i’m obsessed with imaginings of an ancient forested before-time / 
that probably never was // 

in any case i come not just for them and solitude on winding coastal highways / 
i also revere the friends of the redwood / 
which never seem to come along when suburban homeowners plant them in their yards / 
the tanoak, fern, and trillium / 
sycamore and bay / 
white-berried lily-of-the-valley / 
old walnuts with deeply darkly furrowed bark / 
madrones and manzanitas with peeling skin more delicate than any old world birch / 
redwood-sorrel like lawns of giant clovers beside canyon-bottom creeks / 
and the most beautiful poison-oak / 
nets of three-leaved lianas encircling old trunks / 
“why not pick me, take me home” they asked / 
leaves painted with crimson and gold as much as with oily pain / 
“you’ve never felt that stinging rash before, who knows maybe you’re immune” / 
caveat temptor / 
(yes i know that doesn’t quite work in latin) // 

i needed to see them all again / 
nine months after that most recent late-morning hike through second-growth giants dwarfing all but the occasional douglas-fir / 
though still probably mere neophytes compared to their enormous forebears / 
clear-cut to build the cities that would soon crumble and burn in the wake of violently shifting tectonic plates / 
but it’s been a long time since all that / 
and newly sacred groves reliably returned after that genocide of all but a handful of hidden ancients // 

that was a good day, that walk in january / 
posing for photos with one parent standing on a curiously curved hillside doug-fir trunk, / 
with the other inside the huge dome of roots of a tipped-over bay tree / 
i was glad to be back on similar trails along similarly lovely ravines / 
where the redwoods are a little smaller, a little scragglier, living as they do a hundred miles south, where there is a little less rain // 

all that is bittersweet now / 
well it was at the time too, because i knew i’d have for only a day what i want for weeks, for months / 
for every day honestly / 
but now moreso / 
that day, three weeks and two days ago, coming as it did only days before punishing hundred-degree heat (sans air conditioning), / 
then deafening thunder setting off car alarms across the city / 
which i somehow managed to sleep through, / 
attendant burning plasma arcing down from the sky, / 
the purple-white roots of a hidden tree in the heavens appearing for only an instant at a time / 
and then flames for endless thousands of acres / 
chasing people off their homes with minimal warning, / 
their principal sin being that they wanted to live close to the trees // 

“mother nature is angry” some say / 
but i think she does not get angry / 
it is we who are angry / 
is it reassuring to project one’s feelings onto gods? / 
maybe i’ll try it sometime / 
i’m not angry / 
not about this at least / 
i just miss my soggy five-finger ferns and incense-cedars bearing lime-green drooping sprays tipped with tiny cones // 

soon enough i’ll be back with my cliff-clinging cacti / 
avoiding yoga moms and burned-out surfers on my walks instead of tech assholes and people i didn’t like and/or don’t remember from high school / 
farther from my parents and oldest friends / 
closer to my stressors, and my independence / 
farther from the burning redwoods / 
closer to the crumbling cliffs home to beloved pines contorted by the wind and aridity into giant bonsai, / 
still locked behind chained fences and unintentionally-angry signs / 
posted to assuage fears of unlikely (but not completely unreasonable) imagined tragedies of viral transmission among the careless tourists / 
doffing their masks to pose for the same insta shot as a thousand others have posted that day / 
scrunching up their faces, jutting hips and flexing muscles just so // 

and probably i’ll have left the redwood smoke just in time for the searing breath of santa ana to whip up flames in more southerly mountains, / 
and fill the air with poisonous particulates only slightly different from the ones filling my lungs right now / 
fewer notes of primeval forest, / 
perhaps more of oily chaparral and dusty inland deserts // 

i hate the summer as only a californian can /// 

seeds

it rained in the late fall/early winter and then there was a longer dry spell, and i began to mourn the rainy season, maybe it was just going to be a dry year. but then for the last month and a bit it rained quite a lot and i quite enjoyed it. i realized i wish id been sowing seeds to germinate in the rains, but i hadn't imagined thered be any. needless to say i got sowing but felt like i'd maybe missed an opportunity to anticipate and plant the literal seeds for opportunities to come.

strikes me as a rather potent metaphor for whats happening. we are at the beginning of a long dry spell. the once-green plants are starting to desiccate, soon they will dry out and many will die. but eventually the rains will come, maybe not all at once, there may be yet more waves of mortal dryness, but the eventually there will be growth. eventually there will be vigorous growth, but of course it will never be as it was before. but certain seeds only grow on the parched ground where the plants that would once have blocked the light have shriveled and died back. some seeds only open in a fire, certain trees only mature in areas of disturbance, just as others take decades to thrive after several stages of succession. sometime it is the decomposing flesh of forebears that gives the nutrients necessary for the next generation. too often also, disturbance sets the stage for invasives to radically take over, and i fear this too, though there are measures to take with foresight to do all we can to allow more of a balance to emerge when its time comes.

it's not clear how dry it will get except that this is only the start, our predictions will seem naïve much sooner than we can imagine. but surely will be another bloom to follow, probably not in a month, maybe in three if we're lucky, but more likely 6, 12, or 18, i prefer not to think about just how long we will wait for the green to return. but also sooner than we think this will be behind us and seeds of all kinds will germinate, some already planted, some during the dry, and others we will only think to plant after the rains have already come.

so i ask, what seeds should i be planting now? what earth should i be readying, or leaving fallow? what seedlings should i begin in shelter so that they will be strong and ready to take quickly to the newly supple ground?

mass extinctions usher in new taxa never imagined, financial crashes set the stage for entire new industries, personal and national tragedies spurn personal and national reinvention and rebirth. those seeds planted with foresight will be ready when their time comes, an opportunity that is proportional to the calamity that preceded it. its not just that i find imagining the present in retrospect reassuring, though without a doubt i do. but every day it becomes more clear that what is happening now is in a category all its own, maybe the most significant set of global events in my lifetime. maybe that speculation will seem foolishly grandiose, but maybe it will seem too small-minded or incurious. part of me wants to wait to see what the new order that emerges will look like, to wait for the acceleration to stop accelerating, but of course that will happen once this earliest window of possibilities has begun to close. i sense now that there is something special about this period in particular, when the old foliage is still all around, just feeling the scorch, the old world in clear memory, the present confusing, and future overwhelmingly unknowable. but thats the point after all, the future unknowable because its tracks have not yet been laid, its seeds not yet germinated. the point is that the future is malleable, chaos leaving a vacuum of endless possibilities. its hard even to imagine what the seeds should be, let alone where or when or how or why to plant them, but if i know one thing it is that is still early, but it will eventually be late. i think i have a sense of what was before, im gaining a sense of what is now, what will come after?