The Stone of Unction

The stone of Unction,
a slab of native limestone
where His body was anointed,

lies beneath a slab of marble

to protect it from pilgrims who

once took chips from it.

The marble has been worn by

a thousand thousand kisses.

How can stone feel this soft?

I am surprised and pleased

by its warmth, it asks my lips

to linger. Then the shock

-like the ones I’ve felt run up my arm

to my neck after walking on synthetic

carpet and touching a doorknob.

Hair standing up like an cat

arching its back, a small and not

really unpleasant tingle that felt

like Welcome. Like the tears I had shed

at the foot of the Western Wall,

the Wailing Wall of the Second Temple

where I slipped a small prayer

entrusted to paper into a crack

between the blocks. It was answered.

Many times. Times that sometimes

I wish were gentler, but it was

the right prayer. And the blessing,

the embrace of the Holy Spirit

when I kissed the Stone of Unction

confirmed it. I carry it still.

Gospel songs

The red-shouldered hawk
cries up the sun rise.
Not the red-feathered cock

who’s been consigned

to the farm

round these parts.

They used to roost freely

in the trees in Rancho Cordova.

Now you need a hen permit,

maximum of six and no roosters.

Our neighborhood turkeys

have gone elsewhere for now,

no more gurgling and gobbling

as the toms hassle the hens

up and down the street.

Just the choruses of juncos,

wrens, and thrushes,

the squawk of crows

and the screech of jays.

I long for the sweet songs

of robins when they

pass through in March.

I was sitting on the sun porch

a few days ago as we were

discussing the gospel of Luke

where Jesus ponders what

the kingdom of God is like.

He says it is like a mustard seed

tossed into a garden that waxed

and grew into a great tree

where many birds of the air

nested in its branches.

Every ten or fifteen seconds

I heard a woodpecker knocking

high up where one of the

redwoods had snapped

in a windstorm last spring.

Who’s there? I wondered.

Just for a moment.

It was God, always there

when you listen.

Babylizardville

The scent of tar weed

hovering over the trail

signals summer’s end.

When baby lizards

soak up the warm

late September sun.

Sights and scents

that fill my senses

ever since I was six

climbing up the tawny

flanks of whatever hill

is local to my feet.

The green sticky leaves

of the monkey flowers

have withered to a dull

version of orange

that tempts no battling

hummingbirds nor I.

And the poison oak

has changed like

a stoplight from

April’s deceptive green

to late September’s

menacing red. I was

warned when I was

five and our house

perched on a hillside

beside a poison oak

choked ravine and

a neighbor said

that the man who

rented the house

before us had cut

the blister-inducing

vine and set a bonfire

which filled his lungs

with caustic smoke

from which he nearly

died. Smooth-edged

leaves in clusters

of three, the colors

can change from

green to red or white

sometimes a bush

sometimes a vine.

Don’t stick you hand

into a place if you don’t

recognize the plants

trying to grab bluebelly

lizards. They’re easier

to catch on the rocks. 

Black feather circle

I dreamt of a pile of black feathers

circling a few gnawed bones,

one lone foot.

I’ve seen this before.

In ’62. Backyard lawn after dawn,

everything else was gone,

carried off in the mouthes

and bellies of the raccoons

who ate my pet crow.

Why does that vision

return now, in a dream?

Even fragments rarely last

for more than a few seconds

after waking and then falling

back into orphic meandering.

I knew of death at the time,

I was nine, but this was

my introduction to deep grief.

News of a friend’s death

reached me this week,

I don’t know which came first,

the dream or the message.

Doesn’t matter, I embrace

mystery wherever it emerges

from the shadows. Carved into the wall

of an ancient ruin. In a cloud or a tree,

or even a random social media post.

Grief and sorrow sit like a cyst that

resists the body’s efforts to absorb it.

Waiting patiently to break up

the everyday, every night cycles

of every year’s yesterday’s happy

memories and tomorrow’s promises.

Still there, like an old acquaintance.

Not a friend, but it remains just a cyst

not a tumor.

The Gaza Surf Club

Rawand don’t surf -anymore.

Neither does her brother

Abdullah or her cousins ’cuz

the Gaza Surf Club doesn’t get

out in the Mediterranean Sea

anymore. Hamas don’t like

girls participating in sports.

And the IDF don’t like Gazans

who might participate in Hamas.

Or get in the way, so the Club

is living in tents on the beach

beside the sea they dare not enter.

Lieutenant Kilgore’s famous line

in the movie, Apocalypse Now,

“Charlie don’t surf” was inspired

by Ariel Sharon’s comment after

winning the battle for Aqaba in

the Six-Day War. He took some

of his soldiers spearfishing and

boasted after roasting a few,

“We’re eating their fish”

When Abdullah was ten his first

surfboard was a refrigerator door.

Seventeen years later, the boxes

those appliances come in might

serve as a bedroom under a tent

a shelter from the swelter and

insects that plague your huddled 

masses gathered on the shore

of that wine-dark sea of yore.