on the beach

I was raised by the sea shore, and everything which I have known I have simply borrowed from it.

I have borrowed the ocean’s cold capable strength; heard kind words and turned my face resolutely away.

I have borrowed the sand’s exhausting infinity and allowed myself for a spell to be tired.

I have on occasion borrowed heat which rendered me more lucid, and allowed me to see every one and every thing in the quick bright flash of mirrors in the sun.

I have borrowed a stone through which one can peer and when I did

I loved every one.

I have borrowed the feather of a sea bird which spoke a word of summer. I have held myself in my own arms on grey mornings.

I have learned the times of the tides from my father.

I have known the feel of night water, and all that which comes with night water--

stars and words and skin. I have known May and June. I have borrowed February and August and, once in January

many moonstones and a new skin

recalling some nights

My Bacchanalian evenings went uninformed. I sometimes test their fabric with slightly older fingers. I loved many things; many times. I have been rung like a rag by tides of energy and fright,

wrists burned by ropes too tight,

My own motivations mysterious to me. Summer heat and cactus liquor, pulling me up by my own limp arms, sent me staggering to brave and bait the keeper of some other cave, yellow-eyed, deep in the red dirt.

adeline gilchrist (right) and her sister.

the humphreys property in dutch flat, ca

was their home away from home many years

before any humphreys. she wrote a leaflet called

dutch flat: a brief history on its 100th birthday

and it was published

in 1951.

Adeline graduated from Miss Ransom and Miss Bridge's School, in Alameda, in 1916:

"Mrs. Guy Gilbert GILCHRIST (Adeline Easton HOWARD) is president of the Alumnae Association. She comes to school occasionally, and on those visits her one-year-old son is a most popular visitor."

Dust: part four

My own path isn't the sort that can be reduced to sand by a glance. The sage is dry and months old crumbling in my hand

I thought I had a host of liberating reasons. To no one's surprise but mine

I was young

Walking with my feet in the thick dirt dust all rising with the breeze. Walking through the mission to the place where I can breathe

And recalling my indiscretions I've got no wounds left to leech. My blood is flowing through the dirt dust

Red and clean. My blood is flowing warm and wet all over me

Until I roll myself in the live oak leaves and scratched and dirty light my own

Spring pyre

Miner's Country

A stranger tried to unclasp my hands from the reins. Drew me from my cave into the light of unpredictable day. But I cannot set the

bones that you broke in the course of your play. Can't anticipate the curves of

Another's highway. I never knew for sure

just dug my toes into the clay. Somehow I have been made weightless by this place. With no need to declare

I would not stake a claim. All that I've got; all that I gave. They seem one and the same. My desire is lent mostly to my longing for a respite in the miner's country.

the lady of the lake has been called by so many names. she was lancelot's foster mother / mother, a sometimes faery queen, and always the keeper of excalibur

arthurian legends inspired quite a lot of romantic art. i find that the stories also make incredibly good leisure reading. they draw from an oratory tradition with a really significant radius-- Ireland to Spain; the celtic reign was far reaching. Marie de France's lais were mostly attributed to Brittany, and they are oh so fantastic.

vernal equinox

mine was the unholy office, held aloft

by will which in the morning rose green

but withered dry and grey

then slumped exhausted on its

dying day

now in the wake of

new branches

seeking

a grove

the unobstructed sky provides a vast bed

sprawling edgeless

circular,

a chunk of pine amber to warm the palm.

a chunk of pine amber:

charged with a merciful

warm electrical crackle

making itself an open vessel

for any breed of grief

once fragmented, i was

a crumbling sandstone city

contaminated byre

funeral pyre

seeing nothing but end

after death after end

cold, without clothes

sought a grove and found a wasteland

sought a doe although

the doe who does not run is dead

but nevermore a hunter will be led within the grove

unless it is as legend long has said:

the traitor will be buried alive,

within the oak's cleft:

a crack exposed only wide enough

to keep him drunk with death

a bolt of lightning illuminates

that all that is new

is all that is left

and that was a seductive look,

young:

cast off that sullen disposition, you are

young

and if you ever step over my weeds

to beseech

an open vessel, free of lead and

free of grief

you will find my body placid, murky

green

shimmering, stirring

nearly imperceptibly, a young thing

spring begins to bend and flow

finding in the floor a hole the girl proceeded to climb right in.

it was dark and it was dim. there were no friends. it led nowhere. there was no sun at the end and there were no sconces on the walls and there was no wine in any of the bottles that hung from the ceiling of the cave with their necks broken, sharp

tears blurred the candle flames into lines of yellow heat. nothing touched her. she shook from within. it was dark and it was dim, she thought, i know not what state i'm in. anymore.

the allowance of sadness can lead to more sadness and when the tear leaked down her cheek she felt herself slip. all was horribly truly bad. time had been wasted. stupid times had. nothing gained. only sad. and foolish as the day is long.

she paused for the flash of eyes as flat and black as the onyx fished out of the river to satiate her lust. eyes that could only be held when apologizing for some devastating breach of trust. i don't believe in modern love.

stolen, she realized. stolen-- each moment from the dark place used to store everything that is never meant to be. stolen from the lesson vault. stolen from hell. snorting lines off of dressers in beautiful bedrooms. setting lovely. deeds depraved. choking hands followed by words in vain. and then climbing up the orange tree, jacques brel singing sadly, Poeme from a tiny bottle weighing the air. humid summer hell 90 degree days.

he did not ask. she changed the record. she curled into her pain. she knew he was, she was insane. and it all drove her all the more insane. she was very beautiful; it did her absolutely no good. she could not stop her mind from reeling. she found some calm in otis redding. existed as a hurricane

and when the tunnel turned it led to more dark and the dark led nowhere at all. it was, as it were, a cell with walls and she felt very nearly locked in. she slumped to her knees. the floor began to roll

be done, she thought. and disappeared beneath a rising tide. the flood took her under and tossed her around in its grasp.

they hid beneath her own brown blankets. said it would last. i don't believe in modern love . more will always come to pass. on all fours on the floor wrapped in brown blanket he baited a cat. morning rain lasted such a short while; arriving and disappearing just as fast

wine and pills and sick in the bathroom, coke-head teenaged misdirected gunshot took a grazing beauty down. songs and songs

the tide bore her downward

songs and songs, all of my beauty she thought. and all of it wrong. a carnelian and a long time gone. wasted

'dont pass me by' played, perilous curves in the highway 1

big sur moss briefly flashing

i smoked so many cigarettes.

the water level slowly begins to lower, even despite

despite despite. those were dark times but more spent driving

driving ceaselessly. highway 1.

cigarette after cigarette, damned scratched c.d. summer mothered me. you create the circumstances, we'll provide the party

at the end.

at the end what remains is simple. first feeling the walls for a door, and, in finding the door, for a lock. if lock is locked, consulting mind which she finds is the gracious bestower of the key

many thanks.

greeted not by light but by thick obscuring grey. fog covered the clouds but did not distract from the landscape

at the end what remains is simple. a single candle. a blue shawl. hematite bracelet that has seen enough but will see even more. record player still revolves. brown blanket keeps her body warm. time slips

slips and is merciful

whole

learnings

when i walk no one cares where i go

i’m as free as a ghost here.

i am unconventionally winged and i have been stuck in amber

three thousand years of fog and sun.

i read of a king. the king of ireland when ireland had kings;

named

Anguish.

he proved to be persuadable.

it occurs to me that i have worshipped

vice and called it character

attempted alchemical madness

with dylan thomas as defense

and everything i touched permeated

with poison

hind sight beholds

the time i’ve spent

tried to defy

gravity:

truth

sinks.

there’s nothing to fear any more

(that was not a pretty sight)

what is genuine is much quieter than that

in the middle of the highway it pauses staring

through the night

with wolfish eyes

it’s not nothing.

i. some stones.

the bloody jasper in my pocket lends a lovely glow. close to me it feels warm as if it was cut from my chest, cut

with a knife made of ancestral bone; warm as a lung.

i keep stones. i could sew them into my hems if the notion bore me from below. return to the river but for all i've grown. these days, knowing more than nothing, i have something worth keeping

worth keeping in stone. long nights i have known

were long days too.

yet every facet sometimes catches a moment of light. can cross a divide and arrive on the other side, guided by something spectral and wild

conjured from memory, someone i knew said:

i carried crystals, hoarded stones

until i learned to keep them in my mind.

now they go wherever he goes and their light is his alone. trailing smoke and cellos,

sharp as a knife of ancestral bone,

warm as night