21 March

1995, 2010, 2011
The garbage truck lunges into the parking lot across the street, lurches to a halt, beeps the first three notes of “Für Elise,” and backs up. It huffs and shudders as it hulks in a corner dancing with the dumpster, flinging its awkward partner high into the air, into an instant of motionlessness at the zenith, then down again with a thud. I’m thinking of a friend who has been using the words “writing” and “dumpster” in the same sentence lately, marveling that there is only one act in my life I regret: gently placing the journals that kept me company through my teenage turmoil into another dumpster, watching out another window as another garbage truck spirited them away, nearly forty years ago. I’m just as glad when the dance ends and the truck hurtles off in search of its next partner, and I turn back to today’s words.

19 March

Bandon, Oregon, USA 1985: Whatever road I take from here, it will be a new road.
Luang Prabang, Laos 2010: It will be a river.

10 March

Policy and procedure

Waldport - The New Carissa’s stormy two-day

sea tow ended on a sandy stretch of coast that

looks much like the Coos Bay beach where

the ship first went aground one month ago.

- The Oregonian, March 4, 1999

On the same two days they finally towed

most of our local shipwreck

out to sea in a hurricane

and she ran aground again up north,

my sister was hit broadside

by an old guy running a red light,

and the elders of the church announced

that her fourth marriage didn’t count,

and until she got herself out of it

she wasn’t welcome to visit God.

It’s established policy, standard

operating procedure to prevent implying

to the other members of the flock:

“Go on, have at it, marry and divorce

any old time you like.” That weekend,

while my sister tried to shake the flu

and muck out the flooded garage

of the place she’d just moved into,

I was mostly listening.

She’s managed through all this

to stay off booze and crank

and she doesn’t even seem

to have a bone to pick with God.

All my sisters, all their husbands

and grown children know exactly

what I think, but that didn’t stop me listening,

as I did years ago when I was taught

the story of Job and silently lost the faith

that they hold fast to even now.

It’s late winter, but not late enough.

Blossoms crowd the ornamental

cherries, too early. All I know

to do with suffering is ease it.

When the mud settles I’m going to help

clean a few oiled gulls, seeing as God

apparently has more pressing matters

to attend to.

6 March

All these years, all these musings on the future, all the while the tornado was just beginning to show itself over the horizon, behind my back.
1988, 1996, 1997, 2007, 2011

5 March

Be careful what you condemn; you might wind up doing it.
1991, 2010

2 March

This journey is nearly over now

though we talk of the next trip whenever

we are travelling, whenever we are not.

These hands that grip the steering wheel

are restless to create, to find the stone hidden

in the matrix, to give words to the quality of morning

light through a thin fog on all the colors of ice plants.

These hands that grip the steering wheel ache

to grip a drill, a pen, and that is why we eventually return

to the place where the solder is, where the envelopes are,

where we have a chance at a decent night’s sleep.

Like the planet our wheels are travelling over,

we are hurtling through the dark in circles,

around and around some idea of home

we never reach.

1994 (Highway 101)

Getting restless

1996 (Coos Bay, Oregon) I feel so fortunate, so ready to be surprised. I even considered Texas briefly this morning as a place where desert and ocean are close together.

2009 (Tarnow, Poland) Is there a university in Galveston?

2010 (Kep, Cambodia) Heck, there are three universities in Kampot. Could I do a Ph.D. in the field?

Unsettled

2011 (Siem Reap, Cambodia) This time around I have to go before I am restless, before I am quite ready. People here call the place where I am going “home,” thinking that the United States means the same to me that Kampuchea means to them. Western Massachusetts, where I am going, does mean something to me, something good, but it is also where, eight and a half years ago, fresh from Asian Russia and its shifting shortages, I stood in front of 22 varieties of hummus – I counted – and could not choose.

1 March

LOVE IN A SHOTGUN SHACK

1997

Tonight in the liberty

of darkness, help me forget

tomorrow, daylight,

when we’ll be tilling

someone else’s fields.