The pink tulips and dethorned roses did not
last the week,
yet they were the first ever left boxed on my doorstep,
and from you.

1. Gauguin quit playing stockbroker,

sailed to Tahiti
painted thick Polynesian women
with seven toes.
Sent dozens of canvases back to Paris,
sold only four.
Died alone, island-bound, for his fantasies.

2. Wish I could say I would wish to rescue Tripoli, feed Darfur.

I want to do Zumba
stretch to Salsa
wearing a ballet leotard
my high arched feet
on cool concrete.

Second times are like
slumber parties.
You pick the guests (but your mothers can come).
You stay as long as you want.
You worry about not enough dip and how many glasses,
but not about rehearsals and your father’s sister’s second husband and your cousin Rose.

You may forget the horseradish or the Tamari salt, all the forks or the toasting
goblets.

But you won’t forget why
you gathered
or where you’d been (before).

Lord give me a lily
I need not tend.
Can’t tell a weed from a seedling,
clay from droppings,
acid soil from my own bitter
spring.

Wouldn’t know a pest from
pollinator,
or if the earth, still frozen to my touch,
will ever warm to blooming a
goldly fragrant
field flower.

I.
A few minutes past
the next decade
the black corgi
barks at street firecrackers
as if for the first time.

II.
Muffled under the doubled-up down comforter
remembering the coffee shop on El Camino Real New Years Day 1966
Thousand island dressing with pickle relish
and shredded iceberg
at dawn.

The letter to the editor said

It is useless to work for world peace

under this administration

so I will just work on peace in my own home.

When I spoke to the Buddhist

She told me that she had spent the first day

cleaning up.

After what, I asked.

Just life, she answered in that quiet contained voice

I will never have.

Here and there, restoring some order, so I can go on.

I didn’t even take down my tree, the ornaments from Tibet and Prague.

I cleaned my spice cupboard though, tossing the bag of bulk bay leaves from 2005, and the dried out thyme.

In the back I rediscovered a jar of bourbon molasses mustard from my father’s shelf.

We only complete what is most necessary

the Buddhist instructed me,

learning what the few remaining herbs and Tuscan oil can teach us about

starting over.

I will buy you a basket of cellophane wrapped strawberries

shipped in from Salinas,

two for four dollars on special.

You ate the entire last carton in a day or so,

the one your grandson brought after supper not even dark when you were already sleeping,

dreaming about Palo Alto and the red trumpet vines wrapped around brown shingles.

You children were born there, you told me this morning when

we took you out for bagels and nova lox deli, and a view of

young girls paying their own checks.

No, I said, we moved when I was ten, from DC, where we lived in an ugly brick tract house in Bethesda, out by the beltway now.

But then there were still fields and wild apple trees.

From my new place in Oakland, you insisted, I will be able to see the shoreline park, the ducks and the sea gulls pecking at the garbage.

No, I said, you will only see as far as just south of San Francisco,

straight across the bay you want to think is the Pacific.

There never was any ocean here,

and the fruit came in by rail.

Since I did not fly to Tulsa

I went to the Morningside market

where I touched the okra and sunflowers

where I bought two late summer Japanese eggplants

a large bunch of lemon basil, good for chicken or fish,

and caught the season’s first tiger swallowtail on my

rear view mirror.

I choose to tell my perhaps grandchildren

that when this war of wars was called

I was lying in my own bathtub

in dollar store bubbles.

I could not watch the sober suit,

the narrow stripes,

the pious stars,

the proud and final

fall.