New Poem

Particulates

10/9/17

Ashes to ashes, they

fall from the sky-

coat the car hood, the inside of

the nostrils. Dry & oily at once.

Contained in each ember, each powdery grey flake or

black shard-

a story, a life.

The motorboat & the bassinette,

the hot pulp of pumpkins simmering in the garden,

the pop of their exploding seeds.

The fire consumes it all-

not just the wall marked

with the child’s height every Passover, but the ingredients in the pantry,

& the pans used to

make the meals.

How many framed photos of lovers at sunset? How many trophies and blue ribbons? The wooden rocking chairs and heirloom desks:

kindling.

And not only the two fig trees gone,

 but the hammock strung between them.

The books loosen as they heat up, opening like an accordion.

The fire gobbles enough Christmas tree ornaments to festoon

a forest, when the forest was still standing.

Lost are guitars and pianos-

the French Horns emitting a drawn out moan

as they melt.

And the oil paint on

the art work bubbles then ignites.

With each breath, the intake of stories, histories.

We breathe in all that was lost, all that lived there:

frog/coyote/deer/possum/rat/mouse/fox/mountain lion/skunk/horse/sheep/cow/goat/snake/lizard/raccoon

all that

could not outrun the flames.

And the singed birds, unable to navigate their way

through walls of smoke,

succumb,

falling from the skies

like dropped handkerchiefs.

Ashes to ashes/dust to dust.

But there, on the hill, the orange light

that I took for more fire

was not flame, but butterflies.

Monarchs-

in the thousands.

& not

descending, but rising

in a great, living plume-

as if fueled

by their  own beauty,

exultant in their own survival.

Fire Stories, October 9th 2017

It was the dancer Martha Graham who said fire was the test of gold, adversity, and of strong men, and surely the past week has been a testament to that. I was awoken at 4 in the morning on Monday the 9th of October 2017 by a staticy, urgent recorded phone call on the land line commanding: "Be prepared to evacuate. Wild fires raging! Repeat! Be on high alert, evacuations in progress!" I had smelled smoke earlier that night, even stepping outside to see if something in the back had caught fire, but could not see anything, so assumed there was a fire somewhere far away and went back to sleep. After that emergency phone call, I did not sleep again for twenty hours.


What do you put in one suitcase? A life-long collector, my small house is filled with art, bird wall pockets, salt and pepper shakers, teapots, vintage pitchers, mermaids, octopi-themed ceramics, etc. etc. Since my neighborhood in Sonoma was not under mandatory evacuation, I had much more time to pack up than the people who fled Santa Rosa and Napa with only the clothes on their back. My two dogs of course would be priority. After that, the material things: passport, a bulging scrapbook of old photos, before the cellphone digitalized snapshots, a favorite skirt, a large octopus plate that I carried around Italy in my backpack and that made it home in one piece, a framed photo of my mother when she was 18 in Australia hugging a koala. I was too overwhelmed to start loading the suitcase up with more treasures, and it remained half full for the next many days as I vagabonded the Bay Area, staying with kind souls in Berkeley and Mill Valley, not knowing if my house would still be standing when I returned to Sonoma.




I have lived in the Bay Area for many decades now. I was in San Francisco 1989 when the big earthquake happened on a very hot day in October and terrified everyone with its strength and destruction and aftershocks. In October in 1991, I stood at the end of my block in Oakland and watched in horror as houses in the hills were literally exploding from the heat as the Oakland Firestorm swept through. I was married standing on a rock in Yosemite on New Years Day of 1997 as the park was being evacuated during the beginning of the disastrous El Niño flooding that would take place over the next two days. But this North Bay fire? It is a monster.


Over the past week, almost two hundred thousand acres of our county's most beautiful places have burned. At certain points there were 19 separate wild fires burning at once, many zero percent contained after two or three days. Four fires from Napa and Sonoma merged into one giant fire breathing dragon. 1 out of every 10 people in Sonoma County are evacuees. 5700 structures have burned to the ground. So many people have lost everything. And those who are still in harms way, who evacuated either voluntarily or by order, live in a constant state of anxiety. Most people I talk with have been obsessively watching the news, whipped into a fearful despair hearing about "winds picking up" or flinching every time the cell phone pings with a new evacuation notice from Nixle. "Please don't let it be my neighborhood."


I have seen so many surreal sights during this time: cows wandering around a steaming blackened field, myself trying for normalcy by walking near my house with a mask on and seeing the hills on fire, little spots of orange flame amidst dense tornadoes of smoke. The bees who usually zoom and buzz, drinking in a circle around the bird baths were dopey and staggering from the smoke. The sky was raining ash. You take a shower: campfire smell. You come inside the sealed off house: burnt fireplace smell. How do the birds and animals manage to function, their lungs so much smaller? I go to work an hour south of my house, dogs and suitcase perpetually in the car, to try and connect with others and get away from the smoke. Yesterday, a nurse from Santa Rosa and a man from Napa both showed up at the flower shop at the same time to buy flowers for the people who were hosting them while they were evacuated. As they were trading stories, I raised my hand and said: "Sonoma" and we all three spontaneously hugged and started crying. It is the un-knowing that wears on you. But we are indeed the lucky ones who still may have a house to come home to. Fingers crossed. Knock on wood.


I drove an hour north yesterday evening to stay at a hotel and for the first time in a week, I saw the stars at night. When I was about half-way there, I realized I no longer needed to wear my mask. 80% of the guests at the hotel were refugees from this fire, and their stories were heartbreaking: "I jumped in my car with my wife that first night, without even having time to pack. We were going to head to shelter at my son's house. Then we heard that he lost his house too." Many of the firefighters who have not slept in days continue to battle this giant, even after losing their own homes. Every single person I encounter has either lost their own house, or has friends who have lost everything. The farm where I buy my produce burned. My favorite two hiking trails burned. Even if the nearby vineyards did not burn, their crops are tainted by ash. Napa and Sonoma, both dependent upon tourism, are like ghost towns. The scope of this fire is mind-boggling, and it will be a shock to see the aftermath, the post-apocalypse reality of what now I can only picture in my imagination.


Friends and neighbors and co-workers have been so supportive, supplying fire updates, places to stay, general kindness. I want to think that if my house is still standing after almost a whole week, dare I think it may indeed survive? It is supposed to rain on Thursday. Meanwhile: the dogs, the suitcase, and the mask remain in the car.

Opening of my second novel, RADIANCE

Prologue

            The Driver slapped himself hard on his right cheek to stay awake.  He yawned and reached out to turn on the radio. Elvis was singing “All Shook Up” and the driver sang along, imitating The King’s classic staccato delivery, hiccoughing along with my hands are shaky and my knees are week. Enjoying this, he turned the radio up louder.  It was sleeting and he had to keep swiping at his windshield to make a porthole through which he might possibly be able navigate this crappy road.  The road was called the Golden Road because the dirt in this part of Maine had a strange yellow tinge.

            The Driver had driven The Golden Road five days a week for the past decade, in all conditions,  and it never got any prettier.  He should not have had that third beer after he punched out, but the job was punishing. Even the name of his Union embarrassed him, The International Brotherhood of Pulp.  He had lost track of how many logs he and the others had gotten onto the conveyer belt that day for processing, but if the pain in his lower back was any gauge, the answer was too many. He yearned for an easier job, but the paper mill was the only game in town. At least his thirty mile commute from the Millinocket Mill was paved. He slapped himself again and shook his head, taking in a great gulp of air through his mouth.  Sometimes he wanted to just keep driving, chance the storied unpaved stretch of The Golden Road that led right on up to Canada, to the St. Zacharie Border Crossing, one of the few with no inspections.  He would just drive right through and begin again.

            The Driver’s chin bobbed down onto his chest and the next thing he knew, the car was on the other side of the road, aimed at a birch tree.  He snapped to, swearing and grappling wildly for the steering wheel,  righting the car only seconds before it would have ploughed into the tree.  He was wide awake now, heart galloping.  Dion sang The Wanderer and the driver sat forward in his seat, downed the dregs of some cold coffee,  and gave himself a loud pep talk.  After a few minutes, he saw something coming towards him, and even though the beast was far away, he could tell by its sideways lope and eerie nonchalance that it was a coyote. He slowed down and swiped at the windshield again, rolling down the passenger window just a crack, which immediately sent icy rivulets streaming down the interior glass but did little to help his view.  As he got closer he saw that the coyote was a mangy, half-starved thing, an elder, and also that there was something glowing in front of its muzzle. What the hell? Was the beast carrying a flashlight?

            The driver rubbed his eyes. In the soupy early dark, the object gave off a dull glow, not green exactly, but not pure white either.  The coyote continued coming straight at the driver,  walking steadily down the middle of the road, his head bowed against the sleet, or perhaps from the weight of whatever was clamped between his teeth. The driver slowed to a halt now to try and get a better look at the object. He recognized it first as a bone, and then, if he was not mistaken, a human bone, a small femur,  one end broken and jagged, the other notched where it had once fit into the joint.  And this bone: it glowed.

            The coyote stopped walking and sat down in front of the car. It dropped the bone and looked up at the driver,  then shook the moisture out of its coat, lay on its stomach, and began to gnaw methodically on the bright treasure. The driver honked and pulled out to go around the animal, gunning the car and not looking back. The next day he would tell himself he had imagined the whole thing, that it was the beer, that he should not try to make that drive when he was exhausted. And the driver of the logging truck that came up that same road two hours later and saw something small and glowing off on the shoulder would think it was a torn woolen scarf, knitted with some sort of glinting, metallic yarn. Gradually, as animals and time nibbled away at the femur bone, the next passerby who saw it at night would mistake it for a some spilt paint,  small but surprisingly bright there on the side of the road.   The old coyote had long since returned to the woods, where the others in its pack mostly slept during the day. At dusk, a female checked in on her three new pups.  Each had been born with six toes instead of the normal four, so their paws were big and cumbersome, and they licked at them often to remove the now that hardened there. The pups were eager to emerge from the den, and they stretched and tumbled out into the night, each carrying a small bone between its teeth, picked from the larger hoard piled deep inside, bones that radiated with a strange and persistent light.

POTUS 2017: No Experience Required

I think I am in a little bit in shock. I knew this day was, ostensibly, coming, but somehow I held out hope that regulations would prevail and triumph over questionable electoral votes. After all, hope is what gave us President Obama, one of one of the greatest Presidents in my lifetime.   I am trying to squelch the anxious feeling I have had pretty much since DJT "won" the election in November. As I plan for the protest march in Oakland tomorrow, I am excited to have the opportunity to be a part of this peaceful protest, which I believe will be a massive one across the country, excited to feel proactive rather than appalled or helpless, which have been the dominate emotions of late.
Some are saying liberals' indignation is just sour grapes at losing. Give him a chance, say they. But I do not believe  this unqualified, reality TV star, scofflaw, and narcissist actually won this election. What do we as a people do when there is documentation by our our intelligence branches, that Russia hacked our election to get this man into office? Do we shrug and say, "Oh well, let's just wait and see what he does?" We are already seeing what he does via the cabinet of deplorables he is picking, billionaires whose only qualification is that they donated to his campaign, climate change deniers, racists, and game show hosts. Our government should be "by the people, for the people," not a business venture, not some sort of bad joke.
Today, the country inaugurated a politically inexperienced man who has never held any kind of office to run the most powerful nation in the world. Can you think of any other position, even the most basic, where previous experience would not be required? Moreover, we inaugurated a man who does not pay taxes, when every other American citizen is required by law to do so. This makes him a law breaker. But not this alone: there are seventy-five lawsuits pending against him at this very moment, everything from sexual assault on a minor, to not paying people who have completed work for him, to fraud, and the list goes on. Lying about divesting potential financial conflict of interests, lying about Russia's role in his taking office, lying about damning things he has said, even though they have been recorded on video. When a president does not think the rules apply to him, that is a very dangerous place for a nation. Despots and dictators start out in such a fashion.  Within an hour of taking office, Climate Change and Health Care vanished from the Whitehouse Website.
But the main reason I will protest tomorrow is because that is one of my rights as an American. I fear for our country. Just because one man finds hard cold facts in conflict with his agenda, does not mean that those facts don't exist. Facts are not debatable. I do not want to see my country turn into a place of prejudice, censorship, ignorance, anti-intellectualism, disregard for Nature, a place where the wealthy take and take, where the less fortunate are bullied. I want a government who respects all genders and all races and religions. "Truthiness" should not be in a leader's lexicon. Love trumps hate. Let freedom ring. I'll see you, fellow resisters, at this and future, protests.