Redwood Writers…
Alone We Write, Together We Grow
Interested in joining us in the Redwood Writers Salon?
The Salon meets the even months of the year on the fourth Saturday.
Brennan, Gone Too Soon
(for his mother Sheila)
He roared like a lion
like the ocean
crashing against the rocky shore
(insides thrashing one struggle to the next).
They say still waters run deep.
Sometimes, noisy waters run deeper.
Run, and jump, and probe,
trying to find purchase
or
trying to find quiet.
There’s a hole in the bottom of the deep blue sea.
The blue green sea that is the color of his eyes.
Always bringing him home.
Bringing him to his mother’s door,
Bringing him to his mother’s shore.
He’s there in the laugh of the seagulls;
in the storms that rumble and tumble your head
only to bring sun the next morning.
He’s in the clouds that darken your door one minute
but break into amusing fluffy shapes the next.
He’ll turn up and surprise you
just when you’re least expecting it.
He was, and always will be
after all.
It’s Happening Again
Yellow gray skies
again
pervade my world.
They are the color
of the fangs
I want to bare
and snap and snarl
at everyone
and everything.
Gray ash falls
from the sky
as if snow
was always
the color of sorrow
as if trees
wished
to be licked by flames
before peeling
and disintegrating
in fire’s embrace.
This is the afterbirth
of a fire
whose breath lingers
on your clothes
and in your hair
and
builds a nest in your lungs
like a starling, making
your every breath rattle
through the branches.
Robin Gabbert, November 2020
Splitting Hairs
They say she keeps
her feelings bottled up
yes
I am a classic introvert
I suppose
however
it might be more accurate
to say
her feelings are like
the hand grenade
your crazy Uncle Joe
brought back from Vietnam
and keeps in a shoebox
under his bed
or
like the balls of twine
Muffy bats around the room
until they’ve been dashed back
and forth a few dozen times
except when
they’re like
the hot caramel
on top of an ice cream sundae
or
the face
of a Dali clock
Robin Gabbert, November 2020
Blank Page Syndrome (BPS)
I wonder if white might become my new favorite color?
It’s the one I see the most, day after day,
lonely cursor blinking at its glowing edge.
It’s the color of snow, an egg (well some),
Italian marble, squishy marshmallows,
and luminous ghosts.
Perhaps I should be happy to see a blank
page, free from the detritus of my mind.
No evidence of that internal struggle—
the glacial, constipated lack of movement
toward words being typed on a page
just to be deleted, juggled, cursed at.
Maybe, white
is the new black. So, for the moment
I’ll savor these white-out conditions,
lose myself in this eternal field of lint,
make a swirling tornado of milky intent,
and lie down until this chalky oblivion takes me
to its heaven of alabaster or hell of ashen descent.
Dental Hygiene
I close my eyes because it’s better that way.
The light is bright above, and
I know the drill, so to speak.
The hygienist is giving me instructions
which I understand, although they sound
like parents do in Peanuts cartoons.
She starts by measuring my gum recession —
Calling out numbers to a colleague: 3-2, 3-3, 2-2
while piercing my gums with a pointy crooked wire.
At least that’s what’s on the end of the instrument
I can see when I open my eyes.
She says my numbers have improved,
but I find my hands, clasped together in my lap,
still unnaturally gripping each other — as if
by some magnetic force. Even as I’m trying to relax.
She asks if I’m okay with “the ultrasonic”
“Sure,” I say. Not sure I know what
that means. Then the sound brings it back.
There is a high-pitched squeaking-squealing
behind pressure noise. It sounds like a wee mouse is
being tortured with a water cannon. Repeatedly.
Once that is done, we move on to scaling.
I picture a tiny mountain climber on my teeth. This will be better, I think.
The reality is a scraping sensation, a garden trowel abrading stones (or gnomes).
I try not to think about it that way. Instead
I think about fish being scaled on a stainless
steel sink. Somehow, that doesn’t help.
Then I’m ready for a polish, and I breathe a
sigh of relief knowing this is the final stretch.
The hygienist sends me home with fluoride rinse
and instructions to return in six months.
I’m already dreading it, so I swear to start
flossing— regularly. And I mean it.
Nose Job
I was the serious big sister.
There for support. You
smiling (you were always
smiling) — unworried, being prepped.
The wait while you were under dragged on…
I stared at wallpaper, tongue depressor beige.
Paged through fashion magazines
from the waiting room,
but kept wondering— did you really need
a rhinoplasty?
Yes, your nose was a little
crooked, not unlike mine.
When you came back, you were
not smiling. Bandages cocooned
your face. There was purple and
black swelling where your eyes
had been. The room seemed hot,
the walls now melting. Nausea
like morning sickness swept me.
I wasn’t pregnant.
Then I was on the floor.
Later I drove you home.
You slept sitting up on the couch.
Your head a thundercloud—
dark shadows with occasional
showers, or rather, leakage.
I slept on the floor beside you
suppressing my own storm.
Glitter
My first reaction was to cover my face
as I felt the prickly glitter
landing there in showers
One-two-three-
and I blinked awake
to see your 3-year-old smile
chubby glitter-covered fingers
working above me.
“GRRR.... you woke the tickle monster!”
I started crawling after you across
the thick knobby carpet, shaking my head,
shedding colorful glitter from my face.
You ran giggling into the kitchen—
there was shelter between Mommy’s
soft black leggings and Truffles’
furry wiggling body and wagging tail.
Ohh.… No… the glitter-box
is no more.
No more of Truffles bounding to the door.
No more Joni in the kitchen cooking dinner.
No more smiles, wiggles, giggles.
It was just the tapping of
rain
on the roof
that woke me.
PaPaw
When PaPaw was young
he looked like Sean Connery
dark hair slicked back and
a smile that said, I’m all that
and whipped cream on top.
A few decades later
he was rail thin, shoulders hunched,
wrist bones sticking out of his cuffs,
no hair to speak of.
We grandkids tiptoed around him.
He teased my little sister
after she found a sparkling black rock,
just sure it was black gold.
He told her, “No, that’s a pig turd.”
and he laughed and laughed.
Terri held her ground, mumbling
“NO, it’s black gold….”
Then he went to stoke the fire
in the big rusty oil drum where
he burned the trash every day.
He died when I was eleven.
I was sobbing after the funeral.
My Mom was touched.
I was just sad that we
missed the school play.
I had a lead role and
the funeral had taken all day.