Steps

Yesterday was walking heel-toe
down the path to the boulder overlook.
The mountains across from our mountain.
The tiny road below
winding to Kings Canyon
hidden behind that range.

At home, the bloom of a lemon-hued bearded iris
large as my hand
its ruffled petals doing backbends
and hidden spaces between the top petals
leaning toward each other.

Today, this morning, she died
(as lately we learned she would).
Young. Young.
Too young. So much younger than I.
When we visit her husband and children
the dogs leap to our laps
and we stroke their eager softness desperately.

At home
buds on the stems of the lemon-hued bearded iris
bulge with the promise of more blooms.
Tonight.
Or tomorrow.
Or perhaps not until the next day.

A Year in Three Sunsets, 2007

Writing about camping recently on Bodega Bay harbor and enjoying another sunset in the town where my parents lived in their retirement, I was reminded of the following poem.


A Year in Three Sunsets, 2007

1.
Mom's street slides down the hill 
and curves back up. At the bottom 
of the loop my son and I stop 

and watch the Pacific open 
its mouth for the sun. We wait 
for the green flash that might occur 

on a clear day just after the sun 
slips into the ocean and that 
so delighted Dad. Today 

there is none.

2.
​​                                The remote 
shuts the garage door on the now 
quiet house that pulsed while all 

our children visited. Seeking the coast 
we turn west on 128, drive 
through the rain and fog and into 

a tunnel of moss-hung trees. Reaching 
Highway 1 we squiggle north for a time 
along the edge of the Pacific before 

pulling into a turnout. We climb 
down to a cove and picnic in its shelter 
while white horses race across the waves 

manes and tails flying. Later
as the ocean slides over the sun
the highway empties. In every turnout

humanity silences the rush
and faces west as though commanded 
by the twilight to attend. We turn 

so quickly, I say.


3. 
​                                 A man stands 
in the brown grass of the cliff 
along the bottom curve of the loop

hands waiting in his leather jacket's pockets
camera expectant on a tripod
as our slice of earth turns 

away from the sun. All around the loop
people stand at windows
on decks. I run up the steps

calling to Mom. She is standing already 
by the sliding glass door. We watch the sun 
expand at the edge of the ocean

and the clouds glow fiery then fade 
and the ocean and clouds merge 
into twilight and it seems everything 

holds its breath 
to listen 
to the sensation of peace.

Sonata: Fresno, 1999

        I've taken over a hundred pictures lately of an hibiscus that was given to me by a ninety-one-year-old friend when I came home from the hospital last summer. It nearly died outside in our unusually cold winter but managed to survive when I finally brought it into our bathroom. I eventually moved it to the corner windows by our kitchen sink, where it has bloomed repeatedly, profusely, ever since. I am awestruck by its huge blooms of intense color, ruffled and curved and veined petals, and intricate long stamen. Photoing the hibiscus again this week, I was reminded of a poem I wrote fifteen years ago and have of course revised every time I bring it out.

Sonata: Fresno, 1999

Allegro

I dig weeds, lop off seed heads,

prune wayward branches, chop

(and curse) the redwood

with its endless debris and offspring,

drain grit from sprinkler lines (and later

dig it out from under my nails).

Andante

Ra-nun-cu-las,

a-nem-o-nes,

(lush syllables in my mouth)

intensely imbued petals though shy

above their feathered leaves

(my older son’s first spring).

            Periwinkle roams, exuberant,

starred. California poppies 

are wildflowers

but their trust

was hard earned. “Oh!”

She realizes I am crouched

            over here, weeding. “I picked

your iris.” I kiss my butt

to the dirt. “Take more.

Come again.” Bearded irises’

curves and ruffles stupefy me.            

Scherzo

            Strawberries, baby’s tears,

gazanias, you may have

your say, but you,

forget-me-nots, believe me,

I won’t forget you—

seedlings already crowd

your feet which is why

I am yanking you

out by the armload but I

do love your blue clouds.            

            Mexican primrose:

insouciant dancers,

swirling your skirts,

stomping your boots, clenching roses

in your teeth, while your deceptive

wiry roots greedily creep

through the soil to multiply

your tenacious dancers

like funhouse mirrors.            

Finale

            In the shade of a trio of crepe myrtles 

that gloriously bloom mid-summer, 

club flowers and heart leaves 

skim the soil on runners, offspring 

of our first home’s violets. If I am 

deer still

a scent almost 

not there whispers in my nostrils 

on the breeze that brings too 

foreign conversation of a herd 

of bumblebees foraging 

in the hollyhocks that nod 

in the hot sun.

To Peel an Avocado

          Yesterday, as he prepared an avocado sandwich, Doug commented, to my great pleasure, how he always remembers my story about Nikki when he peels an avocado. So do I.

To Peel an Avocado

I lift another avocado from the basket. This one is for salad:

it must resist like a muscle the gentle pressure

of my fingers. This one will work. I remove

the remnant of its connection to its branch, then rotating it

in my palm, press the blade through the rough skin,

through the lighter green meat, and around the pit. I set down

each half and the knife. I will not peel off the skin with the knife,

leaving fruit on the skin, as I would have eight years ago.                                   

                                                                                                            The latticework

over the patio slashes the spring sun’s path into Nikki’s kitchen.  At the island

I cut an avocado in half, then begin to peel the skin from the fruit

with the knife. Nikki says something I can’t understand. I peel. My fingers

green. Nikki speaks. I peel. The knife handle becomes green

and slippery. Nikki becomes more urgent so I look up to her lips

but they give no clues because, not satisfied with having pushed Nikki

into a wheelchair and disabled her limbs and allowing her to breathe

only with a ventilator and eat only with a feeding tube, Lou Gehrig’s

has been snipping at the nerves that connect the muscles of her mouth

to her brain. Nikki is neatly groomed as usual: short blond hair washed

and styled, gold earrings, subtle make-up; slacks, sweater, socks,

and pumps that coordinate with the mint green blanket that lies

on her hands that lie limp on a heating pad and with the scarf

that drapes over her shoulders and neck and the tracheotomy tube

in her throat. Finally I make out Get a spoon. I ask what for. Get a spoon,

she insists. The knife misses the woodblock Mar, and pings on the floor.

how can you have lived I open several drawers, so long in California

leaving each ajar, and not know how locate a teaspoon, to peel

an avocado? hold it in my fist. Slide the spoon between the fruit

I prod the green on green grenade. and the skin. I glare

at the innocent fruit. Then scoop I glare at Nikki. the half out. I

search for the space to insert the spoon. I want to put down this avocado

and this spoon and get in my car and turn it on and open all the windows

and not look at the ocean and turn right at the bottom of the hill onto 5

and gun the engine out of San Diego and drive north five or seven hours

depending on the traffic and leave the car in the driveway

and go into the house and up to my bed and turn out the lights

and close my eyes under the covers. Who cares how you peel an avocado?

Instead, the spoon slips in. It slides between the skin and the fruit

like a figure skater gliding in a spread eagle along an invisible loop,

and the green meat lifts neatly out. I look at Nikki in her wheelchair

across the island. This woman I have known since before

degrees and careers and husbands and babies and my divorce

and grown children going off to college can’t speak. And she can’t

laugh. And she can’t smile. But, for now, she can tease me

mercilessly with her eyes.

                                                                        I look out my kitchen window

at the Chinese elm branches waving like a figure skater’s costume

caught in the breeze of his own velocity. Then I cradle a half of the avocado

in my hand and I slide a spoon along the curve between its meat

and its skin and when I lift out the fruit my fingers are not green.

                                                                                    —Marilyn Riddle Harper

Morning Show

     When I first moved from Fresno forty miles southeast to Visalia, I missed the singing of birds that I'd known in my three Fresno yards. Doug immediately installed bird feeders. We currently have five feeders and two birdbaths. I often stand at the sliding doors or sit in the breakfast nook just watching and listening to the birds.

Morning Show

           

The blue jay announces breakfast from the Chinese elm, then flies

madly about the back yard, trying to dominate the feeders and the

ground where seed has spilled. He favors the long clear tube and hangs

half upside down from one of its delicate perches long enough

to get his beak in the hole. In the pomegranate branches, brown finches

with black-striped heads wait patiently, when it is safe, drop to the ground.

The black-hooded ones I call executioners vie for supremacy of the wood

house, hopping from one side to the other, catching a quick seed before

flitting to the roof. On the red schoolhouse, hanging amid the tulip tree’s

blossoms, a small, drab brown bird turns and reveals scarlet washing

down his throat and breast. Pewter gray doves make a short, straight flight

across the yard, looking as though they will crash, then chase each other

around under the azaleas. Watching from the breakfast nook, my husband

drinks coffee and I tea. He turns to me. “You wanted birds,” he smiles. 

Between the Rows

       I originally wrote this first poem years ago and have revised it so many times since that it gives me a headache to think about.  It's the time of year here when plants begin to grow inches a day, and so this morning, passing our nearby strawberry field, seeing how big the plants suddenly are, and wondering with watering mouth when the first strawberries would be ready,  I decided to share my thoughts on the matter. 

Between the Rows

1.

A tall pole rose in my grandparents' back yard, its finial a two-story,

multiple-room purple marten house Grandpa built. From the grass’s edge,

Grandpa’s strawberry vines trailed down the bank toward the woods. Mom

preserved their summer sweetness in jam we spread on toast

to warm us on Pennsylvania winter mornings. My own efforts,

while my sons napped, rarely made it to Fresno’s foggy winters.

I lack patience, and when a batch appeared promising,

the paraffin failed to seal.

2.

Clouds of pink and white blossoms billow in the orchards

that line the road we follow east toward the Sierra Nevada

foothills rising in gray-green mounds. Through the open windows

the breeze whispers of almonds, peaches, nectarines,

plums, apricots. My sons, the older turned to his brother

in the back, chat of clubs and hopes, for it’s Hank's-Swank-

Par-Three day of the Fresno Junior Golf Tournament, which means

it is also first-flat-of-strawberries day. After the boys' rounds

we pull off to a crude roadside stand, swirling dust behind us.

Between the rows that stretch to the vanishing point

stoop Hmong families, grandpas and grandmas in conical hats,

women in colorful print and striped wrap skirts and blouses,

children in t-shirts and jeans. We study the mounded flats of fruit,

pay for the twelve green plastic baskets of the chosen one, lift it

from the wooden counter and settle it like royalty in the center

of the back seat. Now, my sons and I gather green leaves

with our fingers, open our mouths to the crimson flesh

and are anointed by the moist sweetness of spring.

3.

Like giant gray-green feather dusters, cypress line our narrow

country lane in the middle of the city, crows calling from the tops

that they see the Sierras. It is July, and we move, in a parade

of friends, wheels, and belongings four houses down the street

to our new home. I plant strawberries, but birds and sow bugs

usually find the small fruit before I. Our sons’ bedrooms cannot fit

two beds, and sometimes, unprepared for separation,

one drags his mattress to the other’s room for a sleepover.

4.

For three decades since Vietnam, tens of thousands of Hmong have arrived here,

in California's Central Valley, whose flat aridity contradicts

the humid heights of their Laotian mountain past. But they’ve been expelled

from one land and another and another, for centuries. In the nurturing

of strawberries, they wed ancient culture to new surroundings, and strawberries

do not despise them for being Hmong. My teen students, some born

in Thai refugee camps, some in America, tell me their grandparents chide them

for not speaking Hmong well. “But Grandma speaks so fast, I can't understand.”

5.

It's long since I've driven to Hank's Swank Par Three, drawn by the Sierras
down the road between the rows of blossoms. In this new town
with my new husband, the jagged Southern Sierras swell
what soul I may have. I begin to allow my feet to rest on the ground

of this dry valley that has claimed me. In  early spring
on the corner down the street, green plants poke through
black plastic and trail down the sides of rows that stretch
to the wood fence. One day the Hmong man opens

the shutters of the wood stand to crimson-mounded flats:
it is time again to be anointed with spring’s sweetness.

                                                           —Marilyn Riddle Harper