March 2024
Bio Note: For the past fifteen years, I’ve lived in the Mojave Desert. When I’m not writing, I’m out in the desert scouting for poems, or tending the vegetables and flowers in my garden, or remembering things past, like the years I lived by the ocean. My latest book, Arrival (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), contains many poems from the ocean years.
Par Avion
I open the storage box
and time’s reel snaps back
to childhood hours bent
over the Comprehensive
World-Wide Stamp Album.
When I lift and turn it, heavy
as an unabridged dictionary,
postcards and envelopes
rain out—most addressed
to my grandfather, by people
I never knew—but others sent
by Aunt Gene and Uncle Nello,
from trips I forgot they ever took.
Italy, France, Japan, Switzerland—
the cards glow in 60s technicolor,
marked by his hasty scrawl
between meetings, or her tiny,
perfect penmanship. On the last
she asks about my leg,
hurt in a sledding accident,
and I think of her own leg,
broken by a hit-and-run driver,
that plagued her all her life—
until she finally spent her days
seated at the kitchen table
with the newspaper. I can’t say
my aunt and I were ever close.
But her kindness had the stamp
of authority, comprehensive
as the globe.
Oh birds,
why did you do it?
All my life
I loved you, fed you,
waited for your coming,
tense with longing—
one sighting enough
to help me bear
another day—
The road was empty,
the whole sky open
for you to fly through—
but your entire flock
struck the windshield,
smearing feathers
before my eyes,
blind with shock—
You can’t know
how hard I gripped
the wheel—
how I kept control
of the car despite
my mother,
riding shotgun,
shrieking, beating,
clawing—
Oh birds,
I never meant
to hurt you.
I slowed to a stop.
Your survivors,
and her fit, dispersed—
I was nineteen,
starved for mercy—
leaning against
the cold door,
sick of the lot
given to me—
Oh birds,
I ached for that ride
to be over—
when it had barely begun.
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