My Mother’s Mirror
1.
My mother loved mirrors. My mother
wasn’t vain. Mirrors mirror light
and open up walled rooms
to all of Nature outside
her claustrophobia, opened up
her mother’s tomb
but probably too my mother watched herself
the orphan from all angles so as to know herself
in the eyes of others. To adjust herself to the world
in the eyes of all Nature, her mother
out there
I have three mirrors in my new room
but I can’t see what I look like
with her gone. She was my mirror. She had the camera. She
took my pictures.
To look again is the meaning of respect. I suspect
I too suffer a degree of her need
the mirror-opposite of vanity
2. Mortality
When you take the mirror off the wall
leaving the hole in the little blue house along the road
she died in three days ago, when once again
you are moving
you remember it on the wall over your crib, walk
the gold curlicue antique frame, the shining silver plate
outside to the U-haul. The ocean
is lit in such light and motion
all the years come back
her face, all her faces
now yours
Every time you move, even this move, you deny again
her knowing what you know, not
saying anything, mother
who would deny
your knowing what you know
not saying anything
3.
In your house my photo stared at me
and didn’t cease asking: are you, dear child, me?
Were you once twenty of my years
and did she display me caught in her flowers and cacti
only when I came? To prove
her love? To drive my father jealous?
My bloody pajamas under the house, foundation
of our line all the way back, are you
me? Listen you, I am she, yes, and he
but I jumped out from under the house
to see what couldn’t be seen
to measure the depth of the abyss
I married you Mama
4. Night
Sun lifting from the mountain and lying down
on the ocean horizon. Sun
of memory but your face
is gone. Just the eyes
of all Nature, your mother
out here
When I asked you to take my picture
I was begging you, Mama,
look at me
Now every night I grind away
in your mirror, my face
carving roads
as I sleep here on this new one
mountains, states, my face of graves
from the roots, your nipple
in my mouth
coming ever more into the blood, the river
pounding through, ever more
into the body of Earth. Mother, the mirage
you saw
is no longer your daughter
but your face
in all three of my mirrors
(#3: after Mahmoud Darwhish’s “In My Mother’s House”)
Pacific Ocean Breaks, My Poetics
they come in from every direction no knowing
which way they’ll turn break
so wild foamy in excess their beauty even before
they crash so monstrously huge their lust, their light
upon the sand upon each other breath
taking from where on earth
did this come sometimes
disappointing piddly you
turn away but they don’t
stop wave
upon wave plowing in so conflicting
their path, so contrary
the silver soaked shore
going south now head ripped off
flying behind the next tunnel
too immense a girl drowning in the rip tide nothing
makes her feel more at home now seeing them coming nothing
makes her more the poet than these long silver lines
coming in
and going back
exploding their own order all
civil orders the churning
mudgold blue of the terrorist undertow in front
slanting off the opposite way the one behind colliding they
never stop too many they don’t sum up the light
writing the universe the bioluminescences
of autumn the girl’s neon body
face down in the sand
gasping air pound and roar ever changing rhythm, moan
of earth turning over
on the turning globe to the blinding sun eye
star surf of heaven her
son and daughter inside surfing to shore
(For my surfer son who gave me the word, bioluminescences, and for my daughter.)