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At Home – Al Fin

I arrive home from Africa on a Monday morning at 2 A.M., drive down to the bay to see and smell it, to feel it blow and tingle. There is a strange light low on the night horizon glowing to the North Northwest, maybe Boston. The house itself is shocking in its level of disrepair and disorganization. I take off my Maasai watch and I get down to work, mostly on my back, in bed, in my office. The writer is in. Also the lawyer. And the lover. Once or twice the lawn and garden care guy. And, inevitably, the guy with foot-in-mouth disease.

I don’t leave the property until late Thursday afternoon – and then reluctantly – no car rides, no stores, no yoga, no phone. Glad I got home early given imminent PreTrial appearance date and obligations thereto. Even glad I’m here for the finals of the home renovation experience. Do a fair amount of straightening, laundry, floor sweeping, furniture moving, pissing off the crew. Watering houseplants. Measure out pills for the week. Hang out my shingle: “The writer is in.” Write. Play at being the housekeeper. Even cook. Listen to a lot of music. Don’t criticize myself. Clean things. Organize and put away things. Rest. Spend a lot of time feeding the fire. The house smells of smoke, incense, and paint.

I make cranberry lemon biscuits, cornbread, lemon-blueberry tea, pots and pots of coffee, Kenyan roast potatoes, and Zanzabarian sage merlot bean and potato stew with shallots and fresh garden kale.

Joy works. It’s what she does in addition to making music and spending a little time with me, even though I trust she finds me precious, even adorable.

I start to work in the yard and on the gardens. It feels so good to have clippers and a rake in my hand. Start to clean and organize the shed. Prepare witness lists and pretrial memoranda.

Sometimes I talk to Joy about Africa. But it is hard … and far away … and I’ve turned into a very here and now, present centered sort of fellow. I haven’t had a watch on for 5 days. And it is “crazy” being home, although if i don’t step outside the house i seem to be able to exert adequate stimulation control to stay grounded.

AFRICA

    TRAVEL DIARIES

    Alone – Jack Gilbert 

    I never thought Michiko would come back

    after she died. But if she did, I knew

    it would be as a lady in a long white dress.

    It is strange that she has returned

    as somebody’s dalmatian. I meet

    the man walking her on a leash

    almost every week. He says good morning

    and I stoop down to calm her. He said

    once that she was never like that with

    other people. Sometimes she is tethered

    on their lawn when I go by. If nobody

    is around, I sit on the grass. When she

    finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap

    and we watch each other’s eyes as I whisper

    in her soft ears. She cares nothing about

    the mystery. She likes it best when

    I touch her head and tell her small

    things about my days and our friends.

    That makes her happy the way it always did.

    POETRY BY OTHERS

      Death of the Dolphin

      There had been small craft advisories,
      Their boats were fewer,
      Seas ran five to eight feet
      With variable winds out of the northeast
      Gusting to forty knots
      Moving with the pod
      Warm southern waters flowed into the currents.
      As the storm abated and seas subside
      We pass Provincetown
      ‘Round the horn
      Passed the buoy
      Into the sensations of the bay
      Seas two to four feet
      Sun obscured and waters warm
      Echoes echo over the distances
      Off the top and bottom
      The floor and the air
      Wave action pushing me toward land
      Been in these waters before.
      Now slightly disoriented
      Separated from the group
      In too shallow water
      The waves are foamy
      Something’s not right
      Sensing hazard
      The tides confusing
      I bottom out
      Helpless and alone
      Sand below and around me
      Socked in on my belly
      I do not wrestle
      I die, fin up,
      Without struggle,
      Resigned on the shore.

      POETRY

        Miscellaneous, different, other, etc.

        Tryst with Death – Gina Puorro

        death asked me to join him for dinner

        so I slipped into my favorite black dress

        that I had been saving for a special occasion

        and let him walk me to our candlelit tryst.

        He ordered a ribeye, extra rare

        I ordered two desserts and red wine

        and then I sipped

        and wondered

        why he looked so familiar

        and smelled like earth and memory.

        He felt like a place both faraway

        and deep within my body

        A place that whispers to me

        on the crisp autumn breeze

        along the liminal edges of dusk and dawn

        somewhere between dancing

        and stillness.

        He looked at me

        with the endless night sky in his eyes

        and asked

        ‘Did you live your life, my love?’

        As I swirled my wine in its glass

        I wondered If I understood the thread I wove into the greater fabric

        If I loved in a way that was deep and freeing

        If I let pain and grief carve me into something more grateful

        If I made enough space to be in awe that flowers exist

        and take the time to watch the honeybees

        drink their sweet nectar

        I wondered what the riddles of regret and longing

        had taught me

        and if I realized just how

        beautiful and insignificant and monstrous and small we are

        for the brief moment that we are here

        before we all melt back down

        into ancestors of the land.

        Death watched me lick buttercream from my fingers

        As he leaned in close and said

        ‘My darling, it’s time.’

        So I slipped my hand into his

        as he slowly walked me home.

        I took a deep breath as he leaned in close

        for the long kiss goodnight

        and I felt a soft laugh leave my lips

        as his mouth met mine

        because I never could resist a man

        with the lust for my soul in his eyes

        and a kiss that makes my heart stop.

        POETRY BY OTHERS

          Valentines Day in Israel

          The waves are rough in the sea of love
          This Valentines Day
          Crows fly into the wind
          Hoping for leverage
          Seeking support
          Buffeted though free
          They call but no one hears

          Accusations fly through the air
          The sounds of lovers unheard, unheralded
          Fractured families longing for simplicity and rest
          Comfort, unambiguous pleasure
          Safe harbors to anchor in

          Sometimes it feels like a kiss

          Sometimes just a breeze passing by

          The sea is rough in Israel

          This Valentines Day

          Waves crash onto the shore

          Depositing beautiful shells

          The tiny homes of lonely sea creatures

          Onto the sandy beach

          That Palestinians are forbidden to walk upon

          Where a man draws names on the beach with sticks

          Then draws a big valentine around the names

          Then writes the words, “Free Palestine”

          His heart breaking with the weight of love

          He builds a wall to protect his creation in the sand

          But the sea is restless and just
          And softly erases it all.



          POEMS FOR PALESTINE

            Israel and Palestine borders…

            I Sleep with Rachel Corrie

            I sleep with Rachel Corrie
            Meditate on her message and meanings
            She is smiling though dead
            Her head tilted to her left
            Her blond shoulder length hair
            Tucked behind her ears
            An all American girl
            Who loved justice and the Palestinian people
            Crushed by a Cat D9 bulldozer
            With a restricted field of vision
            And several blind spots
            This last phrase sounds familiar no doubt.
            Now but a memory, a martyr
            A poster on the door
            Of a home in Palestine
            Where her mother comes to visit
            To see for herself what moved her daughter
            Who wrote
            “A massive military machine is killing
            The people I’m having dinner with
            I am witness to the destruction of a people.”

            The older Palestinian woman
            In whose home the poster I sleep with hangs
            Has seen more than her share of humiliation
            Jail
            Her land stolen
            And death
            She says to Rachel’s mother
            “There is a field where flowers grow in our village
            That is called Rachel Corrie
            There are streets and plazas named for her
            Your daughter is our daughter
            Our daughters are your daughters
            We will never forget your daughter
            She is with us every day
            Every time this door slides closed
            Every time this door slides opened”

            An American Court found
            The bulldozer that killed Rachel
            Was paid for by U.S. Government funds
            But declined to rule on the merits
            Concluding that whether the financing of such bulldozers was just
            Or appropriate
            Was a political question
            Not entrusted to the Judicial Branch

            On the same day Rachel was killed
            Nine Palestinians were also murdered by Israeli forces
            Including a man aged 90
            And a child aged four
            While Rachel, second wife of Jacob
            Who stole her father’s idols
            Was cursed unintentionally
            By the husband who loved her
            And died
            The way of women upon her
            Her doors slid open
            Her doors slid closed forever
            Tears in her eyes
            Words on her lips
            Crying for the end
            To her family’s suffering

            © BRTaub, Ja’ayus, Palestine – Valentines Day 2008



            POEMS FOR PALESTINE

              Israel and Palestine borders…

              The Siege of Gaza

              If Hamas is a terrorist organization 
              What does that make the occupying,
              land-grabbing,
              wall erecting,
              falsely imprisoning
              nuclear weapon-bearing Israelis
              and the Israeli government?
              The only true democracy in the Middle East? 
              “Terrorist organization” is a label;
              that Gaza is sealed is a fact. 
              No food or medicine allowed in. 
              Think Warsaw Ghetto. 
              Think children starving and dying
              Think “never again.”    
              Besides,
              Hamas saying it is going to destroy Israel
              is a bit like the Sioux on reservations
              saying they are going to destroy the U.S.,
              when as we know,
              the U.S. is destroying the U.S.,
              and Israel is destroying Israel.

              POEMS FOR PALESTINE

                Israel and Palestine borders…

                Furry Bug

                On a humid, dark, cloudy summer night,
                Temperature still in the high seventies,
                Streetlights not working,
                I step from my car as a huge fluttering bug
                Flies smack into my lips.
                I do not see it.
                I know it is not a moth or mosquito,
                More a furry flying beetle of some sort.
                And just as I do not see it, I do not hear it.
                Rather I feel its flutter and the soft thud
                As it crashes straight into the very center of my closed mouth,
                Smack in the middle of my pressed lips.
                I blow and brush it away quickly,
                Feeling its dimensions only slightly.
                I respond in surprise and shock,
                But without fear or disgust.
                I know at once that I have been sweetly touched
                Not assaulted or attacked.
                And though my rational mind recognizes it as probability expressed
                A happenstance of fate,
                A random intersection of invertebrate and human,
                I am aware instantly of having been kissed by a beautiful stranger,
                A princess living in the body of a bug,
                The light but explicit tap tap tap of god’s finger
                Calling forth my attention

                “Hey you,” the bug commands with her furry kiss,
                “Wake up, we’re in this together, man.
                Live life fully aware
                And appreciative of me,
                Fly around in the muggy dark night
                Kissing strangers with me
                Let’s be in each other’s company as much as we can bear.”

                I dream that night I stand beside the rushing waters
                Of a mountain stream which calls to me,
                Bids me enter,
                To be pulled along in the frightening, exciting, inexorable flow to the sea.
                I imagine being in the water.
                I imagine being water.
                I am a furry bug
                I kiss your lips.

                POETRY

                  Winter Fog

                  During the night a warm front
                  Passes over the frozen snowpack
                  And with it a sense of hope
                  And forbearance
                  Of limited visibility
                  Thickened air
                  And the pregnant
                  Odors captured in foggy droplets
                  That wolves and hunters know
                  Air warmer than the earth
                  Cats mewling
                  As we are mewling
                  In darkened bedrooms
                  Resentment, regret, and sorrow
                  All now like snow on the ground
                  Hidden in the wondrous fog

                  Poetry

                    Dr. Renik I Presume


                    November 21, 2012

                    I am mostly baffled at what fuels my desire for a rendezvous with, Owen Renik, a H.S. classmate I haven’t seen in 54 years, and who I honestly don’t recall having had one conversation with, ever, or indeed even a shared activity, ever, altho I was surely aware of his existence, viewed him as of a different class, almost waspy, and a competitor. He was not from my neighborhood, i didn’t “hang out” with him, and I knew nothing about him other than what he looked like and what I projected onto him, which at that age I expect I saw as somehow “known” by me. And although I would proclaim I am not that attached or attracted to most of my high school experiences, nor to my high school cohorts, the fact is I have gone to the 10th, 20th, 30th and 50th class reunions. Dr. Renik has not, and I did not ask him why, although my guess/projection is that his h.s. experiences and mates are of little to no interest to him. And I “imagine” I get it.

                    Nonetheless, I am interested in meeting him, and in attaching a real person to his name and face, and I have worked on making it happen over email for about a year, telling him of my interest in meeting him and how I’m often out in San Francisco, and him suggesting that when I was next out here to let him know and he would put some time aside for me.

                    Here’s what I knew about Owen Renik before our rendezvous … nothing. Here’s what I “know” after our rendezvous at a very lovely lounge/bar in the neighborhood of his office around Sutter St in SF.
                    He is currently a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society. He was editor and chief of the “Psychoanalytic Quarterly” for a decade and Director of Training/Associate Chief of the Mt. Zion Hospital Department of Psychiatry. More than that he is the father of two girls/women, one a pediatrician in S.F. and the other a geologist, living in Texas, where Owen’s current woman/partner is. Neither have children and although he recognizes it would be a lovely experience to have, he is not attached to the notion that if it doesn’t happen he will suffer. Indeed, although I understand there were times in Owen’s life when he did suffer, and was confused, his overall experience of his life is that he was/is a remarkably fortunate man who lived a nice life. And on this one occasion of our meeting I found him to be as lovely a man as you are likely to meet. Fit. Trim. Nice haircut. T shirt and sport jacket. Works out. Girlfriend in Texas. Daughter in Texas. Other daughter pediatrician.