Life Gets in the Way

Suntosun Circus released Feb 2022.

And then, life.

Suddenly, my best & most thorough plans for tending the new book’s release crashed. An avalanche of major & minor challenges at work, at home. Deaths of family members, friends, & pets. Storm damage. Job complications. Health issues.

One after another, often overlapping.

Life.

The avalanche of challenges hasn’t stopped or slackened.

But in the seventeen months after publication of Suntosun Circus, I keep moving forward—oh, so slowly!—with the sequels. Two sequels, because the circus split into 2 troupes to perform & hunt on separate continents: Africa & Europe.

Squeezing story (or poetry or essay) writing between real life’s little gaps is snail-pace work. Writer’s block has never been a problem for me. However, I’m certain that every time I hit the too frequent fatigue wall & fall asleep at the keyboard, I can’t call 2 paragraphs followed by 100+ pages of xxxxxxxxxxxjjjjjjjjjjj “experimental writing” even if I add punctuation.

Meanwhile, a different completed novel waits its turn for publication. In stages ranging from partial draft to nearly finished, four shorter works sit on the sidelines. Two previously published works slated as second editions joined the queue for re-edits.

Life + writer’s life.

I stare at the computer screen. Consider rolling dice to decide which project stands the best chance of gaining more than 2 paragraphs before I nod off.

And wonder how many monkey wrenches the universe could possibly have.

Starlight Through Five Apertures

We try to touch our toes to stars.

Chains anchor one swing set, and our toes only reach as high as the kitchen window. The frame rocks, pulling free as though about to tip over at the peak of our swinging arc, then slamming down with a clanking thunk. We choose the other swing frame, steel set in concrete buried in the ground.

We climb the smooth poles and hang by our knees from the top bar. We giggle at the upside-down world, not realizing yet how much the world is already upside-down. Not yet understanding behavior is taught but virtue is instilled. Our friends hone virtue better than memorizing rules.

Some aerialist cue warns just before the headward rush of blood turns to ache. Sweaty in summer swelter, we slip and shinny down chains to the swing seats. In daylight, we grip the chains and stand on the seats, sometimes lifting our feet from them. Pretending, pretending because no big top is bigger than the bright blue overhead.

Pretense changes to challenge at and after twilight. The first swinging high enough to touch toes to stars and call out Twinkle-toes! wins.

Play fair, play honest—the award doesn’t matter. Maybe the winner won’t be the first it in flashlight tag later. Maybe winning means dibs on the last good cookies, the ones our moms bake rather than the store-bought ones. Maybe it’s just a win. Pick another star, start again, swinging back and forth, passing wins back and forth, striving for stars to the metallic rhythm of creaking chains.

Would we like to swing on a star? You betcha!

But for now, for years ahead, touching toes to stars a handspan high above horizon suffices.

~*~

She doesn’t sail at night anymore. The old dory looks as age-roughened as she does, but it’s no less sea-worthy. Over decades, night has become a time of resting muscles and bones no longer so hardy and hearty. A time of watchful contemplation on the shore.
She has sea regrets, some fanciful, some real, but not many of either. She would’ve circumnavigated oceans solo with only stars to guide her. Sang with mermaids or ridden Poseidon’s chariot. Learned the languages at every seaport. Seen the green flash from every sea, from any sea.

The last, at least, is still within possibility.

The driftwood serving as walking stick took polishing well, but she never had the heart to carve more than a comfortable grip. The silvery, twisted grain matches her loosely braided hair, catching highlights under sun, under moon.

She dusted her surfboard today. She tried to remember the last time she wrestled it from the wall for waxing. Neither kook nor ripping slash-master, she knows her skills were modest. She never braved the gnarliest waves or rode the board through a barrel—another regret. She traced her fingers over white constellations painted against ultramarine blue. Aloud, she spoke their names, their stories as she outlined their shapes.

Even now, as she hobbles from her cottage, she smiles: she surfed standing on the shoulders of Hercules.

Farther along the shore, sand gives way to rock. She often tosses stranded starfish back to the surf or collects the dead she finds in dried tidepools. She loves the quietly busy activity there, but she’ll not ramble that far this eve. The closer stretch of beach, still warm enough to soothe, satisfies.

She passes the dory moored just above the high tideline. The hull should be scraped, revarnished; the dulled brightwork could stand attention. Some of the sail’s seams need restitched before she launches to sea again. These days, she dreads the sewing more than the labor on the dory’s wood and metal. Her eyesight is fine for anything but threading a needle.

Little breeze rolls in from the shining sea. Reflecting the red sailors’ delight of the sky. Reflecting the sinking sun’s ripe apricot glow. Reflecting the dory would lie becalmed on such waters until a freshening wind filled the sail. Reflecting on how often she’s waited becalmed on the shore for a glimpse of the green flash.

On the horizon, the crimson disc of the sun sinks, sinks. She stares, not daring to blink.

Now a thumbnail, a hairline. Now winked out, gone.

Exhalation. Explanation. Resignation.

Perhaps the air is too clear, too calm. No prismatic haze divides the day’s last sunlight for a flash of green.

Perhaps another evening, then.

She builds a small beach-fire. Her contralto isn’t as true as it once was, but songs of sea and stars, of love and adventure, lift her spirit when it ebbs.

Twilight darkens to dusk; dusk darkens to night. Pinpoints of light quiver on the glassy sea. Constellations form on the waters, then she gazes up to their source. She digs her toes in the warm and twinkling sand.

~*~

Night after night, year after year, I gaze at stars. They glint like chips of light-struck ice, fresh and cold in the skyscape. They are clock and anchor, compass and almanac. They are pattern and poetry. They are legend.

Magnitude, lightspeed, azimuth, parsec, aphelion, perigee. Astronomy borrows and provides the words and formulae for stargazing, but science never diminishes their mystery.

The scent of new mown grass envelopes me. My star chart glows in the dark and points the way to Lyra, Vega, Draco, Aquila. Cepheus rules near the throne of his queen; Boötes herds the stars by the Northern Crown. Hercules is high overhead. The great bear ambles slowly around the smaller bear.

The life of a transient means taking little for granted. Necessities and detritus carried from place to place may be lost or broken in transit. The people met get on with their lives, forgetting someone was present and now is gone.

Stars move, but they return. A multitude of constants shining on an inconstant world.
Another month, another place. A short way from my campsite, I sit on a low bank of the broad, braided tributary of the Platte River. I clutch my campfire-fragrant coat close against the chill. At the end of Ursa Minor’s tail, Polaris— North star, pole star, Cynosūra, lodestar, stella maris, sea-star—is a fixed constant, orienting me on land even as I stare skyward. Pegasus charges across the night sky, accompanied by ram and goat. The great swan soars into the west.

Another transit. My younger sister has a first-grade project about constellations. We spread a quilt on the ground, wrap blankets around our shoulders. Autumnal cool arrived in the Midwest early this year; the late September night seems unseasonably crisp. Some of the trees already dropped leaves. Others are turning colors, shedding more slowly.

Her head leaning on my breast, she looks along my arm as I point out the Big Dipper, then the Little Dipper. A naked ash tree obscures most of Aquila, but we spy the eagle’s brilliant Altair hovering near an upright branch. I tell her we can make the star disappear and reappear.

Oh huh! (Cynicism often overrides gullibility in the young.)

Close your right eye—see how bright the star is?

Yeah.

Close both eyes. Whisper Twinkle-toes, then open your left eye.

Twinka-toes. (A pause.) Oooooh!

Do it again, but open your right eye.

Twinka-toes. (Another pause.) Oooooh!

Leaves falling from the poplar windbreak rustle and patter. The breeze stirs drying, dying odors from the field stubble beyond the fencerow. She repeats the incantation. Once more, Altair vanishes behind the ash branch, then returns with each parallax shift.

For one evening, my sister thinks we’re magic.

~*~

The man doesn’t think she dreams of stars. When she was a puppy, the older dog showed her angels. Not so much the guardians and messengers of light, though she probably sees them, too.

No, she watches angels of nature, elementals in camouflage. They tend the seasonal cycles: vernal equinox, summer solstice, autumnal equinox, winter solstice. They signal migratory timing for bird and beast. They crack hulls and husks of seeds in the darkness under the dirt, urge the dormant to new growth. They show worms the way to cooler depths when summer sun heats the soil. They flutter wings of fallen leaves, dance en masse disguised as snowflakes.

The Labrador half of her ancestry alerts her to geese in formation overhead, but the back and forth calls of owls disturb her shepherd half. She presses her furry shoulder to his leg. Her head tilts up to nose his hand. She doesn’t understand why he still stares at the sky. The geese are gone.

Meteor showers—Leonid, Perseid, Orionid—mean nothing to her. There is no sound, there is no scent. The swift strobes are too distant for her sight, but the angelic display isn’t done for her eyes or for his. Flashing across the skyscape, the diamantine trails proclaim destruction and renewal in another form.

Later, she curls beside him on the couch. Her feet twitch and paddle as she sleeps, but she doesn’t dream of touching her toes to stars. She dreams of hooting owls, of honking geese, of angels masquerading among moths or milkweed down.

Perhaps, though, if stars glimmer in her slumber at all, she dreams of chasing squirrels or rabbits, hunting side by side with Procyon and Sirius whose twinkling toes are stars.

~*~

Night after night, year after year, you gaze at stars. You wonder.

Do you remember driving along a high plains highway at night? Through the windshield, a cloud shone as though reflecting the lights of a thousand cities. You slowed, then parked roadside. No atmospheric haze hung in the clear darkness. The Milky Way’s magnificence washed unfading awe over you, imprinting you forever.

Strange to think the sun is the closest star. Other stars divide the days and nights of their nearby planets the way old Sol lights this solar system, this Earth. Strange to ponder how this sun might appear if you stargazed from the crystalline shore or turquoise steppe of a distant world. Would you even notice a single star, a sun, in the lesser spur of the Orion-Cygnus Arm? How insignificant it seems amid the longer spiral arms of the Milky Way. Yet this star is life for Earth. Is it any wonder ancients worshipped the sky’s yellow dwarf? The impersonal master of seasons personally validates existence and solidity with shadow-stamps on soil, sand, and snow.

You used to look for your shadow by starlight. Their light is far, faint, but that doesn’t mean there’s no shadow cast. The ground is too dark to discern such dim and indistinct shade, but with so many stars scattered, shedding illumination crisscrossed across the sky, they may cancel each other’s light. Still, the palest stellar clusters don’t seem strong enough to nullify shadows cast by the brightest stars. Perhaps you need only stand on purest white to see your starlight shadow.

When you wish upon a twinkle, twinkle little star light, star bright, would you like to catch a falling star? Do you want to swing on a star, or do you hope for a pocketful of starlight? On a starry, starry night, does Mariah blow the stars around? Would she be wind or whirlwind stirring the galaxy’s spiraling arms?

Per ardua ad astra. Through hardship to the stars. Hardship for those who lost the sense of marvel and miracle to scholarship. You attain the stars in the way children of all ages do.

You climb the jungle gym of Cassiopeia’s Throne, cross the monkey bars of Orion’s belt. Your aerial silk flutters in cosmic wind as you angel-spin from the stinger of Scorpius in synch with the throbbing heart of red Antares. You launch from wing-to-wing trapeze as Cygnus soars the night. With a grand jeté, you leap from the horns of Taurus for an Aldebaran pirouette en pointe. You jazz with the Pleiades sisters.

You play and dance and frolic with stars. Pretending, pretending. Shout out Twinkle-toes! to win.

*****

 

“Starlight Through Five Apertures” by Glynda Francis first appeared in The Tishman Review, Vol. 4, July 2018. 

Residing at Vaile Mansion

rocking, rocking
I know my family loves me
rocking, rocking
even though they think
something’s wrong rocking in my head.
The doctor says asylum,
the nurse says loony bin
but I know it’s a mansion.
The gardener with rocking leafy hair
and willow eyes said so.
He said Mr. Vaile lived there
alone eleven rocking years
after Mrs. rocking Vaile committed suicide.
She said it wasn’t true
when I melted rocking in the marble,
met her in the cold grey veins.

The girls’ school rocking failed,
but she said they were afraid
when they saw her dancing
in the mirror rocking and the pool.
She told me in the cluster
of the rocking gilded grapes
and in the corner of the picture frame
that I should weave sparrow wings
and doves rocking through my hair
when the rocking window bars
shining change into the shape
of rocking cold wet sheets.

One nurse doesn’t like me,
and when rocking day turns black
and the sun bursts its seams
hurling sparks across the rocking sky,
she brings the drug to make me sleep
just so I won’t see the sun
sew its sparks together again.
But Mrs. Vaile says it’s all right
it’s only rocking laudanum
it’s not so bad, it doesn’t hurt
to be sifted rocking funneled
down the rocking throat of that small
cobalt blue glass bottle
but it’s cold rocking cold cold rocking cold . . ..

 

“Residing at Vaile Mansion” first appeared in the journal Pleiades (1992), and appears in the poetry collection Under Every Moon, published by Charlie Dawg Press, 2013.

Shell

 

 

Walk barefoot on this warm, soft beach where sea foam sighs along the long border of sand that marks the seam between land and sea.
Yesterday’s storms stirred shells from the depths. Crashing waves scattered them like so many jewels tossed on the sand. They lay shining, tide-polished—abandoned homes of creatures that breathe brine and perceive the sun through blue-green distortions of water.
Crabs amble around knots of seaweed in a sideward dance. Shore birds pick through larger tangles, searching for small fish or mussels netted in the green-gray-brown masses.
Look. There’s a shell unlike any you’ve gathered so far. Pick it up. Brush away the sand sticking to it and raise it to your ear. Listen to the shell echo the sound of the waves.
As you watch seagulls wheeling above the shore, you begin to hear voices—hollow, delicate voices the shell gathered throughout its watery life.

It is good, my Lord. Yes. Yes. It is very good.

Amphitrite fled, seeking sanctuary with Atlas. Nereus advises me to recover her gently, with diplomacy. I will send my most trusted and intelligent friend. Delphinus will charm her to me for he is sweet natured, irresistible. A lovable rascal, he asked what reward he would receive for persuading a Nereid whose countenance is set against matrimony—not an easy task. I promised to show him the pattern of his image among the stars in the high waterless ocean far above where the feathered ones swim.

My father holds no love for me. I resemble the brother he slew; he cannot endure to look on my face. I told my mother I would seek the grandparents his crime denied me, the cousins I long to know. I kissed her cheek in parting though I broke her heart, but I will not bid my father farewell. I will not look back for a man on the beach, a man marked by the curse of God. As this ship departs from the shores of Nod, I turn my eyes to the sea.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be, for the shell collected voices and the dreams of voices just as you collect shells. Its brine washed chambers captured the voices of spirits and men, recording their work, their passions, their crimes, their visions. Listen.

I bear the wrath of Reef. He never forgave us for losing Calypso. My sisters killed themselves; but he made me a wrack-chained priestess singing atonement to him, sacrificing virgin vessels’ blood for without blood there is no atonement.

44˚18’N, 26˚10’W Should’ve sighted the Green Island by now. Navigator checked and rechecked bearings, but no sign of the island the Portuguese call Ilha Verde. Will search the area for a few more days. If nothing found, will report to HM cartographers the reports from that drunken sot of a captain from Gibraltar are false. If we find it, there will be great reward for our king promised . . ..

Familial blood has stained us since Atreus. Now as we sail for Troy, I must choose whether to perpetuate the taint. The waves are angry. The men speak among themselves—we never should’ve brought Iphigenia. I see their furtive glances. They wonder if I will appease the waves with the life of my daughter. If I do, the fleet will be saved, but the curse will poison yet another generation of my house. If I don’t, we shall all perish, and Troy . . ..

Red sky in morning, sailor, take warning;
Red sky at night, sailor, delight.

60˚30’N, 1˚50’W . . . sighted a herd of pale horses frolicking in the surf. Such beautiful animals: powerful limbs, proudly arched necks, flowing manes and tails, shining pearl-gray as they splashed in the flood-tide. Steeds fit to draw the king’s carriage.
We spoke to the captain about capturing some to sell in Liverpool, but when the lookout saw them through the spyglass, he turned white as the foamy waves battering the cliffs beside that beach. He screamed and babbled something about cabyll ushtey being flesh-eaters. Dangerous. Monstrous. Who can figure these Manx sailors?

Look, son, look there! The dove returns, and she carries something green in her beak!

51˚48’N, 30˚0’W The wind’s been keenin’ like a bean-sidhe among the sails for four days and nights. Ye’d think the very sea grieved for us and the leavin’ of our homeland.
Three more died today. A woman, her teeth stained green from eatin’ grass. A child not ten years yet. And a babe that lived only an hour in this cold stormy world. There’s no holy father aboard but the captain’s a Christian soul, he said words over them before givin’ them to the deep black water.

In the Year of the Tiger, in the Hour of the Rat, I go down to the Tsientang. I make an offering to the angry spirit of the river. I make an offering of rice and ribbons of silk. I bow toward the directions of the wind. I do this under the full moon. I ask the kings of heaven to protect our ships as we sail down the Tsientang to the open sea . . ..

37˚12’S, 43˚5’E Half my crew is ill with the same malady rampant at the last port. It’s not deadly, but it does incapacitate them for a few days, leaving us short-handed. I know there are a few seamen among the prisoners. When I looked over the manifest, I saw their crimes were not grievous—the theft of a loaf of bread, a brawl with a squire over a lady of doubtful reputation . . ..
I will speak to these men about working on the ship. If they perform their duties satisfactorily, I will offer a small sum in payment and a letter of recommendation for amnesty to present to the governor when we drop anchor at Sydney.

. . . when she gave a flourish with her tail, and the boats capsized.   Eleven men drowned . . ..

66˚42’N, 11˚0’E . . . navigators I spoke with in Copenhagen advised me to steer well west of Mosken and Moskenaes to avoid what the Norse call Maelstrom. They said we would be able to hear the roar of that evil water from a great distance . . ..

You wrap the shell in the length of linen you carry to the beach with you. You place the protected shell in your net bag with the starfish stranded too long in a dried tidepool, with the husks of sea snails, pieces of coral, and claws of crabs. You walk slowly home. You think about the multitude of voices echoing in your mind, and you stop along the way to hear more.

20˚10’N, 115˚0’W . . . exasperates me beyond belief! If he wasn’t such an excellent lookout, I’d feed him to the sharks myself and good riddance. At least he doesn’t come down from the crow’s nest while I’m on duty.

55˚10’S, 65˚1’W The lookout rang two bells and reported a ship listing badly one point forward of our port beam. I instructed the steersman to make the best course toward the distressed vessel.
We were within one and a half cable lengths when a breeze caught the vessel’s flags—one was a yellow rectangle. I immediately ordered our ship put in irons and viewed the vessel myself from the crow’s nest. I then instructed the first mate to make ready to burn the vessel.
Several crewmen and the helmsman were dead on the aft deck and fo’c’s’le. Large, blackened sores covered their bodies. There were no signs of life except for the rats swarming everywhere . . ..

Go down, ye blood red roses, go down . . ..

. . . when he signaled the other boat to help. Their catch was so many, I knew their net would break; but it held. When they hauled in the net, it seemed certain both boats would sink for the weight of their catch. My brothers and I worked all night but the sea gave us nothing. How did he know to cast the net once more on the right side of the boat?

53˚30’N, 3˚20’W A reading of the invoice bound for the colonies shows we carry the following: 2 stallions, 5 mares, 3 bulls, 18 heifers, 5 rams, 25 ewes, 30 slaves, 47 bondservants, 250 chickens, 150 cases of ale . . ..

43˚0’N, 40˚0’W Blasted landlubber! He spends half the voyage heavin’ his guts over the gun’les. Now he’s spendin’ the rest of it botherin’ me about knots.
Show me a bowline, he says. The rat climbs up the hole, runs around the mast, then back down the hole.
How’s the reef knot go again? he says. Right over left, left over right.
I forgot how the bowline goes, he says. The rat climbs up . . ..

Immortally yearning mortality, I sing alone as years pass, years of gazing out on watery wastes, endlessly wishing I could spill my briny blood, my salty tears.

41˚0’N, 12˚2’E . . . and though I see it with my own eyes, I find it difficult to believe, captain, that as a man of God you allow your navigator to use that instrument. The needle is obviously bewitched by demons, yet you entrust the lives of your crew and passengers . . ..

. . . know now I should not have heeded the ship’s owner nor the helmsman. Through every storm, the prisoner’s counsel kept those of us who listened alive. Dare I believe his other report of the Galilean?
When we ran aground, the soldiers thought to kill him lest he swim ashore and escape. I, Julius, centurion of the Augustan Regiment, will not permit this. God’s hand is on this prisoner. I will defend his life to my last breath. Agrippa was right . . ..

74˚1’N, 90˚5’W . . . can only surmise that Sir John either underestimated these waters or was unprepared for the time of year in which he attempted the expedition. We found wreckage from the Terror and the frozen body of a drowned sailor washed onto the rocks of an island. Another ship coming in from the west reports bits of wreckage belonging to the Erebus. Considering the condition of what has been found, I must conclude there were no survivors.

The currachs tomorrow will stand on the shore
and Daddy go sailin’, a-sailin’ no more . . ..

You sing with them, weep with them. You share the excitement as they discover a new passage, a new land. You feel the rush of adrenalin when a lookout yells, There, there she blows! You ache with personal memories of loss and loneliness as you hear the sobs of women sound out across water from headlands and widows’ walks.

The dragon’s head pointed west when we last saw the sun. Curse this fog! Every sounding we take is the same as the one before. We may be going in circles for all I can tell. We can’t see what few birds we hear, and I fear if we release any of our ravens, we won’t be able to follow them to land. The fog’s too thick, the wind too weak. I pray Woden favors us with the sun and a strong breeze soon.

16˚21’N, 70˚58’E Blast his scurvy hide! I should keelhaul him! His blather about that blasphemous Dutchman has our new cook terrified someone will sight that cursed ship. He hasn’t fixed anything fit for dogs to eat in nearly a week for fear of being doomed to drown.

. . . afraid if we do, afraid if we don’t. The Hebrew says this tempest will calm if we cast him into the sea. God charged him with a message for Nineveh, but he fled . . ..

. . . their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves . . ..

51˚30’N, 0˚5’W . . . but the hands that’ve sailed on the Mary Margaret and the Elizabeth were glad to hear the Muscovy Company hired Basque harpooners and flensers for this voyage. The crew thinks they’re lucky. I don’t know, but we do bring back more ambergris when they’re aboard.
The Basques should arrive a fortnight before we weigh anchor for Spitsbergen.

. . . By the deep 6. And a quarter 6. By the mark 7. And a half 7. And a half 7. And a quarter less 8. By the deep 8. And a half . . ..

. . . and I know it could be months or years till I know if the sea took the one so dear, and it wouldn’t be so hard to watch if it weren’t for the widows walks.

75˚10’N, 70˚0’W I’ve never considered mutiny, you know that. But I think the crew is right—Hudson is risking the ship and all hands in his search for a passage. Too many close calls with icebergs. The men have cause for pleading mutiny on the grounds Hudson is non compos mentis. They said they’ll set him adrift in an open boat before nightfall.
If I try to stand in their way, I’ll be with him . . ..

35˚55’N, 4˚9’W . . . and most of the crew’s on their knees crossing themselves. I should be, too. Although fire engulfs everything above her waterline, the flames are not destroying—not even charring—her timbers and sails.

27˚0’S, 109˚0’W Long before we dropped anchor, we saw standing along the island’s hills and beaches massive stone heads gazing out to sea—great, silent sentinels keeping watch for reasons forever behind hewn lips.

You place the shell on your mantle among other shells you collect. From time to time, you raise it to your ear and hear the lives of the sea folk. As years pass, you wonder if your hearing fades for the voices grow fainter each time you listen. At last, you realize it’s not your hearing. The shell starves for new voices to fill its empty chambers. It thirsts for roaring tides and salty waves.
On a day when you’re chilled despite the fire in the hearth, you reach again for that treasure from the sea. But the voices sucked down into a whirlpool of silence leaving only the emptiness of a hollow shell.

 

 

A version of “Shell” first appeared in Issue7 of The Cross and the Cosmos quarterly ezine (publishing online from 2010-2014).

“Shell” appears in the following collections:
Under Every Moon by GL Francis, 2013 (publisher: Charlie Dawg Press).
Available at http://www.amazon.com/Under-Every-Moon-G-Francis/dp/0615870694

Leyfarers and Wayfarers by GL Francis, 2014 (publisher: Charlie Dawg Press).
Available at http://www.amazon.com/Leyfarers-Wayfarers-G-L-Francis/dp/0692336834/

Pearl Diver

 

I was the best.

My sisters swore
I grew gills and fins in every dive.
Octopus and squid never fled
in inky fright from me;
sharks that claimed my brother
swam sightlessly near me.
I held my breath longer,
I dove deeper
than any in my village.

I never told my secret.

Grandmother says
a water demon entered me
but she is old
and she sees demons everywhere.
She says that is why
I came up coughing blood
when last I dove
and now must walk the land
with sea-pain in my bones.

Never to dive for pearls again—
I weep for Urashima
enduring sea-change born of love
only to end a scattering
of surf-bleached bones upon the sand
beside an empty open box,
an untied ribbon of saffron silk
fluttering in the salty breeze.

The oysters sang to me.

 

First published in Under Every Moon by GL Francis, 2013 (publisher: Charlie Dawg Press).
Available at http://www.amazon.com/Under-Every-Moon-G-Francis/dp/0615870694

Yard Patrols

Without fruit, branches
of family trees become
stories seldom told.

After so many years, the doves in the blue spruce are not the original pair. Offspring of offspring, perhaps, or opportunistic squatters with soft gray feathers and faintly blushed hints of dusty rose on bright cloudless days, faintly brushed hints of dusty lavender on overcast days. An ideal nursery structure, the spruce’s stiff, sharp needles discourage marauding crows and red-tailed hawks. Squirrels shun the sticky sap bleeding from splits in the bark, sap that baptizes the tree in strong terpene scent.

At first, the doves startle at my yard patrol, a check before letting the dogs out. But soon they learn the routine and their departure from the ground becomes less panicked. They observe from nearby trees or the roof’s edge until the dogs are inside again. They resume their hunt for fallen seeds or nesting grasses.

High-pitched cheeps alert me when the eggs hatch. Patrols take longer. I look for baby doves in their first forays away from their birth-branch. The parents supervise from a safe distance as I scoop up one or two fledglings from the bare dirt and return them to the spruce. The youngsters awkwardly scramble-hop branch to branch back to the nest.

I haven’t imprinted them the way the parent doves do, yet they are subtly imprinted by touch alien to their kind. As they speckle with new feathers, they never take wing in frightened flight as quickly as other birds.

Three steps away,
they watch till I wave arms like
a deranged windmill.

From the althea, something drops to the ground with an alarmed whistle and zips into the cover of planters and loosestrife. I’m not sure what I’ve seen.

Coffee cup in hand, I settle on the back step. Most of the brew is gone before a tiny tricolor head peeps from between planters. We regard each other until the ground squirrel is satisfied I’m not a predator. Harmless. An encounter cost it part of its tail, held half-mast high as the rodent darts across the sidewalk and through the chain-link fence.

Brown open pods from last year spike out amid this year’s blossoms. Hairy seeds still cling inside many of them, food for birds and the little stripeys. Blooms drop, and new green pods swell. The community of ground squirrels forage in the shrubs and along the fences where morning glories, weeds, and native grasses drop seeds. The half-tailed stripey favors the althea, but as summer spins toward fall, it no longer performs the alarmed aerial launch from the branches. At my greetings, it pauses to eye me, then finishes picking seeds from old pods and newly opened ones. Cheeks bulging, it moseys along a branch to the trunk, to the ground, then leisurely scampers away.

Who was she? An aunt?
What crime in her lonely chats
with wild animals?

Either I missed its presence on my patrol or it wandered into the yard just as I went to open the back door. A melee ensues between my dogs trying to catch the invader and the groundhog suddenly outnumbered by snarling, barking canines.

They chase it around the brushpile, but it slews toward the side fence on the third circuit. The dogs think it’s behind the pile again. In its rolling gallop, the long claws patter softly on the hardened clay soil. The groundhog freezes—I’m too close to the pushed-up fence section where it came in. It rears, stares.

I point to the gap. “Hurry up! Go! Go!”

The dogs are still nosing the back of the brushpile. The groundhog looks in the direction I point, then back at me. Seconds suspend forever. It’s puzzled, uncertain how to interpret words, gesture. Then it drops to four, wriggles under the fence, and vanishes into the woods.

The dogs arrive by my side. The brindle girl wags her tail, approving my diligence in keeping the home turf safe. The younger girl gives me—bipedal usurper of the chase—a Cape buffalo glower. The blond boy found a chunk of branch and lost interest in the quarry.

Happiness: better
a stick in mouth than critters
too dodgy to catch.

The brief flush of yellow segued to golden brown overnight. Dry, papery rain is the sound of the ash rapidly dropping leaves weeks before the oak and maple change colors. The leaves form an isolated drift on the yard’s south side.

It’s after midnight. The bigger dogs do their business quickly, then go back in the house to sleep. The smaller girl always dawdles. Now she stands rigid, head tilted and looking down in her I found something strange posture. I thumb on the flashlight and wade through crackling leaves to investigate.

Neither baby nor adult, the juvenile opossum lies in classic “playing ’possum” curl, lips drawn back from tiny teeth, saliva oozing from mouth. A tangy musk surrounds the young marsupial, the wild and foul glandular odor of fresh death.

I leash-lasso the dog. My light skims over the prone creature, and blood gleams on its flank. The juvenile truly is dead.

As I take the dog inside, I debate whether to toss the body in a trash bag for disposal or give it a night flight into the woods for owls or the occasional passing vulture. This is, after all, a repeating drama in every woodland theater away from the presence of humans.

Grief for life cut short
shadows cold reality—
cycles of life, death.

I return with a lantern, a piece of old blanket and a trash bag.

The critter is gone.

My flashlight reveals nothing in the yard. The ash-leaf rain hinders listening for the rustling rhythm, movement. Then, a faint tink of chain link against metal post.

The animal tries to climb the fence. Useless back legs tangle in Virginia creeper. It momentarily struggles to free itself but concedes defeat to the shackling vine.

I talk to it, pitching my voice low and mellow, an audio caress. Delicate dark ears edged with white twitch as I compare the juvenile’s gray awn to a beautiful Malamute husky I once knew. Mindful of its teeth, I gently stroke its shoulders with a slender stick. It opens its mouth with a brief huusssss, but the hiss is the calling-for-mother sound rather than a warning.

Oral tradition:
grew herbs, spoke to animals—
hanged for witchcraft.

I ease knotty vines from its legs. Without obstruction, purple bruising shows on skin between clumps of blood and saliva-wet hair. There’s an odd offset to its spine just above the hips.

Talking. Stroking. Slowly moving my hand closer.

Talking. Stroking. The stick no longer needed. The opossum sniffs my fingers.

Be brave, little one.

Draping the bit of blanket over the juvenile, I carefully lift it from the fence. My voice stumbles—I feel looseness in the broken back—and I fold the fabric into a faux pouch around it. A sigh, a snuggling shift, then a small pale face with liquescent black eyes, tired but trusting, peers out at me.

The wire dog cage in the back of the truck still has blankets and room enough to settle it in its improvised pouch. With a pipette, I give it pain relief—a liquid that permeates mouth membranes, a leftover from the cat’s surgery—then a few drops of water. A tarp over the cage will protect it from predicted rain and provide a cozy den. If it lives through the night, I’ll take it to the veterinary office where I work in the morning, before the pain relief wears off. There, its passing will be eased.

Be at peace, little one.

Unsung compassion
plays out in minute acts when
little lives matter.

How long since it last rained? The soil is no indicator. The backyard is a solid clay-bank, and it cracks into thousands of mosaic tiles when there’s no water for more than a day. Tender trees and plants don’t survive long in it, but the hardiest seem to thrive. The main benefit: fallen leaves don’t require a rake; a broom sufficiently sweeps the yard.

The dogs’ noses spot and squeegee the sliding glass door while they wait for completion of the yard patrols. During the day, they add commentary if I take too long for their liking, but at night, there’s rarely more than nose squeaks.

I kick the brushpile. No rabbits tonight. No opossums, no raccoons use the fence for a thoroughfare. My flashlight catches a pinpoint of white in the leaves. Then another a few feet from the first, this one pale blue. They could be reflections from water droplets, perhaps condensation glittering in miniscule pools, but there’s been no moisture for weeks. Wouldn’t there be sparkles scattered all over the lawn?

Or possibly old shards of broken glass exposed when surrounding clay cracked. But would it twinkle so clearly, so brightly, a star amid yard debris?

Spinneret silk strength
equals steel, enough to hang
a spider wrangler.

Over the driveway earlier today, a leaf hovered at eye level, trembled but did not tumble to the concrete. No trees shade this part of the backyard. The leaf transfixed me with its minor magic, a momentary mystery.

I blew a quick breath, well-aimed. The leaf spun, swung, and the sun glinted on its tether: a long, lone strand of spider silk anchored to the power line running from pole to house.

Solving the leaf’s mystery made it no less enchanting.

I ignore a single impatient ufff at the door and move toward the second spot my flashlight found. If it’s a shard of glass, it’s in the worn racetrack where the dogs dash in a speedy survey before settling down to business or play. I don’t want anyone cutting or puncturing a paw.

I hunker down for a closer look, and twin specks now shine back. Amid the irregular pattern from hundreds of shallow fissures, a shadow defines a familiar outline, a brown wolf spider against dry, brown clay. The splinters of celestial blue topaz are the spider’s retinas reflecting my light. Solving the shining mystery makes it no less enchanting.

A twig serves for ushering the spider from the dogs’ path. It moves unhurriedly into the brushpile’s shelter. Now that I know what to seek, I turn my attention to the white sparkle first glimpsed.

The eyeshine of the other spider is gone, but where it had been, a funnel web stretches back between a fountain grass clump and a garden trough. With a piece of grass, I lightly touch an outermost edge of the web. The spider rushes from deep within the web’s tunnel. She searches but finds no prey trapped, only a trick played on her. As she retreats, I catch a flash of white like distant starlight fallen by my feet.

Time’s wheel rolls onward.
Former offenses become
oddities only.

I used to think two kinds of rabbit entered the yard: the quick and the dead. Over time, a third kind emerged, older rabbits, but whether they are the stupid, the complacent, or the overconfident, I’m not certain. The working of a lagomorph mind is difficult to fathom.

Although I feel sorry for the few the dogs catch and dispatch, I don’t begrudge the dogs for doing what’s hardwired in the bloodlines of their breeds. The brindle shepherd takes her territorial duties seriously. The smaller female blends the protectiveness of a herding breed with the prey drive of a hunting line. The blond mixed boy doesn’t always know why he joins the chase but is happy to run with the girls.

It’s impossible to tell very young rabbits that freezing in place doesn’t make them invisible to the power of canine noses. Most flee when I draw too close to where they huddle. Half-grown rabbits are easier to spot and quicker to run for the woods. A few older ones simply watch my patrols.

There she is again.
Reckon the rowdy hoodlums
are next? chaw chaw chaw

This one sprawls in the grass, but it’s not injured. Its jaws work rhythmically on a patch of clover. It looks up as my shadow falls across it, and the jaws stop, then continue. Yeah, I see you—whaddya want?

“Go away.”

The ears flick. The rabbit stretches, then moves a couple of feet further into the clover. Its eyes are calm and perhaps a little defiant as it resumes the interrupted meal.

“Go away now!” I stomp and wave my arms.

Rather than bolting for the fence and the woods beyond, it takes strolling hops onto the driveway. It raises onto its haunches. Good enough, biped? I’m certain if it had a middle finger, it would flip me the bird.

After about five minutes of rabbit herding, I finally pursue it out of the yard. It will be back. The clover is lush and too luscious to resist once the all clear is given.
I pause on the back stoop before releasing the dogs.

The verdict: guilty.
Judgment on evidence of
a long-eared trickster.

The doves. The groundhog. The stripey. The possum. The spiders. The rabbit.
I don’t take such moments for granted, but I don’t know why they occur, what purpose they serve.

Solving mystery
isn’t required—sufficient
to savor wonder.

 

###

 

“Yard Patrols” first appeared in Issue 2, 2016 of Eastern Iowa Review, a publication of Port Yonder Press, owner/editor Chila Woychik. http://www.portyonderpress.com/issue-2—2016.html

Scarecrow

Eyeless face tilts to
night skies; swift meteors leap
above, cloud to cloud.

Detasseling—hot,
sweaty work till a shadow
chills with outstretched arms.

Garden effigy
smiles on peas, but in cornfields
the guard is somber.

Sun glints on feathers
blue-black as the crow watches
crucified clothing.

A tatter, a wreck
sprawls amid winter stubble
with no bones to pick.

 

 

First published in Under Every Moon by GL Francis, 2013 (publisher: Charlie Dawg Press).
Illustration by GL Francis.
Available at http://www.amazon.com/Under-Every-Moon-G-Francis/dp/0615870694