whose name is Poppy
I have an old green bucket with the peeling label still on it
Hunter green
My horse Bodhi’s barn colors were burgundy and hunter green
I am placing the dead blossoms in the bucket
rather than throwing them on the pebbles
and I find myself growing angry at the landscapers
They placed tiny river pebbles
called Yosemite
too close to each plant
It will take months to clear these
to make room for my trees, my flowers, our garden
to breathe fully again.
I make amends to the earth
that we ravaged when we tore the old toxic 1939 structure down
I say sorry
I watch the podocarpus, raped by the construction people
begin to make new shoots
but I get ahead of myself
This is a poem
It’s a poem about deadheading
The zen of deadheading
Ordinary mind is the way
Ordinary mind is the way
Ordinary mind is the way
I can chew on NO for an eternity
watch it break open to emptiness
I have learned to see the abyss as brilliant radiance
with a new lens!
I pull a sticky, half dead blossom
I think of my friend Lori who died ten years ago now
and I still haven’t replaced her
Nobody fits in her shoes
I pull a very dead blossom or two
and I send a prayer to Adell who left us way too soon
but had to go because the body hurt too much to stay
She spun pain into gold, over and over again
Her memories of a Satan worshipping parent
… she could never have made that shit up
Rest well, Adell… Lori
I take some sticky, yellowing leaves off
place them carefully in the hunter green bucket
Bodhi’s been gone for over four years
and still it’s impossible, my horse, my son, my horse
No, my son.
and Bo?
how can he be gone?
I pull another series of dead, brown, dried blossoms
bright white only last week
I can see them through my office window
where Poppy likes to sleep and bark at anything that moves
Richard, gone
Bobby, gone
Michael, gone
Joanie, gone
Jennie, too…
there’s hardly anybody left to call on the phone
and so I go to the garden
watch new growth
pause and insist my mind see the new growth and cherish it
and not focus only on the losses, on death
not just fading and complaining and whining
(while gratitude is grand it is no bandaid for grief)
Grief is a tsunami, rolling over me
maybe forever
All the houses I don’t live in any more
All the streets and seasons I don’t see any more
That’s okay
It’s got to be okay
Seems wishing things were different is how we are wired
Ordinary mind is the way
No
No
No!
I fished for my NO and caught a large walnut
I carried it around in my mind’s pocket for days
when it cracked open
I wasn’t on the cushion seeking it
with catholic school meditation
I was loading the dishwasher
I carried the Universe around in the walnut
till it turned into a mason jar with fireflies and I am eight years old
I breathe, I listen
I hear a small voice say, “My belly lives two doors away from me”
but that is a poem for a different hour, maybe
or a different day
So it goes
(photo from Malibu before the 2018 Woolsey Fire on the Best Day Ever)
