L U M I N A * N O S T R I

Quite the Impression   Have you ever met someone who ripples through the rest of your day Their cherry red flats smiling at you from a cheaper pair on the sales rack, the blue of their dress, their eyes blanketing the water and skies, their white hair peeking out at you watching the moon emerge Their confidence and conviction Twin egrets, large and magestic Winging westward  With all their energetic Grace

  LEMON TREE AT NIGHT I’ve been noticing plants lately. Wanting to  bottle em up, drink em down when I get home.  Maybe when the paint dries Maybe when the feeling subsides Maybe when the tides rise I’ll get it right but for now I’ll just keep paying attention to all that glows in the dark. 

  Dish Diva My sink-full of dishes’s got an attitude like a teenager who  insists on wearing  pajama pants to school. I, a tired and aged mother, Barricade the door, Robed in fluff and armed with  a wooden spoon: “Back, back I say!  And don’t come out Until you look presentable”  The exertion fatigues me so I collapse, and that sink-full Of dishes walks diva like right on Over me, ready to carry on with her  Monday. 

  3 minute poem: Swim lessons are over in  five minutes. Our morning already saturated with condensation, baked bread, hollering and hoots. As I move into the all out sprint  that is to mother, alone, from now until Monday morning,  I invoke the goddess of Gratitude, the goddess of Presence, the goddess of Good Humor, And the goddess of Love to make their presences known to me to keep me from forgetting I am never  alone. 

  THE DAY AFTER YOUR BIRTHDAY Take your kids  to the naturalist talk. Tell the guide you’ll hang in the back, ready to peel off when they’ve had enough. They’ll find walking sticks and turn them into pointers little Vana Whites to the Toyon, The Coyote Bush, and the largest grass in the area. When you are not looking, they’ll stand as close to the speaker as they do the TV set, and ask questions one high hand after another. They’ll protest going, then  protest being held back But at bedtime they’ll dream of swinging amongst the fallen  Eucalyptus leaves again.

Unruly Writing The book is becoming unruly again like my hair in kindergarten, or the other day on the boat deck.  I sit down to write through the edits of my friends meticulously as a student working through her exercises. Yet out comes this rebellion hellbent on building some spiral staircase,  rapid fire out it comes: one step explanation, two more analysis, next  memory, then  scene, the bottom or the top step thought.  An hour later I am like  a surgeon, suture in hand with a clear gaping between all that was torn open all that was unearthed confronted with the miserable fact that yet again I am unsure  as to where to first stab the needle. 

  I, too by LANGSTON HUGHES COPY CHANGE (turns out I am obsessed with this practice these days) I, too, sing America. I am the opinionated sister. They send me to my room When company comes, But I think , And laugh there , And grow strong. Tomorrow, My words'll be on every tongue When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to those words , “Go to your room,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how inherently worthy I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America.

  MIDPOINT There are parts of me that sing me to sleep Each and every time  I get close To writing it all down To saying it out loud Like firefighters They extinguish with acumen and speed Eyelids first,  Then my drooping head To a soft and quiet bed; parts  whispering ‘hush, that’s enough now. Rest.”  There are parts of me That sing me to sleep To keep me from telling  the story of you and I

I have not been thinking about that time again,                 not in the morning, nor noon, nor now, at night.        Because I never let the back of your neck make me ache at the sight.  How I could I have forgotten the smell of you? I never noticed your sweet and clean scent, so carefully kept.  I didn’t notice the length of your finger nails; an odd incongruence with so much in its place.  I have not been thinking about your nearness, nor your never ending distances. I have not known them. There in are not the places I begged to burrow, to hibernate in, to hunt.   I do not miss the two of us clinging to the idea of each other While centrifugal forces tried us with all their might.  I would never send you this poem Which you’d never read, never love. So, I won’t add it to the same bin; I didn’t chuck all those other songs not even one time before.

 Today, I am going to publish a copy change I wrote from a local artist and poet, Susan Read Cronin. Her original poem is so lovable and endearing, as is the whole of Notices: Poems & Art (available for purchase from the artist here ) Sarah's Version of Susan Read Cronin's Original Titled:  AT MIDNIGHT, SMELLING TOAST, I COME DOWNSTAIRS TO FIND YOU AT THE KITCHEN TABLE.  AT DAYBREAK, HEARING PBS,  I COME OUT TO FIND YOU IN OUR LIVING ROOM There you all are, snuggling in blankets in the forts you all built three days ago, Daniel Tiger pouring in to all six eyes, unbrushed hair,  my lavender faux fur coat no pants, no shirts,  only one in underwear. Your bare hands sweep the bits of blanket shrouding your shoulders. In the doorway, I stand and grin,  at these little children,  at once two future women and a man,  dear,  dear to me.

 A response to this article  https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates Ta-Nehesi Coates, like a mythic archer piercing the veil  In Vanity Fair of all places explains what we truly mourn: Not a certain person whose shtick was inarticulate  but not innocuous, who rode on waves of people hell-bent on jawdropping, gawking, just passing through, No, we lower our flags— at dual language immersion elementary schools, a week after SCOTUS made speaking Spanish a reasonable suspicion for masked federal agents to  stop, detain, snatch— At a failing democracy  a signal of the death  and destruction yet  to come. 

 Written by request for my kid Sometimes, even the clouds feel heavy pressed in on themselves by external  forces. When that happens, whether earth or sky bound, the only thing left to do  is cry. 

 Find his original here Copy Change of Walt Whitman’s I hear America Singing I hear the US singing, the varied rhythms I hear of those teachers, each one singing theirs as it should be          blithe and strong The cleaning ladies singing theirs as they sort out surfaces or linens The garbage takers singing as they make ready for work, or leave off work The small business owner singing what belongs to her in her shop, the cashier singing at her station. The dry-waller singing as they reach for their instruments, the roofers singing as they sheathe theirs. The hygienist's song, the Door Dasher on their way in the morning, or at noon intermission, or at sundown.  The delicious singing of childcare workers, or of a young mother at work, or an old wife drying and folding. Each singing what belongs to them and none else The day what belongs to the day—at night      a party of neighbors gather               ...

Breeze from the south East at my back Ancestors we buried just north Here I find myself atop a lichen speckled boulder hoping to be shouldered by the forest of sounds: birds kick up dried oak leaves buzzing of some bee or cicada or fly A murder cawing in the distance Murderous road whirs with car noise  Just as before, as before. “Is life-living so worth it?” A small part of me dares to ask Only to hear my grandfather’s cheshired reply  “Well you tell me, kid.  It’s not my life  we’re talking about, is it, is it?”

 **couldn’t do it on 12 or 13**  Poetry, I can’t write out of the thick uncomfortable of Suffering! “You’re addicted to misery,” I know she would say.  If that is so, what of it,  for now, let me indulge: Beauty brings an ache In its being ephemeral; My children’s presences glow with their ghosts; the joys of here harmonize with agony of there. “I can’t talk about that today, children, I am sorry. I’m feeling a little down. We can come back to it another time.” “Will you tell me about the devil then?” Nearly 8 asks. I laugh: The memory of what had felt like a difficult conversation  on our way here, now a welcomed reprieve on our  way home. 

  “Home-line?” she asks me at dinner, at bedtime, now. “Yes,” I tell her, “Yes.”

“I’m in heaven.”  I said to 4, 6 and 8 We crowded in their bunks tucked in, having turned out the light. 6 responded in all earnestness,  “But Mom, why do you say  you are a spirit?”  “When did I say that?”   “Well, you said you’re in heaven…”  I laugh, explain the idiom  to them all, and then listen to them grinning in the dark.  It is unbearably sweet having the children home. A morning blade of grass, glimmering dew

 999 blooming starts from breaking out of the heated wet dark earth, gasping for more water, more air, moving toward the warmth,  until you grow through enough shit to see the light.  Even then, you gotta trust the characteristics of h20 to dance bachata with the seasons and seamlessly break you open whether you are ready or not unfurling one curled lip after another, your flower  button glows, eye catching as any opening ready to receive in the end the world takes of you all that you are, all that it needs and you enjoy the beauty of blooming for as long as you can

  SCOTUS, TRAITORS!  I am sick to my stomach. I am so mad. For looking Latino and speaking Spanish? For working at a car wash and speaking Spanish?  For speaking Spanish?  My kids who speak Spanish My students who speak Spanish My colleagues who speak Spanish I who speak Spanish The shield of blue eyes Blonder hair, lighter skin a thin top lip, a frame with no hips, a lack of knowledge of bachata, cumbia, ranchera music.  I’m sick to my stomach. What in the world have we done?

  ****A practice inspired by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's  A Hundred Falling Veils  **** Unabashedly- I am still obsessed with this minor poet's  word meretrix.  Meretrix fuge flee the harlot the Duff translation reads.  But -trix is the feminine agent, and mereo the word to earn, and mer, the root  of pure. So when Cato and Vergil, and Ovid ( the traitors) used it to describe a woman            who made money                          with her body for sex-- which I admit was documented standard usage at the time what they were really saying... what I perceive exists today is flee the earning woman flee the deserving woman flee the reasoning woman flee the meriting woman  and to this and these men I say along with Queen Dido, Brave Camilla,  Mighty Juno (the goddess of money to maintain a household)  meretrices, fugamos roughly translated, ...

  Gratitude Soft sand-dust- dirt, cool beneath my bare feet. Quiet, the oaks attend this night time concert with care. All sings of Danu, Great Goddess Danu Only the brightest stars glitter in her  dark and sweeping mantel. For a time it’s the full moon and I, and all this beauty, and cool air and peace.  Magic, though, likes to be shared. It draws my neighbor out,  the quiet one, “I hope I don’t scare you,” I, Danu, call from the dark.  Quiet laugh “You did, you did.”  “Well at least I scared you  before the stairs, then.” More quiet laughter as he  climbs down, turns his lamp side- ways to approach.  “I just can’t see the moon   over the tops of the trees  from my spot.  Peak fullness tonight.”  Now all  eyes look up “it is, it is. That’s such good news— about the cat..  coming home.” We smile in the dark- Dennis, Danu and I “I know,” I say “it is. It is.”