Tuesday, January 30, 2007




Love I believe in you, even if you still aren't here,
and it seems unlikely you'll think to look for me
in Costa Mesa under the freeway
behind Baja Fresh.


But I can't go to St. Petersburg for you now,
or Cape Christie or New York City or Deadwood.
I think my fate is here, with the plants
that're supposed to make it seem like paradise.


I talked with a marble stand
of pink and purple pansies
at the southern valet gate to Fashion Island today.


One said that after the shock of the first season,
they and the millions of others like them
grow embarrassed.


That these feelings keep humans from relaxing
on corporate park lawns.


Another said they know how much water
they steal, and just where that puts them.
That they're embarrassed to face the natural world,
when it is,
and that, partly because of them,
there's so little left here to face.


In their embarrassment they've become terribly self-absorbed.


They know that, too.


And truly, they're afraid.
They know their princess colors are no match for the hawks,
vultures, spiders, owls, coyotes,
snakes and red ants.


It was different where they came from.


And, as I turned to leave,
behind a family running to the movies,


one said they're like a lot of the early white settlers
in these ways,


for whom it will take awhile
to become people again,


if they ever do.



Monday, January 29, 2007




One gray, sticky summer afternoon in 1992, the security guard was driving home from the gym and saw a two-toned green-and-turquoise sedan in the middle of the street. Its hood and all four doors were open.

This was when he was still a police officer. It was his day off, but he always carried his gun and radio. He stopped, got out and looked the car over. It looked abandoned. He called in and started running a report from the license plates.

Toward the end of the call he put his foot on the front fender, just to kind of rest it there. He took it off and WHOOOOSH

a wide huffing fire uncoiled ten feet tall.

He turned, shielding his face with his right arm, and fell on his butt. He felt so hot he thought he was on fire, and ran to a sprinkler whipping some front yard. He doused himself, took off his tank top and wrapped his right arm in it. A kid came up to him.

It turned out he hadn't actually been on fire, but the boy said

you're fucked up man

because his face, arm and the side of his torso were burned almost as bad from having been near the fire as they would've been, in it.

He drove himself to the hospital and was admitted right away. The ER nurses and his department had a good relationship because his guys also did security for their floor. His right arm was shaking but the nurses said that was normal. They gave him a shot for pain in the butt and reminded him of having seen his naked bottom for the next few weeks.

Whoever planted the explosive in the radiator did it wrong, they made the blast go upward instead of out or in. The angle of the hood rolled the flame somewhat toward him, but still that was what saved his life they said.

The way he told it, it seemed like he'd come through pretty well. I couldn't see any scars on his face or arm, and it sounded like the wind had died down.

When I knew him a little better he told me about losing his wife and children in a house fire five years later. The ways he talked about the two fires (I mean, the fire part of the fires) were very different. He barely described the one that took his family at all.


Monday, January 08, 2007







You will find that charity
Is a heavy burden to carry
Heavier than a bowl of soup
And the full basket.


But you will keep your gentleness
And your smile.


It is not enough to give soup
And bread
This the rich can do.


You are the servant of the poor,
Always smiling
And always good humoured.
They are your masters,
(Terribly sensitive) and exacting
masters
You will soon see.


The uglier and dirtier they will be,
The more unjust and insulting,
The more love you must give them.


It is only for your love alone
That the poor will forgive you
The bread you give to them.







by St. Vincent de Paul


Monday, January 01, 2007

Capricorn



She asked a flower
how to live forever.


And the flower told her.


Then she slowly asked,


"...so, why don't...
some flowers...
live...forever, if they can?"


The flower said,
"You sense that question trespasses.
You feel like a seductress
with something at stake.


It's called propriety, my dear.
Yes, it comes this way, too.


And, as to your question, well,
that's why."

About Me

I came to Minneapolis from southern California this May to help my 88-year-old mother care for my 86-year-old father. He fell last November, and then declined cognitively for a month as his bones healed at a rehab facility under quarantine. He hasn't undeclined. Before retiring in the 1990s, he was a theater critic, & still seems to have some of his self-confidence and wit alongside vascular dementia, Parkinsonisms, incontinence and real trouble walking. Given his otherwise-ok health, he might still have some tolerable years ahead, though with new parameters. My mom's a novelist. She seems made of iron.