The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Category: Poetry

  • Hashberry

    Words like marine bells and well sounds
    gone without a proper name innocence
    longing not to mention what’s for dinner.

    Alone with a book no means to look things
    up the fine print singsongs see you see you
    read me me eating a bowl of vanilla bean

    ice cream with cadmium blue hashberries
    while watching the Seattle Mariners lose
    to the Houston Astros a book on your lap

    on top book a medium green Fiestaware
    bowl of raspberry sorbet with chocolate
    ice cream the same bowl your father used

    while watching the 1959 new Los Angeles
    Dodgers and the moonshots of the 1960s.
    Then there was the matter of what to do

    with the things of summer forlorn and sad
    surfboards out of water and wet towels
    sandsalt swimwear and wornout sandals

    and radios caught in riptides pulled to sea
    we drifted with the flow abandoned stuff
    not the toys and all but their decorum.

    The hashberry an opaque pearl swallows
    light into its creamy purple gloss happy
    cleavage like rolled baseball bubblegum.

  • Today, and Today, and Today

    Today, and today, and today –
    never today will it be tomorrow,
    the cat creeping about like yesterday,
    filling her box like there’s no futurity.
    Yet tomorrow times our day without delay,
    though it remains as dark as ones past.
    Today’s light will soon turn cold, burnt to nub
    where the candle once stood so tall and proud,
    center stage, lighting all around and into all
    corners and crevices, minutes and seconds.
    Poor today whose hour is usurped by what’s
    yet to play and whose voice can’t be heard
    over yesterday’s, and what happens off
    stage makes more noise than this display.

  • A Short Longing

    This longing for you
    now that you’ve gone
    How could you leave
    if you were never here?

    Who say they see you
    but not who you are
    That you told the truth
    slant, a shooting star

    Mind full and empty
    nest, eggs all hatched
    That was some big bash
    will you bring it all back?

    One of those dudes wears
    his phone on his belt
    and at the ring tone
    plays a game of solitaire

    I gather you hunt
    with sticks that point
    your walkabouts
    and stones from my basket

    We are not lost who walk
    away along this ancient
    path and in words relay
    He lives in these woods

    Thanks for the shoes
    and tools, let me see
    your hands again
    leathered skin sewn

    Take this longing
    from me and give
    it back to him
    where it belongs

  • Without Winter

    “Did We abolish
    Frost
    The Summer
    would not cease —
    If Seasons perish
    or prevail
    Is optional with Us —”

    Emily Dickinson, #1014, c. 1865

    Put off the cold front, the overcoat
    go barefoot into fall and winter –
    Heaven has no need for umbrellas
    in El Porto’s garage no surfboard

    What is optional here is mandatory
    elsewhere – while home mandates
    we embark upon our mission out
    even as our clothes wear thinner –

    It is up to the individual to mask
    at the bistro or tonight’s opera
    decide if hearts pin to sleeves
    or stay locked in summer rooms –

    In the heat we’ve nothing to say
    to keep cool we avoid emotion
    what is compulsory is optional
    work around the toil and toll –

    The only way to beat the heat
    is to stop moving – end travail
    as we slog and toil to the end
    with another hot laptop post –

  • Hand Harvest

    Trees and vines tired yield fatty fruit apples grapes figs pears and plums tried of a risible sun they surmised (if plants could) they’d never leave home tied to secret crawling roots.

    Birds bees and woe wacky wasps buff yellowjackets give peppery ear to where teeny seeds well watered sprout and flume into chalice gold tomatoes peppers gourds hot yams.

    Sockets and bracelets ankled deep and wristed waisted random gloved catch the yawning blue moon lured by lovers deep smell a wet garbage vinegar a hand harvest work party.

    Purple night suckered us here dilly dally by the sap empty sugar shack waiting by the swelled bushels sour jobs lasting summer into sweet fall and to think we happily volunteered.

  • On A Walk

    To light out      
                  Newfangled air
Lift and put 
                  One foot 
In front of 
                  The next one 
Side by side 
                  So don't trip 
First step
                  Last step
Don't put one
                  Foot in front 
Of the other 
                  A sure stumble 
Each stride
                  Start with a 
Capital letter
                  To point 
The trail 
                  Theatrically
Turn around 
                  Things places
Plants people
                  Be wary 
(Beware of X!) 
                  Of curs 
And coyotes
                  Of cars and
Bicycles
                  Notice 
Ornamental 
                  Trees bushes 
Chain link fences
                  Stone walls 
Birds thrifters
                  Ersatz robots
Carrying flowers 
                  Sandwich boards
Falling Debra's 
                  Dull drones
Gutters curbs
                  Profound potholes
And quicksand
                  Prone up 
Drift and blow
                  A lone tree 
Drops ripe pears 
                  The down home 
Tenebrous diner 
                  On the corner 
Pizza Margherita 
                  Sprinkled with 
Fresh basil 
                  But pass on 
Look into 
                  Flyblown book box 
At bus stop 
                  But don't 
Want any more 
                  books putting
Books in not 
                  Taking out
Empty bus 
                  Line 15 
Wobbles noisily 
                  Toward town 
Snatch a sprig 
                  Lavender 
Growing over 
                  Cracked sidewalk 
And work way 
                  Up long hill 
Stuff blue herb
                  In gory nose
Note how hill
                  Like a big water 
Freighter 
                  Grows steeper 
With each 
                  Voyage
Top of hill 
                  Sad old homes
Gargantuan 
                  Chestnut
Across from 
                  Rock cairns
Jazz band 
                  La Vie en rose
On veranda
                  Violets for your
Furs the very
                  Thought of you
Of drunk stuck
                  Coffee
Bitter
                  Boastful
Nutty
                  Smutty sun
Two late cups
                  Two guile blocks
Three slow steps
                  At waltz time
Holding hands

  • Fragments and Garments

    My friend Bill mentioned
    Ashbery, something about
    collages and poems,
    but I thought he said,
    cabbages and poems,
    and googling such,
    I found only one
    reference, in turn
    which posts Ruth Stone’s
    poem titled “The Cabbage.”

    Sum of which reminded me
    of the excellent cabbage
    rolls Susan used to make.
    My friend Wormy used to
    stop by the studio apt
    on Imperial Sat eve in our
    long weekend warrior days,
    Susan’s rolls suffused with
    tomato sauce tasty stuffed
    with meat rice and sauce.

    Sara posted a few pics
    of “Ward Charcoal Ovens,”
    built sometime in the 1870s,
    which I at first misread
    as Word Charcoal Ovens.
    The ovens reduced pinyon
    pine and juniper to charcoal,
    in Nevada. The word charcoal
    oven will reduce words to
    fragments and garments.

    For So much depends upon
    a red dress draped lovely
    on a blue wall, near a statue
    of Mary and a copy of Green
    Lights and 99 Ways to Tell
    a Story and A Room of One’s
    Own, over at the industrious
    Josephine Corcoran’s wonderful
    poetry and writing blog-site,
    where I left a rare comment.

  • At the Mall

    At the mall I walk thru glass
    and almost fall trip boarding
    an escalator in the book
    store, my feet not quite
    aligned to alight gracefully.

    I pass a lady who looks lost
    and a mannequin just found
    her head squeezed dahlia
    pops at the top of a pair
    of stylized skinny jeans.

    I walk through sounds smelly
    perfumes, anonymous noise
    guy in uniform and money
    bag reading a mall directory
    two robots pass by glistening.

    Old guy sitting in food court
    selling postcard size drawings
    on his face a weathered frown
    lady in front of me at coffee cafe
    dabbing red stained tissue on arm.

    Janitor pushing cleaning cart
    picking up fallings the mall
    as clean as a movie screen
    playing Logan’s Run (1976)
    countryside bubble malls.

    I study a few of the other
    people at the mall and try
    to see us as others might
    see us in the mall season
    reasons even Mr. Mall forgets.

    I pause in a general sitting
    area and pull out my cell
    phone and work on a few
    comics then the cell rings
    and it’s time to meet back up.

  • Theory of Meaning

    What is mental may mislead us,
    the physical, on the other hand,
    for example, in a cloud you see
    an elephant, but that elephant
    is mental, not physical, while a
    physical animal in a living room
    could be mentally misconstrued
    as a ceiling cloud; the mental
    is also physical, and vice versa.

    We might call, in this discussion,
    what is physical, the denotative
    meaning, and what is mental,
    the connotative meaning. They
    are both meanings, both valid
    experience, and one plays off
    the other. Denotative meanings
    describe, while connotative
    meanings suggest. Further,

    we may easily and without
    argument agree on clouds,
    but to say a cloud is an
    elephant is a statement
    about which there may be
    some disagreement. Either
    way, rain begins to fall and
    the farmer is happy while
    the weekend golfer pissed.

    Let’s make sense together, you and me:
    Our needs are simple:
    water and food, shelter, one another.

    We think we are thinking beings
    but that’s not to say
    this rock and paper don’t exist.
    The rock quivers to its icy core
    when the voice speaks its thunder
    and the elephant walks
    through the room.

    All thought is substantive, bears
    out, vindicates the light of all
    we see and miss which absolves
    the darkness. The rock too thinks,
    thinks, “I am a rock; I have it easy.”
    Don’t worry about meaning. We
    play hide and seek, turn sounds
    into music, shelter in rocks,
    plant tomatoes under elephants.

    By meaning we mean passing
    a baton in a conversational relay.
    Ask the easy questions first:
    who, what, when, where, why,
    and how – the architect built
    on nothing, why then should
    nothing distract you?

    Meantime, last night I slept
    on my guitar, while the blinds
    blew in the breeze of the open
    window, and night birds flew
    in and out, around the room,
    each with its own song.

  • If Less is More

    If less is more,
    is nothing most?

    Life is a mystery
    bromides won’t solve.

    So it goes
    and comes back

    to haunt
    the empty house.

    Elegance is means
    of choice.

    Space is to be
    avoided.

    Address hides
    function.

    Think in
    visible.

    Do not
    decorate.

    A library
    with no books.

    Barefoot on the lino
    walking the woodcuts.

  • Field Notes 28 Aug 23

    Walked a mile last night with Eric, curlycue around the neighborhood streets late in the evening, the blue moon rising over the houses and over the firs up on the dark volcano, first cool evening in awhile, feeling the ocean air arrive like an old steamship foreshadowed by tugboats pushing and pulling against a tide. Earlier had sat out in the drive with the guitar, disturbing the universe, though no one seemed to mind, a few passersby walking dogs giving me a nod, the International Play Music on the Porch Day passing locally like any other day.

    The neighbor’s Brobdingnagian apple tree, high up above the border wall, half of which hangs out and over our grape pergola, too high to pick, seems to have come close to finishing its self-harvest drop, around a dozen or more bushels falling on our side of the wall this year, a bumper crop, peck after peck after peck we’ve picked up and bagged.

    Meanwhile, peaches are in season. Fresh peaches, juicy and tender, slightly fuzzy, plump, pink and red and yellow and orange. Nectarines are also peaches, but without the fuzz, smooth, and the pit of the peach is akin to an almond. This is what comes from looking things up, a new pastime. Of the numerous poets who have tried to get their hands around a peach, perhaps none have squeezed as close yet stayed afar as Andrew Marvel, in his poem titled simply “The Garden” (circa 1650), where he seems to prefer the actual peach to any metaphor that might point elsewhere for one’s fuzzy orbs:

    “What wond’rous life in this I lead!
    Ripe apples drop about my head;
    The luscious clusters of the vine
    Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
    The nectarine and curious peach
    Into my hands themselves do reach;
    Stumbling on melons as I pass,
    Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.”

    Andrew Marvel

    Why “curious”?

    “I grow old … I grow old …
    I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

    Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
    I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
    I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

    I do not think that they will sing to me.”

    from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T. S. Eliot, 1911

    One of these days, I’ll compose my own poem to the peach, maybe “Portrait of a Peach,” which is to say, one you cannot eat, dare or not. Lately, Susan’s been offering ripe peaches on a plate to nibble through the slow afternoon, so soft, so cool, so sweet, so refreshing. Love peaches, love to see two, side by side, each to each, within easy reach.

    Speaking of growing old and wearing trousers rolled, yesterday, lightly working outside, I came close to falling twice. The first time, I caught my pant cuff on a hook under the outdoor couch. I nearly fell into a cluster of flower pots. The second time, the foot whose turn it was to move forward on the porch somehow stuck in place, and the pot I was carrying was tossed so I could stop my fall with the arm that was holding it. The pot fell and broke in two, splattering the walk with potting soil. And somehow I found myself sitting on the porch step. Not quite a fall, then, a sit?