for Paulette.
I.
She sat on the piano bench
Holding court
The memory hazy but for the falling
Away
Of
The
Earth.
II.
Suspicion reigned on her brow
Perfunctory "Hello"
Was I here to steal their boy?
Who was this macho-jock-surf hippy
Traveling incognito with their Carlitos?
Joanne talked of massaging your stomach in a clockwise motion as to better facilitate shitting. "Works every time," she said.
No b.s. this one (Pun up-ended).
He showed me the view from this precarious perch on Twin Peaks. Wide. Bright and vast.
In the undulating heat waves on the window glass
the hills of San Francisco, City of Dreams, moved
like the shimmering bay in the distance... Waves of Victorian edge and psychedelic color. I turned and in the dim unlit room
saw her move out of the corner of my eye
The memory of the decor, the ambiance, the passing of time is hazy but for the falling
Away
Of
The
Earth .
III.
Inadvertently
You broke a rule, a confidence.
The Seal of Approval,
The Panel of Experts was not consulted.
The sacred text opened and in the bob and weave of the road's
playful twisting he offered you a glimpse into my creative heart.
By chance
By fate's kind grace
Pages turned as if by themselves
revealing two women, embracing.
Hazy, art-y, naked.
Your eyes stopped and scanned the red ink handsomely caressing the edge of the photocard. You saw your name. You saw her name.
You saw my knowledge and acceptance and sensitive attraction
To the beauty of your love for each other.
"A-ha...so he's not scouting for Carlitos
He's watching me. He's attracted to me. He's taken by me...
I guess he might not be so bad after all."
Your innate curiosity was tickled
Your cynicism on call.
Your face, eyes, voice, statuesque beauty,
aura, flora, fauna, (do ya wanna?)
etched into my cells for life since the moment I saw you
sitting on the piano bench
holding court
tho' the rest of the details of that fateful moment, like
this road to Stinson beach, are hazy but for the falling
Away
Of The Earth.
IV.
Picnic. Camera. Dune grass
waves us in for a landing.
Sun bright, "Californian, like us," he said.
Our quartet sitting cross-legged in the sand.
She, sarcastic and funny full of mischief.
He, open, naive and trusting
Excited and trepidatious at the same time
And you
Suddenly curious and careful
but pushing the envelope that lies between the two
its glue wet and ready to seal
or not.
I shot you with a fork in your mouth
Lips pursed, no smile...not my best camera work, no doubt,
But those eyes --
Staring straight into me
Dead serious
Like a vow, a four-alarm fire.
You pulled me aside
away from the others.
"Let's walk..."
you said, for the first of many times to come.
A frequent signal
of a special, connective moment
just around the corner,
down the stairs...but the memory is hazy, gleaned from old photographs and the passionate re-telling of the tale
but for the Falling
Away
Of The
Earth.
V.
We walked toward the Pacific.
Verdant, grassy roller-coaster hills challenge our vision
In a race to the churning drama of the sea
As if the drought's powerful hold on their rolling existence
Meant not near as much as the exhilaration of the fall to mother ocean.
"At least I'm enjoying the ride" goes the song,
not yet written here in 1977.
Gray, foaming brine, so distant
So unrepresentative of our young, focused, searching minds.
Our identification with the sea's battering, relentless, insistence...
Its violent, upheaval of all solid matter...
Its mirror's opaque stare, chipping away at time's handiwork
wouldn't wash over us 'til much later in our lives.
For now, the sea was playful, pretty and vastly intriguing.
For now, I became that hill
Tam's hips giving in to gravity.
Gravity = fun, a playful force. Apples and such. Cosmic balance.
Without gravity, Flight = boredom.
For each slow, rising climb there followed an instant of inertia Followed by a swift, giddy decline
A breath at the bottom as the speed sucks in its stomach for the next
Lesser rise...
Only to plunge joyously down, faster
With each dip and gully and mound and...
overhead the treacherously deep, serious blue of the sky
Smiled upon my heart a billowy kaleidoscope of acceptance.
The moment spread before me
diffusing time into something not to be conquered or feared
So deliciously ornate and uncluttered
Uncomplicated
Molasses on granite
Crawling up out of the cracks of the unimpressed stone
Widening our view, buffering our remedies
Scaling peaks we've yet approached.
Time -- a big, forgiving roving pick-up band of starving mariachis
Playing harmonized counter-point:
Two melodies, one spontaneous purr...
Your voice pulls my unfocused eyes from the horizon's indifference
Though the memory of your words is hazy but for the falling
Away Of The Earth.
VI.
Carlitos called in a panic
"You must come out here tonight. She called.
We're celebrating her birthday and she wants to get together with you.
Aren't you excited?" he gushed as I pulled the skin I'd just jumped out of
back on over my head.
She arrived just after I did and our eyes met. It wasn't a spark really that I saw, just something indescribably familiar...irresistibly comfortable...I fell into her spell like a hypnotist's show dog. Easy mark.
Our words danced around each other like moths fully cognizant of the implications of a flame this bright. Carlitos fluttered around us like a proud Mama chattering about his refried beans and folding together burritos with fresh Spinach from his garden while our energies folded together with fresh panache from our candid pantries. We ate and I tasted her interest and prayed she tasted my eager exhilaration.
As I swirled her questioning gaze
over my taste buds for a brief moment longer
the door flew open and St. Theresa Nightingale flew in
on the fragrant breeze breaking our concentration with a cloud of sparkling wrap-around joy. Our private feast was over. Dessert would be served 14 miles west as I sat stunned and interrupted in my reverie.
-- The kitchen of this tiny bayside apartment
was filled to bursting with laughing
loving
beautifully enticing women
none of whom had a pinch of interest in the two men
sitting in the living room adjacent.
Their camaraderie and attentions were reserved for each other
and he and I sat and talked for hours.
Saving the world.
Planning our destinies.
Soliloquies of beauty and madness and youth and passionate confusion.
Of course, I heard not a word that either of us spoke.
Even the turntable's repetitive caress of the same side of this record
Gato Barbieri's caliente tenor lines
blowing sensuous Latin tones into the air
over and over again
went in one ear and out the toe.
My mind was on the kitchen doorway.
She sat, her long legs folded under her on the straight-backed chair
Laughing, talking, glancing every few seconds
out into the room
where my eyes were always waiting for hers.
We spent 3 hours looking at each other
through the bustling haze of swirling conversation around us
talking with our eyes, catching up on way-old times
times even we didn't recall,
lives we could only surmise had been shared between the ancient relatives of these two pair of eyes.
Suddenly, she stood, walked to me as my flesh tingled
-- My heart beat like a Buddy Rich coronary test pattern
"Let's walk..."
We got as far as the bottom of the stairs
She turned and put her long fingers on my arm
She told me that the woman that she loved
Was the only woman she had loved
That she liked men
That she really liked men
That she liked what was going on between us
That she wanted me to know where she stood
That she wanted me to know that she was very much
very sure that she very much
would like to get to know me better
She called me "Bradley" and I think we walked back up the stairs
to an old-boyfriend/"coming-over-tomorrow-may-be-better" party
but of this
my memory is hazy but for the falling
Away
Of
The
Earth.
VII.
My thoughts of her
rose with me in the mornings that followed
Carried me through classes blunting my tired stupors with smiling
certainty,
Ate meals alongside me
Followed me to movies ("cheap date")
Rang their presence around every chiming note of music I heard
Every bit of conversation, every smile and every breath...
My vocabulary increased incrementally by the amount of time I spent in her presence --
reincarnation, inhibition, fascination, imperfection,
unrequited, reunited, love-at-first-sighted...
I lay in a small room off Clayton Street back porch
and wrote a poem, striving to live up to my misguided poetic yearnings
-- in the dawn's light I heard the magnificent whisper
of their lips meeting
the lovers' embrace
and I wrote of an ant carrying two purple flower petals
from under the door
past me and into your room...
an offering.
I wanted to crawl in right behind him
invisible
and luxuriate in the light of your love for each other.
But, I was me...hard to believe
and turned to the other door
silently watching the morning's charm
wink at me
thru the frosted glass
some unknown secret slinking off with the comforting fog
adrift in worlds it would not be my calling to render apart.
We haunted bookstores and restaurants and bars
falling into each others' confidence and trust
with an agile grace not known to either of us before.
With a speed and depth that would have caused
nosebleeds and conniptions and screaming hallucinogenic visions
to lesser humans.
There we were in our invincibility
Our connected, directed, reflected strength
Shivering like babies,
like hairless ducklings sliding on ice
quacking on about fear
patience
uncertainty
as if we couldn't have saved the world
if we'd been able to see past our new roses.
Other than the vision of her from the chest up over cappuccino
or pasta or drinks sitting at a table across from me looking positively gorgeous straight into my eyes and yearning for connection and profundity and that smile and spontaneous laugh making me want to be the funniest man on earth at that very moment...
other than that
the memory is hazy but for the falling
Away
Of the
Earth.
VIII.
Sometimes, late at night
after too much wine
or too much whining
too many decibels
too many hours just plain surviving
I wake in a cold sweat and the only way to fall
back into the comforting shroud only sleeping through dawn can inspire
is to count
...not sheep
not stars
not coins, cars or minutes between the far-off hum of the passing trains
I count words
sentences
silences
fragments of the endless conversation we call friendship
That years ago fell into a pattern
a pattern of miles
initiative
doubts and white hot indecisiveness
kept at a safe but questioning distance
a conversation that began once
and continued through the ether
soaring through space like the path of human thought
all dream and vision
certainty and hope
faith and passion
belief in the rock solid destiny and kindness and grace
that placed you on a piano bench
and me, head heavy on this pillow
and I count
hazy
but for the comforting falling away
of
the Earth.
-- july 1996
