In These Five Remaining Days

In These Five Remaining Days
after Hafeez

In these five remaing days, I see
I've spent my life bellowing like a mule
feeling broken beneath a burden
that was mine to learn to carry
or the weight of another's I could not ease.

In these four remaining days. the robe
that has been my body, revels on
its own unraveling. Inside, a hummingbird
hovers; half-inside a flower, then zips
away, stitching the sky with iridescence.

In these three remaining days, I am still,
knowing what ripens below, soon breaks
through the duff, finds some light--
a rose-colored mushroom, quietly
glistens in the redwood mist.

On this, the second to last day, I ride
a riptide out to sea, find myself
fixed again to the ocean's umbilicus.
Rocked upon her heaving breast, I taste
the briny tears we share, let go my thirst.

On this, my final day of living,
with every breath, I make a plea
for the chance to hold aloft a hundred more
burdens, a friendship to sip, a forest to sit in,
singing thank you, thank you, thank you!

KATHLEEN FLOWERS

First Steps

FIRST STEPS

Have you ever stopped to gaze at the ones
who have only just learned to stand?
Heads tilted back, open-mouthed and unblinking
they open close open close little fists
clutching at
iridescent sashes the angels dangle before them
the silver-wrapped rain that falls for them
like kisses.

Or having watched a toddler chase his father
down a gravel path laughing
parrot-screech then water-bubbling-over-rocks
instead of elbows riffling the air you saw
two tiny oars trying to row the ocean.

Nor can we prepare ourselves for the radiance
of their faces as when
running they become birds delirious with flight
the sun blooms behind a summer cloud
saffron crowns the treetops and turns the field
to golden poppies in its shimmer.

For if you would abandon your busyness
in a tantrum of red tulips burning through snow
reckless intoxication of twirling and staggering
you might catch the receding glimmer of a child's
former life--those last dying breaths soaring
again in these first teetering steps.

-----------Kathleen Flowers------------------

Kathleen Flowers (1964-2009)

Kathleen Flowers was a bilingual teacher and acclaimed Santa Cruz poet. I was attracted to her verse by its warmth, beauty and bite. She died of a rare form of cancer on Easter Sunday. Adios, muchacha.

Before Surgery

I hurry up Laurent, steep hill
behind my house, before night
has fully fallen. Above me
the sky is a royal blue
belly slit by a sickle moon.
From this vista, the street lamps
string together the neighborhoods
of this coastal town.

Beyond winding avenues,
the Monterey Bay sleeps,
a black field lying silent.
In the cold deep, sea creatures
are eaten. Their bones,
picked clean, tumble and drift
across the ocean floor.

I like to think the spirit is freed
once the body dies, but it is this body
that allows such beauty, such exquisite
pain. I unzip my jacket, offer this malignancy
to the dark gulls, to the night.

From "Call it Gladness"
by Kathleen Flowers
Photo from poetry reading
at Bookshop Santa Cruz