Wednesdays I drive to Trader Joe’s
park on the side street
tall trees
old inviting houses
today a woman
watering her yard
white screen door propped open
I sip my hot yerba maté
sing snatches of
“Our House”
Mourning dove
mockingbird
sit on wires
across the way
listening
I drink my tea
breathe
cry grateful tears.
This house is filled with crickets
I have found them dying more than once
Some nights they sing
loud in the living room
and I stand in the dark
and listen to their song
When I am working in the black chair
I will see one crossing the carpet
and send up prayers
May you be safe
May you be happy
My mother stomps near them
to scare them away
and I worry I will step on one without knowing
I find their small belly-up corpses
now and then
in every room of the house
lying in chavasana
small enchantments
lucky charms
loved ones.
I heard once
crickets in the house
are good luck
a Chinese belief
I think
but maybe not
In my trailer home
a family of them
lived for a time
behind my fridge
I loved their loud
singing in the night
so near my bed
I missed them
when they moved out
and it was just me again
and the quiet daddy long legs.
I hear the loud heater
down the hall
and think of my little home
and silence in the middle of the night
especially in winter
with no air conditioners
only cold air
through the open louvers
and the cry of the barn owl
and years ago, the small, warm weights
of my two cats
tucked against me
in the quiet night.
I dream Julia Roberts and I
on a rooftop
She has a cut lip
and hair pulled back into a small messy knot
There is city around us
maybe near the sea
and we visit there more than once
gaze across the rooftops at dusk
She has trauma, too, something to do
with a dream she wanted to fund
in Syria or Ruanda
and crazed pushback on social media
And somehow we are close
comforted by each other
Our lives both hard just now
but meeting
and being met
easy together
like old friends
like decades
like no secrets
like no hiding at all.
In my joy class we sing “With a Little Help from My Friends,” all of us swaying and clapping together in our little Zoom boxes. After, I have Alexa play it for me again and again until I memorize all the words. I pick “When I’m 64” to learn next because I think I should sing it throughout the coming year while I’m 63. Late at night I sit in the living room, heater and ice-maker noises behind me, solar Christmas lights on the succulents outside the window, headlights on the 210 moving like water in the distance between the black curves of the foothills. My eyes close while I type, and I jerk awake more than once, but when I finish my work, I look for the song. I find the music with the lyrics, and I play it on my laptop with the volume turned way down. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?” My knees bounce as my feet move, and I sing along, delighted with the music and the words, the minds and hearts that made them. I am lifted out of my limited self in the quiet night, unhindered, even happy, spread out like the valley to the west, silent now in the late dark.
Unexpected warmth
the big lizard does pushups
in the corner of the back yard
I lie on my back
in chavasana
and wake up snoring.
No Holds Barred 