Almost Forgotten

Out comes the rain
playing with the spiders that hide in my thoughts
out comes the rain
washing me out.
pools and puddles
all that blackness reminding me of the leaky drain

rain
wash me away
every part that answers when they call my name

were it easy
were it easy
were it easy the rain might
grow bitter

I remember
when I looked into the moon
and saw them kissing.
We sat in a café as the bright silver plate filled the sky.
And then it rained and I came
Driving through puddles
The freeway was just a long river towards
Blue eyes and a sea hidden by clouds.

I thought the spiders would slip out
But more came in
You pushed them inside me
On those rare occasions.
You pushed them inside me with all those
Cigarettes and the tiny little lies that turned into mountains.
You pushed them inside those places I let you carve.

When you went away
The pools felt like they would not end.
When you went away the clouds lifted
When you went away there was joy
When you went away I opened for the first time.
Caressing the wounds, I let you fade.
And then today- your birthday.
I had almost forgotten.

Has the rain found you
and all those spiders you sent?
Happy birthday,
I am hidden in the clouds,
may we never meet again.

Akio In The Park

The park bench was a mottled thing of orange and white and brown; paint jobs from different eras showing themselves unabashedly in a speckled milieu. Akio slouched on the bench, the uneaten portion of his sandwich wrapped in yellow wax paper resting beside him. He watched the duck who was almost as mottled as the bench and wore a strange red mask over his face like a super hero. It waddled about, turning its head from side to side to blink out of one eye or another, hoping for a crumb.
Akio reached for his orange flavored soda and took a swig from the glass bottle letting the carbonation tickle and burn his throat on the way down. He liked the park, this particular park, so many miles from home that he had to take a train and then hike to it in order to enjoy its charms. The great distance made his visits infrequent and enhanced its allure. Vaguely Akio could remember his grandfather bringing him to this park. The very small boy had held the old man’s soft wrinkled hand and had stared nearly eye to eye at one of those masked ducks.
“Akio,” the old man had said, “This is the most magical park in all of Japan.” The boy had looked around in awe. “I met your grandmother here. In some ways, this park is the reason that you exist.”
Saying this, his grandfather had squeezed his hand and smiled at him and Akio had felt then, more than on any birthday, that his life was a gift, that both he and Grandfather were so lucky that there was an Akio, that without the park there could easily have been no Akio.
He watched with great dismay as a young woman, far off, peered at the sky and opened an umbrella.
“What a stupid girl.” He said to the duck, because, of course, it must not rain today. He had come so far to be here, sitting on this bench, speaking to this duck, watching with some anxiety that girl out there.
Looking at the sky, he agreed that it might rain sometime today, later when he was taking the train home, but not now. The sandwich should be finished, the soda bottle with its graceful long neck emptied, and the path through the trees walked slowly with relish.
Even as he thought these things he felt the first drop hit the bare skin of the back of his arm. Then another plopped rudely down on the wax paper covering the sandwich. The duck turned one eye on Akio and three more drops speckled the concrete between them. Akio sighed. Then as the rain began to fall with greater speed and a more consistent rhythm, he scooped up the sandwich and bottle and deposited them into his back pack.
The girl with the umbrella was hurrying along the path leading down hill. Perhaps she too was heading for the train and perhaps she wouldn’t mind sharing her umbrella. Using the bag to shield his head from the onslaught of water, he took one last look at the bench where he had intended to spend his afternoon, then bidding the duck farewell, he ran after the girl huddled under her big black umbrella.

Wedding

The day was drenched in mist that turned into larger drops of rain as she traveled through the twisting tree-lined roads of Marin. The greenery was old and time had created a canopy of leaves above the path of asphalt and motion. She drove through the white mist that turned the trees into a shade of magical green and scented the air with eucalyptus and lavender. As the drops hit her windshield she wondered if a bride’s wedding was being ruined. She would find out soon.
She had on her uniform of tight black Dickies and a collared black shirt. Neither of the garments fit her very well. The pants were just slightly too short, even for her 5’3 frame, and they seemed to like to burrow themselves between the cheeks of her ass. It was always slightly uncomfortable, and during each catering event, she would vow to get some new ones, but then she would forget again until the next wedding required they be pulled out of the closet again, and then she would remember and pull herself into them.
She drove until she found the Marin Art and Garden Center which was a sprawling piece of land with many chambers that could host multiple functions at the same time. The sound of a fountain greeted her as she walked up the couple of steps that separated the parking lot from the entrance. She walked up a curving path that passed a bursting rose garden that smelled electric in the slightly muggy air. After a sharp right at the rose garden, she followed the path that led to a green lawn.
On the lawn, but slightly to the right, was a long rectangular three-sided tent. One wall was open and exposed the interior. There were multiple rugs on the ground that covered and protected it against the damp grass. In the center was a foot tall coffee table that held a couple of glass votives with candles. Dozens of pillows were strewn on the ground, creating a harem-style lounge area. To the left of the soaked lawn was a narrow wooden deck that was covered in a slanted beige canopy of canvas. The moist air released the scent of the deck. Even after countless people had tread upon it, it still held the power of the smell. The deck was met with sliding glass doors that opened into the rectangular banquet hall and hidden from sight, the kitchen.
There were a couple of people inside, dressed in black, rolling tables out from their storage space in the large closet. A couple of others were carrying plastic crates of plates and wine glasses and ceramic coffee cups up from the dolly which was parked out by the stairs that led to another storage shed. She quickly found out what tasks needed to be done. She spent the next hour and a half arranging place settings and unfolding chairs and rolling napkins into little scrolls.
Her supervisor gathered all the people in black into a little group.
“Okay, we got word that it is dumping up on Mt. Tam (the place were the ceremony was taking place). They said that they are coming here a little earlier than expected. Everyone is cold and wet and grouchy. The kitchen is brewing some hot tea for them now. Please do your best to make everyone feel really welcome and cared for, even if they are grouchy.”
Everyone nodded.
“So lets do our best to finish everything up before they get here. Is there someone who can man the tea station?”
“Sure, I can.”
She walked to the rectangular table adorned with a crisp white table cloth and votives that fought against the wind to remain lit.
Within a couple minutes, guests started arriving. She smiled at them as they passed and offered them some tea. Most were more than friendly and quite grateful to be given something warm. Most of the women were wearing short dresses, wholly unprepared for the task of looking nice and staying warm, it was one or the other.
After a while, a crowd had gathered below the canopy, although some had refused to stand out in the drizzle any longer and sat at their circular tables in the banquet room. There was the comfortable murmur of chit chat over cocktails.
Then an angular small white car, one that could have been seen in England in the early 60s, drove down the narrow asphalt pathway that ran between the grass of the harem tent and the larger lawn. Applause erupted among the guests and two tall people emerged into the drizzle that thudded against a canopy tent.
The bride was olive skinned and lean. Her dark hair was pulled back into a twisted elegant braid that was bundled near her neck. Her dress was sleeveless, reveling her bony shoulders. The skirt of her pure white dress was long and skimmed the wet grass. The groom, just a little taller than she was, was wearing a gray suit to match the color of the clouds.
Her father, waiting beneath the canopy, held a microphone in his hand. In his thick Israeli accent he said, “if it’s going to rain, then let it rain!”
The DJ sparked a Michael Jackson song as the father jumped out into the drizzle and ran to his daughter with open arms, a wide smile spreading across his face. He grabbed his son-in-law and kissed him on the forehead. Other guests followed his lead. Some women took off their shoes and stepped into the soft earth. The couple was surrounded by fifty people, each one giving them hugs and words of congratulations. The majority of the guests stayed below the eaves, watching the merriment from afar.
The girl in black watched with the crowd below the eaves. She shared their joy. Tears came to her eyes. She heard the voice of her friend, “let the energy flow through you.”
The song faded and then a Klezmer band, which stood close to the couple, beneath the cover of trees, burst into song. The people quickly formed into a circle, bound by clasped hands. The circle spun and spun and eventually a small inner circle formed of the bride, the groom, the father of the bride and two other people. They spun in the opposite direction of the larger circle.
Four men stood close to a padded chair that had been draped in satin cloth. The bride sat in it and the group each took a chair leg and hoisted her high up into the air, bouncing her up and down. The bride clung onto the seat with her white-knuckled hands. Complete joy and terror mingled on her face, she let out a scream as the men lifted her chair up and down. The groom held onto a marigold colored napkin, he swung it around the air like a stripper that had just taken off his first garment. He swung it and then tossed it gently to his bride, she too waved it in the air. Then she held the napkin out to him and he managed to grab an end of it and they both held on as their chairs moved un-rhythmically.
The night was long. There were small plates of salad delivered and cleared. Family-style plates of food were delivered to each table. Hundreds and hundreds of different shaped glasses that were filled and then put back dirty into the plastic crates in which they arrived. The girl in black listened to loving toasts and worked as hard as she could to make sure everyone at her assigned tables was content.
Then the guests left one by one and soon is was how it began, with a small crew dressed in black. They were just about done, she was finishing the final sweep of the deck area. She looked into the night, into the lawn area where the two satin covered chairs of the bride and groom sat beneath the trees. But in the groom’s seat, was the leader of the Klezmer band. She had seen him walking around all night without any shoes on, wandering between the bar and the harem-lounge area. She smiled at him.
“What do you think it would be like to be married?” he asked into the dark night.
Many thoughts filled her mind, but she didn’t way anything.
“Come and imagine it with me,” he said.
She went to sit down on the chair, carrying her broom beside her like a scepter.
“Oh, it’s wet,” she said surprised. She stood.
“Okay, we can stand,” he said.
She looked into the empty lawn of grass, at the three horizontal strings of rounds bulbs that hung artfully above the grass. She imagined dancing and laughter and a happy father. She looked at the man next to her.
“I’m sure that day would be very nice, but I just can’t picture myself in it. I don’t think it is something that would happen for me. I feel like I am married already, but I can’t imagine a party like this.”
He smiled, his eyes nearly closed slits.
“Look at all those lights hanging up, no one owns the light, no one owns the light. Go to where the light is.”
She nodded and then he smiled. He nodded distantly and then smiled again. He seemed to shrink, as though something had shifted. He disappeared into the night, stepping back into the tent and the trees.

Foreclosure

The window was still spotted with circles of white from the rain of two nights past. It had come down like an avalanche of tears, a state of being she had come to know so very well. There had been thunder and lighting to match the violence of her mood. As the orchestra of electrical sounds played, shooting as they went through the air like gagged lives running from a demon, she took her brother’s old wooden baseball bat and destroyed the contents of her old family house.
The bank had sent her the final notice three days before, the words in stark black and white. Those sentences showed no mercy, no softness of compassion. The words blurred her vision and took away the speed from her heart, she fell to the ground. At first, unable to breathe, unable to cry, unable to think. The world closed in on her, swallowed her up and took her into the small little cave that she would soon learn was home. Her new home. She sat crumpled like a piece of dirty laundry on the rug in her hallway, she sat there as the afternoon turned to night and until her little white dog came up to her and took a lick of her ankle, on the skin just above her sock line. The feel of life, of wetness and heat brought her back just a little, then the thoughts rushed in to fill the newly opened space.
What would happen next?
Where would they all go?
What would happen to all their things?
The stuffed animals and the furniture that her grandfather had carved and the album collection she had spent so much time building. How would she get it all out within a couple days? They had shown no mercy, those men in tailored suits and black hair, she thought of them with hate. She had no job and no waiting apartment, no trucks or movers. It was her alone, and she had nothing to fall upon, no mattress to catch her fall, no soft arms that would open and receive her, taking her pain.
Her chest moved up and down slowly. Life indeed was ending, this life that she had known. She watched the dark rain clouds moving in fast, pulled in from the coast by the heat further in the valley, just beyond the mountain ranges that filled her window with their power.
And as the rain came that night, she smashed holes through the walls, she tore at the sheet rock with her bare hands, cursing with each action. She crushed the tiles along the bathroom sinks and in the kitchen and pissed on the carpet and smashed the glass doors that led to the patio. She cried as she did so, screaming and cursing with rage.
She was hurting her own child, the place she had loved and tended to. But if they thought they would just take it from her, if they thought she would just walk away and give it to them without pulling it down with her, no…they were wrong. They would come to know her rage, or someone would. She would leave her ghosts in these walls, she would forever linger here, her screams would come with the rain.

Ohio

It is my home. It is theirs. The dense woods smell of earth and flora. The air is damp, the moisture lingers, reluctant to make room for anything but cool, thick air. This population of trees, thick and overgrown, it has been here since the continent was formed. The same woods were once filled with Algonquian longhouses and brown Native children running after butterflies in the summertime.A creek bubbles happily through the woods. It carries fresh, clear water. Red clay lines the banks of the creek. As a child, I forged pottery from this red clay only to be disappointed, time after time, when my vessel crumbled into a million pieces after the sun had sucked the moisture from the clay and with it, its ability to maintain its sculpted shape.
Sometimes I spot crayfish in the creeks, or tadpoles or other small fish whose names are easily forgotten. After a big rain, the creek stops bubbling happily. It rises and swells, full of muddy, chaotic water and it angrily rages its way downstream, leaving long stains of red clay and discarded shoes and trash above the banks.
I walk quietly in the woods, picking jewel weed and spotting gently nibbled branches of low-growing flora, a deer has been through here. On my right, I see a lightly indented patch of ground, a deer has slept here. There, on the ground, there are small owl pellets and next to it, bits of fur and bone, regurgitated from the owl’s last meal.
In the small clearing, a shadow blots out the sun momentarily, I look above and see a circling red-tailed hawk. It lets out a scream. Is it calling to its lover? Is it warning its prey? I guess at the meaning of its cry.
I move below the canopy of the trees. Thick and cool, the air wraps me in its damp arms. Fallen leaves scatter the ground, each step of my body upon them releases a chorus of crunches and an earthy scent. Soil and decay and water and rock, the smell is like a perfume, as raw as can be. Sprouting from the soil, pushing past the leaves, is red and white polka doted mushroom, just like the kind I read about in fairy tales, only its real, and here, and right in front of me. The stories, once painted as fiction, come from this, from the magnificence and strangeness and wonder of this! Where polka-dotted mushrooms sprout. Where fairies dance and hawks unabashedly sing songs to their lover.
Nightfall comes. The woods begin their transformation. The trees become eerie shadows, but the sound of the crickets and tree frogs comfort me. Tiny lights sparkle all around. Small lightning bugs flash their golden yellow light, their only hope of finding a mate. If only they knew they’ll die tomorrow… maybe they do. Maybe they flash their little lights like beacons in the night guiding passing ships to the shore. The urgency is now, tomorrow is death and the species requires a new generation.