ass burgers

first bird seen
watching through darien’s (via mom) binoculars using the eastern birds peterson field guide:
rose breasted grosbeak
the red patch on its chest
and the white specks on its black feathers 
and its short beak
making it easy
to find in the book and its long still perch
in view from bed loft also making it ideal
as a first bird
_______
cutest raccoon ever held in captivity
tame and mellow
and almot dog-like in behavior
how i hate being a human who wants to keep the creatures from raiding our house
which means we capture the creature and drop them off so very far from home
near water at least but still
_______
how when emory hears aspbergers  his eyes widen because what he’s really hearing is ass burgers
as in: so and so has ass burgers
_______
we feel restless
somewhere inside us the treadmill grinds on
heard on radio station
a huge part of meditation is paying attention
and then it’s paying attention to where our attention is

the sacredest

the usps person on the phone
and how her sneeze
brings us a small human moment
(she apologizes and says
she’s coming down with a cold and
i tell her i hope you feel better soon)
_______
the juniper i find
in a swath of undeveloped land
at the edge of campus
and before the edge of the sports field
next to which i sit
in the reddish sand scattered with stones
just so i can see the mountains
as i read

_______

something about orienting the map
in the book that is talking about here
and four as the sacredest number
and how mountains in the cardinal directions
declare the boundaries of where the earth
has been cooked to done-ness,
ready for humans to inhabit it
but beyond is the great undone wild
and that’s where we live

and also there’s something
about orienting the mountains on the map
to the mountains i see to the east
something about aligning my internal compass
(now, always knowing south)
is like lining up a treasure key
with it’s mechanism
and turning it to unlock
_______
anthropocene liz says
as jamie pours slow tea
green tea (gyokuro)
into the small and thin ceramic cups
that we pass around the circle
and there is something about the aroma
and the flavor
familiar and not,
with hint of spinach,
not bitter – but something like it,
and not sweet, but something like that too
_______

the tea made with water
traced back through the tap:
treated at canyon road treatment plant direct diversion facility
after being gathered from america’s most endangered river
(the santa fe river),
the dwindling rio grande and wells
that draw from the tesuque formation
(aquifer downstream
from the los alamos national laboratory
[one of two sites in the u.s. for the development
of nuclear weapons]
which means there is radiation, a small bit,
in this water
and how some folks estimated the time it would take
the radiation to leech into the water source
to be around 1,000 years
but it only took 60)
_______
72 microseasons in japan
jamie says naming the example of
the 5 days of a certain flower blooming
_______

the corn muffins that jessica bakes
and carries to us on two small plates
on top of which we drizzle
the sorghum

startled into flight

sloshing in our galoshes, cynthia and i sing
the aaaay doombah and
lay yourself down on the rocks now songs
as we scrub, sweep and shovel-scrape
inside the cistern/sound chamber
our voices whirling
(moving from wall to wall)
how we howl and animal call and yowl too
not a bad way, indeed, to begin the morning
_______
the way the water moves i say about
the trickiness of scooping it up
because it moves in waves
_______

perhaps a turkey or some other
large bird taking off from
the strip of woods between ours and slater’s land
huge wings thwapping
twigs of branches as it is
startled into flight
_______
i apologized to some of them i say
about the varieties of dahlias
as i scrolled through them
for being given some of the names they were given
_______
cilantro pesto
home made corn tortilla quesadillas
and fake meat extravaganza
crafted by cynthia, moe and tyler
awaiting on the butcher block
_______
sun so close to setting
(huge orange orb
hovering over horizon
and how from inside the hoophouse
the plastic spreads out/diffuses
the glow)
_______

what it is like to finally
see a photo of the face of aleksandra
finally released from immigration detention
who i’ve been hustling poems
to help raise bond money for;
a softening
a familiarity
a being sliced through of the utter humanness
of this creature
_______
clean pint jar filled with
clear water and plant cuttings
left on my dresser
(thank you mica!!!!!)
_______
how, between the moon and two candles,
there is enough light
to write these words on paper

plus sambusas

it is an appreciation gathering
at the college i TA with
and i don’t know his name
but i know his face from the east african food booth
at the ucsd farmers market

he carries food in foil pans
plus sambusas in pastry boxes
and he recognizes me
(me in the doorway him outside)
and there is light
(his face is always an arrangement of brightness)a

his surprise
because he hasn’t seen me in so long
and it’s true i say
i haven’t been by the farmer’s market for
at least a year or so

if you, dear reader, could see the size of the line and the
number of folks that red sambusas and catering
serves in one day at ucsd
then you would also be broken open
by the fact that he remembers you
and not only does he remember you but
asks how you are
in a way that makes you feel less like the customer you have been
and more like the human you always are
in a way that makes you feel like
maybe he also sees that your face is made of light
maybe that thing that you often try to get across to the people who make money off of serving you
(that they are human and you are human and you are truly grateful for their service)
did get across

that it is really our light that recognizes each other
and it has nothing to do with our faces
and the only thing you regret is that when you tell him how you are/
that you are graduating
and he congratulates you and then you ask him how he is and he says
working
that you wish you would have insisted
on asking him more
and by offering questions
acknowledging that he exists in ways outside of
other than cooking and serving food to people

not only that i am remembered
but that we get to be human together in that doorway for a minute
that we get to pass this light back and forth
gold gilding the air around us