The country of dead leaves and tenderness

October has been my favorite month for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s because when I was born I got through one day and then October clanged in, threaded with the nostalgia of a displaced New England mother longing for what she would always call “real autumn”. And October marks the birth of my first child, the birthdays of many poets (Keats, Thomas, Plath) and Halloween, all sweets and shudders and doors left open for children. And masks. You can be what you want in October.

We slid in past a full eclipse this year. My stepmother phoned just before October, on my birthday, to tell me she loved me and she wanted her ashes divided between her second husband’s grave and her third. My dad was her second husband; her third introduced her to a love of country music and made her laugh. October came. She died.

And my artistic love of 50 years ago died. And a garden friend. And a street advocate. It’s like there’s a party somewhere and everyone is rushing off before the refreshments are gone, or the music slows. I’m getting so I flinch at the sound of the phone.

And then…well, there’s the complicated one. The other morning I walked with a good friend down by the river and along the cliffs and into the woods.

The day was October blue. The mist had just lifted. The river is low, but enough for the ducks to enjoy. A heron and an egret were fishing, standing beside each other. At our approach the egret flared up and flew upstream. The air was sweet with the scent of water and poplar and melilot. There were birds singing. We came near a few camps and apologized, along the willows or in the circles of ferns. We walked on.

There’s someone missing from the October days. I get calls from out of state; there’s a worried woman. There’s a little boy whose daddy came to make money. There are friends who haven’t heard. There’s a turned off cell phone, and a whole lot of rumors, whispered, fearful, lurid.

In the October morning my friend and I went, clambering over fallen trees, pushing through brush, hoping the poison oak we were brushing against would be kind to us. We paused, sniffed, moved on.

We felt the moss beneath our feet, watched the glitter of the creek in the filtered sunlight, tried to figure out..by sign, by heart, by rumor, by luck…where this young father might be.

Yeah, I expected to maybe find a body. I hoped to find…oh, an injured guy. Or something.

The woods held their secrets for the moment. We thought, once or twice…is that the smell of death, over the smell of bay leaves and October sunlight. We told each other it could be…a squirrel, a bird, anything. The air eddied and teased.

Someone asked me today if I was grieving, wearing black as I am. I said the black was accidental. But my heart has been slammed, again and again and again, this lovely month.

And we are walking now towards the end, to All Hallows, to the spooks and masks and sweets. Day of the Dead, All Souls.

I don’t sleep well, these nights. Hey, if I should not be here, remember I love you. And..may all the lost, all the forgotten, all the beloved…be found.

***

There's a update, sadly. The body of my friend was found the day after I went looking; I did not climb far enough up the cliffs. His dog had stayed with him for four days after his death. He was murdered, my young man from Ohio. We are trying to get the dog back to a grieving mother far away who will love her.

Just an old story

Did I already tell you this story?

It is an old one.

Seems a guy…or maybe it was a girl, wildhaired and dusty from her travels, or maybe it was an old guy, weary with memories of war & loss—but anyway, the wanderer came into the village.

Times had been pretty rough. Some of the crops that the villagers counted on had failed. Rain came at the wrong time, or rain didn’t come at all, or rain came in floods and sputters. Crops seeded when they shouldn’t. Crops molded as they stood. Those who thought they had good, prosperous work, were turned away. You could count the ribs on the village dogs and even the mice seemed thinner than usual and the town gossip was all about tragedy and loss, down the street, across the world. Didn’t matter.

They were for sure hurting.

The traveler had been on the road awhile & she was hungry. Or he was, or they were (maybe a band of kids, maybe a lonely man with a dog on a string and a pack on his back).

Oh, go away, cried the town folk. We ain’t got a crust to spare, and who do you think you are anyway, did you grow up here in the dry hills, were you born in this dust. We been here a long time, cried the town folk. A hundred years, or two years, more’n you. But you..you are new and the problem.

The town folk said yeah, you with the tangled hair, you with the packs, you with the wandering feet, you are ones to blame. You made the rains not fall or called them down. You seeded the crops. It’s you, you who make me want what I can’t have. You who are at fault that my love’s eyes seek someone else, that my house is falling around me, that the messages I get are only demands for payment, that my baby frets, that my heart aches.

We ain’t got nothing to spare.

But the traveler had a big cooking pot, and set it down in the public square. And some kid got some sticks. Or someone cooked up the propane or the magic heater, what do I know, it’s just an old story.

And asked for water.

Well, water’s not all that much, just a pailful. Someone brought it. And the wanderer took a fine round speckly stone, the sort that catches the sunlight, the kind that makes you think of summer nights and childhood, a good stone, and put it in the pot. Good thing, said the traveler, that I can make a fine, fine soup of water and this stone.

You do know the story, right?

And the wanderer tasted the delicious stone broth and said “oh, a bit of salt, and it would be perfect”. And then…a handful of parsley, a sprig of rosemary, some carrots, an onion…and so on.

The soup fed the whole village. And someone knew a song, and someone knew a story, and there were leftovers for the dogs too.

And they all realized…they did have something. They did have a bit to share, and together it was…well, it was soup. Or maybe (we can get all metaphorical if we like)..as each shared their gifts, it was community. It was home.

And the tangle haired stranger showed them the way.

Yeah, it’s only a story. But I think about it a lot.

(there has been a great deal of hatred directed towards the travelers and the poor in my area; I was thinking of that when I felt the need to write this little piece)

Season of the Hunt

There’s a certain beauty and comfort to the swing of the seasons, the certainty of traditions, the trusted cycles. Used to be in this region of long summers and long rains that the first drops signaled the slide to the holidays, the days of harvest, of snugging up the homestead. Back in the days when I cleaned motel rooms between poems, the rise of the rivers brought the travelers intent on snagging a steelhead or salmon in the swollen rivers of winter. Trade at the motels rose as the rivers rose. The summerfolk had gone, the adventurers and the rains were here.

Now in our region there is a new tradition, a new sport with the twist of the season. The start of the rains, the drop in temperatures to below freezing—these signal the good times of rousting the campers and raiding the homes of those without addresses.

Perhaps a signal goes off in the offices of deputies as soon as it is wet enough and cold enough. Severe weather alert: hit the camps.

Again this year teams of sheriffs went to the hills and bushes and beside the river. Said theSheriff, chatting carefully on local radio, the deputies went in and “we were actually here last week starting notification, letting them know it’s gonna happen, giving them some alternatives, giving them some ideas…where they might go & some other county programs”.

This sounds like the most beneficent of social welfare programs. Go to that elderly veteran trying to recover from his wounded heart and body and reach out a firm, loving hand. “hey man, you don’t have to sleep on the muddy ground!” Say to the young mom and her daughter, “hey, no worries”.

But that’s not what happens. The veteran, the mother, the dozens of others receive a note telling them to clear out or else.

What programs are they offered? Where are they told to go, as they leave what possessions they cannot carry, or as they return to their camp to find all they had has been taken and thrown away?

Here’s the Sheriff again: “Well, obviously, one of the biggest problems we have…is services. There’s not a lot of services here…we’re trying to encourage people to go to where the help is available.”

And where might that be? Los Angeles, with its thousands, not dozens, of people sleeping on the streets? Eureka, where the few shelter beds are not enough even for the people of that city? The helpful TAP (transportation assistance program) can help those who have families to return to.

That won’t help the young woman whose family is the furthest thing from safety. That won’t console the widower fearing everything he has left, everything he has left to love, will be taken from him if he is found again trying to sleep, just as his wife, his home, and all his previous life were wrenched from him. He doesn’t sleep too well at night, waiting for the sound in the brush, waiting to be found once again.

We force our neighbors to live as if they were hunted. Because they are hunted, in this traditional season of the hunt. And even if the TAP program fits some temporarily displaced soul, the program requires some waiting. When your gear has been taken, when it is raining, and your clothes are wet, and the temperatures are dropping into the 20’s, and you have no place to go…how are you going to wait for the paperwork?

Says our Sheriff “uh, I feel that it is time for this area for us to step up and help. There’s a lot of people in this area who have expressed their concerns so I’m trying to help deal with that”.

Right. The confiscated gear, according to the papers received by our most at risk, will be stored 30 days. In fact, it is taken to the dump by the helpful SWAP team (a new twist in the games, using prisoners—well, at least they get some fresh air and time outdoors).

“They broke my home” said the wild eyed, shocked man. He’d lived there for many years, in the curve of a hillside, with his things. “They came and they broke everything down”. Where will you go, I asked. “I don’t know” he said “I’m homeless now”.

It is the time of the long rains. Of the return of the salmon, and the greening of the moss. It is the time in which nights bring frost and memories. People draw their children close and sit by the fire and dream.

And outside our neighbors shudder. It is the time of bronchitis and pneumonia. Of death by exposure. Our neighbors, without their bags, blankets, or a place to rest, hope to find a moments sleep. Maybe even a dream or two.

“Are you okay?” I asked the man who is dying of cancer. “I mean, with the raids and all”. He says “I’m fine. I carry all I have with me, and I get up before light”. He smiles and asks how I am doing.

I don’t quite know what to tell him.

Welcome the Wild Geese

Apparently there are flocks of wild geese enjoying the water that laps over the porch & window sills of the family house on the banks of the Souris River in Minot, North Dakota. I saw a couple photos today. The street sign was helpfully in the middle of the flood waters. Otherwise it’s hard to tell. One neighborhood under flood looks kinda like another, one shocked human, counting the losses, pretty much like another. Cats perched on rooftops—well, they look like cats. That one is a dead ringer for my old cat Perdita, but Perdita left this life years ago.

I wait for word from my brother and meanwhile chat with strangers, witnessing the unfolding of drama, connections, & concern from hundreds of miles away via the online stream of a family run North Dakota TV station.

I’m not from the Magic City myself, though my kids and I spent the summer before my mother’s death there at that now flooded house, and my brother has lived there since then, more than a decade now.

So I ask questions, and there, instantly, people tell me what they know. People trying to figure out their own futures—how to clean clothes for their newborn, where to go for clean drinking water—tell me how the mail is being delivered for the flood refugees, where the shelter is, how to find photos and information specific to my family’s neighborhood.

Lots of online hugs & encouraging words are exchanged. The TV newscaster has evacuated his 4 cats & doesn’t quite know when he’ll get to go back to his own submerged home.

He stays on all through the night. 11,000 people were evacuated. The waters are still high. Of those 11,000 most were taken on by friends, family, and strangers. Churches on high ground converted extra rooms to temporary homes. Some hundreds sleep on cots at the Dome, my brother presumably among them. When there are stories from the Dome I watch eagerly, hoping to catch a glimpse of his profile, a moment in the background. To know he’s really safe.

It makes me think of the thousands throughout this world who are separated from loved ones, who have no clear lines of communication. I’m lucky. I know this flood caused no immediate deaths. I know there is not—as in Japan—an unstable reactor in the process of meltdown. I know that—although there are certainly many soldiers on the ground—my brother need not fear them. I know no drone is likely to hit the shelter in which he sleeps. And I can send word out, however tentatively, however randomly, and know that, perhaps, word will reach him.

A kind stranger let him use a cellphone to call our Mississippi brother, the one who sold his cows because of the long drought.

Tough times all over. But I can’t sit remembering my mother or the house or the watercolor paintings my uncle did, the small family treasures floating somewhere through the floodwaters, the little birch tree, the lilies of the valley.

The wild geese look really content. And I’m impressed with the city, with the warmhearted reaching out to others, the kindness of strangers and the determination to survive, to do better, to have hope.

As I waited for word of my brother and the flood, two in person conversations struck my heart.

The first was an exchange with a young travelling girl who asked early in the morning when I opened the shop. I told her, and she waited patiently, and then came in—yeah, I opened up a bit early. She needed some water. I showed her the spigot and told her to be careful of my goldfish, and said “I’m sorry you had to wait; you should have just told me, I’d have been happy to show you right then”
And she said “well, I know businesses don’t like to have people like me hanging round.”
Nonsense, I said, you’re people. Period. And you’re just fine.
But I wondered at what hurts had proceeded our encounter, what insults, how many rejections.

The second came at an official meeting at which a colleague said “well, you’re an extremist” I looked at him, asking what that meant. He said “You believe this town should treat everyone as if they were human, welcome them with respect and kindness and open arms.”
“Yes,” I said.
“But no where on earth has that ever happened. How can you think that it could happen here?”

Well, I said, we always need goals…We can’t be stymied by “it’s impossible” or “it has never happened”.

And if we’d welcome the wild geese, we can welcome our brothers and sisters. Wherever, however we find them safe.

(the beautiful photo is by someone named, obviously, Ed Porter. I hope he doesn't mind my borrowing it.)

A Revolution of the Beautiful

I realized the other night, sorting through articles & photographs, calming my despair over photos of oilslicked birds & stories of death, loss, vigilance--I realized that in fact I was born into an atmosphere of grief, into a world of mourning, into a culture shell shocked, guilt ridden, & desperate.

And so, perhaps, were you.

When I was born, six decades ago, in a military hospital while my father waited on call for duty across the world, when I was born my mother sobbed inconsolably. Because, she said, I was a girl.
I would have to bear the pains of womanhood in this world, where her mother had died not a year before from a botched operation.

Yes, her labor had been hard. I bear to this day a memento of my hard delivery.

And yes, she was expected to birth a son. What to do with the football and the cute boy-blue clothing?

My grandfather sent small pink roses.

So I came in on a wave of grief, and I learned to sleep to the sound of trains and bombers, and I learned to hate the sound of air raid sirens, and I loved the Japanese hillsides and not so much the Mojave plains, where we waited for the end of the world in the early 1960's. As an officer's family we'd have nice quarters in the secret underground bunkers, waiting out the post nuclear radioactivity. No problem.

I loved the flowers of the high desert and the snakes. And we didn't die, and my father warned me against commies and we fought our own sort of cold war. My brothers became soldiers.

One went to jail for murder. One, after his time in the missile silos, retired to raise corn and cows in the Mississippi bottoms. And life goes on.

And I've lived six decades of wars, learning geography through atrocity stories.

You too, maybe. Or two decades, or four, or seven.

We've been huddled here in a sort of darkness, trying to deal with it all the best we can, at the edge of this stream of sorrow and joy.

The young travelers come by, and the old ones, in increasing streams. Words of loss come from across the planet and echo everywhere. Volcanic dust, earthquakes, white phosphorous, oil slicks.

How do we go on? How do we hold to an entire world of passion and suffering and not go under, and not give up?

No, I don't have the answers. But I think we sit with it, as we would sit with a crying child through the night, looking out into the trees for light dawning.

I think we play with it, when we can, like the group of people in Belgium--200 strong, who arranged a sudden dance/son explosion in the middle of the Antwerp train station, singing and dancing to a song from the Sound of Music.

Or like the soldiers in Afghanistan who posted a preposterous and silly video taking off from Lady Gaga's Telephone. With their cardboard and duct tape costumes, in the moments between...oh, death and murder, boredom, despair. They were good dancers.

I think we try in every creative, every grateful, every compassionate, every determined way to keep going. To listen to what gives us joy. To act on that knowledge.

It won't change the world. It won't stop the storms. But maybe we can transform some moment, some thought, some action.

I walked through the cemetery with my dog and sat beneath a dying cedar tree to watch a young hawk fly over the graves and the flowers. I watched a long while, the early sun warm on my face, the scent of mown grass in my nostrils.

Before I become part of the dust that softens the edges of this world, before I am still, I want to care more, dance more, sing more, watch more free flying hawks, love more.

And since every breath could be a last one, and every word a last one, I am not going to be caught saying "I give up". With every breath I am going to be saying Yes. Or at least...maybe. And "I love" and "how beautiful" and "let's be silly,let's make a revolution of the beautiful, of small pink roses, of courage".

And what will you be saying?

(I wrote this a few months ago for the newspaper my partner and I publish each month. I felt I wanted to share it here as well. The photo is of one of my supervisors, checking to make certain the newspapers are cared for.)

The leaves drift

Yes, the rains have set in. Before the first rain, nearly a month ago, with the wind from the south and the falling leaves scattered over my porch, I met a young guy on a bicycle and we talked philosophy and politics and community and literature in the warm bookstore.

The next day, early, he was back. "I don't know if this is the right place to say this..." he started, and I said "go on". The first raids on the homeless encampments had begun, he said. He was sleeping on what is called the Island--a triangle of land between road and freeway, up above the cliff that goes down to the river. And the police came. They were cordial enough. They gave him 15 minutes to get his gear, his bike, his food, and leave.

And they told him the other gear, the tents, the sleeping bags, the clothing--all would be taken to the landfill.

Because it was trash. Because the people who slept there were...well no, they didn't call them trash. Desperate. Homeless. "undesirables".

My new friend had met some of the people camping there, and knew they weren't around, and worried. I told him he had of course come to the right place, and my partner and our beat up pickup went out to the Island and loaded up the survival gear and the real trash.

I spent the next day getting word to the street, washing clothes and blankets, bagging things, trying to preserve these little bits of people's lives.

I also sent out a message to everyone I could think of in my local circle of contacts, explaining the situation and asking for warm clothes, sleeping bags, survival gear.

Because--bottom line--please, no one die this winter. No one die because you were rousted and hounded and suffering on the street and in the woods. Oh please, not on my watch. Let me keep you safe.

A week later the next camp was hit. No notice. Earnest, intelligent, sweet officers of the law, just following orders, a little sad about it, but what to do? This time an ally of mine picked up the raid on her police scanner and hightailed it in and snatched up gear from the truck headed to the dump. The driver said "it's just trash". Deb showed me the "trash"--tents, papers, blankets.

And we were sorting through the gear on the porch, trying to figure out where the people were, and what belonged to whom. As we stood there, a young man came up to me and said "oh, sleeping bags? Oh, all my stuff was taken, could I have one?"

Not those, I said, but I did have one for him. And I invited him inside. And he told me his story.

"So, I tried to jump off the bridge," he said, fairly calmly. "Cause, I wanted to die" he said, with equal calm.

I nodded. Been there, I said, it can get pretty dark at that place.

So the police took him to the mental institution in the north, about an hour by car. And held him the allotted 72 hours. And then he was released.

"So, I walked south" said he. "And after a while I got pretty tired, and it was dark and cold and so I went to sleep beside the road. I covered myself in cardboard boxes to try to stay warmer"

I nodded. He had walked, in the night, about 20 miles.

Have you eaten? I asked. Yes, he said. The nice man who picked him up in the town he'd slept in treated him to breakfast, and brought him here to my shop, because, he said, this was a good place.

He was going to call his mother, who lives in Austin, Texas. He didn't want to call from my phone. We talked a while longer, and in the notebook he carries, under his mother's contact information, I wrote my name, address, and phone number. And told him, as I've told so many of the young wanderers, that I answer the phone and that I accept collect calls. So if ever it would be of help...call me, I said.

He had just turned 17. He had beautiful dark eyes and a sweet smile. We talked a bit longer, but he was ready to be on his way, clutching my list of resources and his new sleeping gear. He said they call him DJ on the street.

Stay on the planet a little bit longer, won't you? I asked. You have things to do here, you are needed. Think about it.

Yes, he left. And I think of him every day, through the new raids--every encampment within a 10 mile radius has been "cleared" now. This doesn't mean that my friends are gone, just that they are having to scramble more as the icy rains fall and frost makes the hillsides glitter.

The local county supervisor dropped by to talk with me yesterday. My Maine coon cat sat on his knee and Champ gazed at him hopefully, though the guy says he's not a dog person. He'd come bringing some warm jackets and little soaps and such. I thanked him. He was enroute to talk with the police; I told him to give them my best regards, but that I had major problems with the illegal raids being conducted. He told me he had only a minute or two, but nicely pinned by my helpful animals he stayed an hour. And he'll be back.

What I told him was...well, no dead kids or dead elders or dead anyone from hypothermia on my watch. And...what I've been telling everyone these days...that I'm ruthless. I'm going to use every bit of light or energy or compassion I can find in anyone. I'm going to seek it out. I'm going to find it in the officers of the law and in the people on the street and in myself. And somehow, somehow, we are going to make a circle of compassion in which no one, no one is going to have to wander the roads and sleep covered in cardboard and look at bridges as means of ending it all.

The beautiful leaves are drifting down with the rain. Beautiful souls are drifting by on the streets. Somewhere, somehow, they must be held and cherished.