Six chickens,
a scrawny tomcat,
and a plumeria.
A prickly pear cactus
next to the house
and a Dodge Polara
which hadn't run in years,
but the cat liked to sleep
on the dashboard
when the wind was cold.
He liked to carve
duck decoys
although he never
hunted
anymore.
He still liked the feel of a chisel
slicing through the wood.
She liked kneading dough
and hanging clothes
listening to him whistle
hoary songs that no one
played much,
anymore.
The Visalia high school year book theme,
class of 1949, was atomic energy.
and that was seen somehow, as benign.
Poor Julius and Ethel Rosenberg sought
to democratize the H-bomb.
They got the electric chair.
Meanwhile, my grandpa Smith
had his eyes on eleven acres of sand
beside the river named St John.
The magazines promised us
a rocket-powered
magnesium alloy future,
all streamlined couches
and flying vacuum cleaners.
-we got big fins on cars.
Walter Keane's wife painted big-eyed waifs
-but he took the credit and the money,
Beatnik Jack hit the road
and Senator Jack wed young Jackie.
Beside the river named St John,
the honeysuckle twined around
the well on Grandpa Smith’s farm.
and he grew a ton of tomatoes,
melons,and peppers.
Isaac Asimov coined the first rule
for automatons:
Do no harm to humans.
Because we had that covered
pretty well ourselves.
An hour before the sun breaks over the roof,
I stagger to the alarm clock app
where my phone sits
on the laundry hamper.
Whatever dream was playing
gone before I put the coffee on
and turn on the shower.
At five twenty this morning,
my mind is grappling with
the consideration of how vast
a heart must be to hold
all the suffering on this planet,
in this universe, in the billions
of galaxies, the streets and cities,
jungles and deserts,
kitchens and bedrooms,
boardrooms and alleys.
How big is God?
big enough to enclose all that?
are there worlds where the greatest miseries
are hangnails and rained out picnics?
is there some cosmic balance sheet
where children's laughter
and a singer's soaring song of joy
eclipse the crib deaths,
rape and slaughter,
war and famine,
the quiet beating in the schoolyard
no one intervened to stop?
It must all fit together,
the sum of all the pieces
make a whole that has no boundary
or edge, no meaning unless
everything is included,
if meaning is even possible.
I stepped into the shower
savored the warm water on my head
with my eyes closed.
When I opened them and
reached for the shampoo
I saw a panicked spider
scrambling along the edge of the tub
trying to avoid being swept down the drain.
Should I let it?
When my mind has just been
struggling with the question
of how ungraspable the vastness
of soul must be to hold the universe?
I shut off the water and stepped out
dripping on the floor.
fetched a piece of toilet paper
and gently trapped the spider.
I put it in the garbage bag
under the kitchen sink,
alive and ready to go out
to the can on the driveway
when I'm dressed.
A small mercy, very small because
my heart wasn't big enough this morning
to go out to the street dripping wet and naked
