Hunger
V-shaped veins, fingers, and palms fluttering.
turning, turning, shaking on a spindle,
then hanging quietly.
Quietly my mother bends to put the leash on Toby
and doesn’t straighten up because,
approaching her 96th,she can’t
all the way,
Way she leapt from the prow of the zodiac
at Tower Island the first morning the vessel
carrying twelve of us tossed across the
Humboldt Current under the sign
of the Southern Cross,
Cross Darwin’s way up lava-pocked
impossibly slick steps, topping out along
a narrow path through a raucous
nesting chorus,
Red-footed Boobies,
Swallow-tailed Gulls,
cactus-dwelling golden finches ,
overhead fork-tailed frigate birds
soar, swoop, dive
Dive off the tip of the Sinai,
Bobbie and I descend the face of
an improbable wall, red and purple coral fans
jutting straight off nooks and cracks, drowned in glory,
as mother Mary agonizes for us to surface,
Surface acacia trees with spikes bristling,
thin and mean, scantest moisture
they can defend, gathered
perhaps centuries ago out of thin air when,
ascending the way to Jebel Musa,
Moses hears a fiery bush
holler for rain,
Rain-dripping California redwoods,
so tall they could see God were they not cut down
for their fire-resistant elder qualities, assembled into
planks, chairs, bulkheads, sunken hot-tubs
soaking up multiple cul-de-sacs
of Terra Linda,
Linda, searching for Linda,
might she be Mrs. Murphy’s red-haired girl?
who warms the right hand pew,
fifth row back from the altar
every Sunday morning 8 a.m.,
and all you hear as the priest raises
the host is the hush of her
breathing, burning
your day dreams,
Dreams that torture your nights as the virgin
mother agonizes for her son,
Son!
An honored name
your ancestors reverence,
hairs of stone, hairs of rock,
fixing vascular nitrogen
from atmospheric
scarlet wetlands,
gametophytes of
the archipelago
V-shaped.