1.1.12

hot summer day
a bowl of picked berries
without sugar

No Further

She loathed four o'clock in the afternoon. It was the time of day when the sun sucked the ocean white. The slow-poke in front of her clearly didn't know how to drive judging from his speed-up slow-down tactics. His license plate said Arizona. Probably the first time seeing an ocean. She was anxious to get to her hotel, unpack, shove an armchair onto the balcony and think. She'd need to wear her dark glasses until the glare subsided and the ocean returned to itself. For millions of years the Pacific had known its boundaries, and that was more than what she could say about herself.


a peacock cries
at the edge of a field
misty morning

Fade Out


As a child, my grandmother's four dogs and my younger sister inhabited my make-believe world of adventures. My grandmother's enormous house in the mountains of Argentina was backdrop for the plays I starred in. Sometimes I'd let my sister have a part, as long as it was a supporting role. We rode bamboo steeds through the pepper trees, chasing bandits, stopping often for black figs or a fistful of grapes, and continued on. It didn't take much to invent a story and act it out. It was especially dramatic when the thunderstorms came and rumbled through the house, or when flashes of lightning lit up the sky and killed trees. That's when I'd let my sister have top billing and the dogs and I hid backstage in the closet.

shooting star
yesterday's idea
vanishes

A New Generation

I fled the house when I was eighteen. Like Moses with Pharaoh, it took several acts of God for my father to let me go. Eventually he succumbed as long as I promised not to disgrace the family. I moved into a small home in a cobblestone street neighborhood. A flower market flanked it on one side with a cemetery in the back. During the day it was noisy and full of mourners. At night, it was so quiet I could hear the stars come out.

childhood memories
shrinking
a half moon
once too many
tadpoles about
her eyes