Sister stars laughing—
long and cold— the trip hard
far beyond the place where
no one sees spruce, sun-dashed,
or rain-impregnated hills, wind—
funneled on the coast’s ragged dance.

In this empty region, dying light
burns steady. When called, Father, you
will not soon return, nor may they linger.
Hurled earthward, they land square beneath
the raven, shy on this rocky trail of hurt.
No balm for their wounds but words—

the search greater than all telling—
inside the body of fire— this live altar.

Corona taught me about being an elder — a vulnerable
one at that. Being sequestered in our home for weeks
on Ben Lomond bestowed a deep, deep gratitude.
Mostly it was very quiet on ten wooded acres.
We loved living here 19 years.

I am a poet, teacher, ritualist as well as a grandmother,
so I had not experienced being alone with my husband,
Geoff, in this way. We had traveled extensively together
over the years, but nothing was like this. We had time contemplating mortality in a way like none other.

Creating sacred space had been pivotal in our work.
Our home is where we practiced our seasonal rituals.
For the past few weeks, we have been working on
sacred space as if our lives depended on it

Because it does. Away from the madding crowd,
we have long stretches of silence. Last week, after
writing circle and two other teaching gigs on Zoom,
I found myself in the living room, the site of hundreds

Of rituals and classes, yet this time I felt seriously alone.
Geoff was outside repairing our pool. I was in my chair
thinking how privileged I was to live in the coronavirus era —
even though it filled me with fear.

It has also given me leisure to sense such deep gratitude
for what the land has given us. By and large, these
endless weeks, perhaps a month, I had appreciated
croaking of frogs in Geoff’s fountain, ravens crackling

In the Douglas fir, wind inducing dance in whistling
branches of the redwoods. Still, this afternoon, the quiet
I had learned to expect was violated. I heard gunshot — a
lot of it.

Not that I hadn’t struggled before, yet it seemed subsided
since the shelter in place order had been enforced. I was wondering if this would take away — yet again — our peace— multiple excruciatingly loud weapons.

Interrupting my solitude, I discovered where the shots
were coming from. The thunderous sound of a dirt bike
invaded the land. I sat up straight. It was roaring up our
driveway. I heard it screech to a halt, fall over onto

Our garage door, hearing footsteps. Our screen door —
a heavy sliding wooden one, that does not even have a
lock, opened. My heart was beating fast. I called out
“Who is this? What do you want?”

I stood up, my legs trembling. A jumbled voice was heard — along with a squeaking of the screen door, a groaning
sound of the sliding redwood door. I managed to move
my legs across the room.

A large tall man was making his way in, unbidden—
mumbling he was looking for Geoff. Each time,
he took a step forward, I did the same, hoping
he would step back. My words shaky —

“Geoff is outside working on the land.” I gesticulated —
“Get out of my sanctuary.” He chuckled, “I bet he is
walking around somewhere.” I continued — stepping
towards him — motioning to shoo him off.

Miraculously, he started backing off, out. As soon
as the screen door shut, my legs buckled — I was
horrified. Joel, our unhinged neighbor — traumatic
head injury, had come inside our home.

He did not strike me as someone who practiced
social distancing. I realized he had been shouting
at me — breathing hard. I never expected this —
seeing he tracked dirt on our Moroccan rug.

I realized the virus might be inside our once sacred
space. I ran for my spray bottle of rubbing alcohol —
brought it back. I desperately sanitized floor, wall,
aerosol in the air itself. Joel, outside doors I shut

So quickly, had no interest in the level of my distress.
He was intent on speaking to Geoff, whom I saw out
the window walking onto the driveway. I ran back
to the bathroom, took off my clothes.

I felt need for a shower. I dried off, put on fresh clothes.
Hearing Geoff outside talking to Joel, I gestured through
the window, trying to get Geoff to come back inside —
he had no notion what had transpired.

He was also dancing — trying to get back far enough from
Joel. When Geoff finished his short conversation, he came
inside — I told him all about my experience. I had
completely lost my sense of being in safe space.

Beloved boundaries inside I had circled so often had
dissolved. I ran again into the bathroom — showered
again, scrubbing, weeping simultaneously for what
seemed an eternity. I had appreciated the time

Of coronavirus right up until the moment of this violation.
Living for almost two decades under the assumption we
were protected by the beautiful wooded land we
belonged to — all that had crumbled.

I had known Joel was delusional. Geoff told me after my
second shower Joel had wanted to know who from our
land was leaving footprints on his bath and what man
Was sleeping in the white truck just outside our parking lot.

Geoff had attempted to reassure him that none of this
was coming out of the land we lived on. Still questions:
Where is the safety? Where is the protection? Life has
changed entirely. It is hard to be anywhere now.

It’s a struggle to appreciate this time. How do I create a
much safer circle, if I do not know how? It will be hard
to figure out the magic. Corona knows.

My mom has left me alone in my Aunt Goldie’s beauty parlor where I shall receive the dreaded Toni permanent. I have been admonished that I must suffer to be beautiful. In this case, beauty was associated with curls in my straight black hair. The story goes that I was on the toilet and Aunt Goldie came to supervise and found bright red polyps. She put them in a jar and presented them to my mom. I do not remember this part of the narrative, but I do remember other parts.

I am taken by my dad to the doctor. I assume my mom was home with my excruciatingly sensitive little sister. I am put on an examination table and probed harshly in my rectum. Only my dad is there to witness. No nurse was there. I did not discuss this before or after with my mom.

After that, I am very afraid to go to the doctor. I scream if it is mentioned. My dad drives the car in circles so I will not recognize the route to the doctor. Then we begin going to other doctors.

First I experienced enemas given without my consent. No explanation was given. I then was sent alone into a room where I had to drink barium and sit for x-rays.

That was not the only part. On other occasions, I was tied down to examination tables, and without anesthesia, I underwent the equivalent of a colonoscopy. This was excessively painful. I did not understand until I described these incidents to my psychiatrist, that the tools they used were not sized for little girls. They were the ones they used for adults.

I had sensed Spirit in the drop in barometric pressure and the smell of ozone before a thunderstorm or tornado.

One time, my dad left me with a group of doctors and nurses. Again, no explanation was given. I believe the understanding was that I would be given tests. I screamed bloody murder when they took my blood. They covered my body and face with blankets and I felt I could not breathe. To this very day, I am afraid of having sheets or blankets over my face. I was locked in a closet for an indiscernible amount of time. Sixty-five years later, I panic in a public bathroom stall or elevator that is locked or that I am unable to open.

After that, I became oddly quiet and reclusive. When I was taken to the hospital to have the polyps removed, I was left alone without the support of my parents. I remember the psychedelic colors of the designs as they covered my nose and mouth with a rag full of ether.

I had already sensed Spirit communicating to me through the sounds and smells of animals suffering — the gagging I felt as a three year old child at the stench and screams of the slaughterhouses in Kansas City.

When I awoke, I found myself in a hospital bed festooned with metal bars. I could not get out.

Dawn

At dawn, the body burns.
What has been its moist
Red ground for decades is
Going to disappear. Desert
Sage cut, dried, prepares to bristle
Sear. Smoke incense for the sun.
Outside the hoot of an owl —
The sun rises. The mice relax.
After the rains, this fertile land
Will be given up. The nests of songbirds
harvested, gone, The tree of the last virgin
Offered up — the flower of her mother,
The bunch grasses of all the mothers
Offered up in the in the tule fog of morning.

Where lava once poured over
Rivers of rock flowed inward
Towards this tawny beach.
An inlet sparkles open,
And two creeks rush with
The insistence that is water.
Tumbling forth restless
With the thunder of a thousand tongues.
What gift could she bring?
A song ascends the canyon
Of madrone — thick with miner’s grass —
The scent of lizard’s breath tickling her ruddy crevices —
The blood of shooting stars.

Her prayer releases a comet
Arching. Seeking the cooling
Touch, reaching ever up,
Laughing in coyote brush, the fields
Of lupin and mallow have disappeared.
Filled with want and quaking
Expectancy ignites,
Strikes from the side, splits
Right through, falls back,
Feeling loss in her core.
Forehead falling to her feet.
Insides spilled out, piled up
Half her heart brought down
Still she is aroused.

Oh! to be young again

Riding the Mother waters
lulled by the sapphire —
hope keeping a starry vigil!

Question:
What secret allowed you, Spirit
of the deep, to carry me, alone
amongst the dampened spray?

Answer:
Oh drenched being, form comes
forth from nothing, swaddling you in
its salty sheets, writhing ’til morning.

Question:
What was the sound like — short name
of women cresting like white horses
where wonder spins with splashing?

Answer:
In the silent languages of spiders,
the sound hisses out each newborn’s
breath — the last thread in my tapestry.

Question:
In your dark drapery, where is the loss?
Is the hanging dark — fruit fallen—
its tufts, pale, and sudden as hope?

Answer:
My glad water rushes down the gorge,
Next to cottonwood, carnage tangles,
sweethearts plunge fast, gurgle…

Question:
Is your secret practice sex? Do you stagger up
the swelling brook where manzanita bark reaches
out to snag a sleeve? Do you transform?

Answer:
The only change lovers make is closeness
to their kin, the final days, their arms around
each dying friend. Trees desire a natural end.

Question:
Why does the flicker sing of sustenance, not doom?
What makes you eat the berries, fierce messengers—
and lull waltzing butterflies to sleep in their cocoons?

Answer:
That untold heart harbors in these hollows. Robins fatten
on my seeds— the plump flesh of soil heaped, the damp
maidenhead turning black, eucalyptus peeling revelation.

Question:
Do the creamy veins of your secret rivers scream red through winter piercing pleasure? When does this night lengthen?

Answer:
Ripen, ripen until you fall free! Give in to the light. Join me.

Among twenty antiseptic sponges,
the only touch of life in the room was
the sparkle in Mandy’s green eyes.

The doctors were of three minds like
a college play with three actors playing Mandy.
She twirled in the December mist. 

Mandy was a walk on actor in a far greater drama.
I have no notion which to prefer: the beauty of her articulation,
the flight of her imagination, 

Mandy laughing, or the aftermath.
Bare branches of the maple tree filled outside our
French doors with the threat of austerity.

The long shade of Mandy crossed it to and fro.
The mood traced it into the shadow of unstoppable joy.
Oh family, lover, friends! Why fret? 

Do you not see how Mandy walks around the edges of the
worries that bind you? We know doors to absolute light and
swirling delicious colors, yet we also know 

that Mandy is central to all that we know.
When Mandy walked into the x-ray,
it marked the vital edge of one of many circles.

At the sight of Mandy in a blue paper gown,
even the narcissists of Gilbert Avenue would cry out sharply.
We rode over peninsula in a metal box. 

Fear pierced our hearts, as we mistook
the silhouette of our equipage for Mandy.
The winter wind was blowing. 

Mandy was practicing her script.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was raining, and it was going to rain.

Mandy climbed up the trunk
in the wet leaves of the Maple,
singing a tune with a goldfinch.

Meanwhile the surgeon sewed
her up so she would not be late
for the scene in her next act.