All poems are from Pleasure, Heyday Books, 2006.
We buried Sarah’s father in the cemetery on Meder Street. He had told his daughter, I’ll be dead in three days, and three days later he was—a Thursday without clouds, the year 5762 by his count, but he’s past all calculation now. That afternoon we listened to an ancient music: the mourner’s Kaddish, the rustle of leaves, and hard earth falling on a casket. It was getting hot; the wind had fallen out of the trees. I stopped at the grave of my old friend Zwerling who once ground the lenses for my glasses in a shed behind his shop. I set a piece of honey-colored marble on one side of his tombstone. On the other side there were other stones—a flat river rock, scraps of granite, a black stone, a white one.
***
Every Wednesday, Fidel brings oysters to the market. I like to eat them with salsa, cilantro and lime. I like to run my tongue along the slick lip of the inner shell and suck them into my mouth. I love knowing they’re alive. Fidel wants to know, how many? And when I tell him, I’ll start with two, he taps his blunt knife against a block of ice, and shucks three.
***
I bought eggplants at the farmer’s market, long and slender, the deep purple reserved for nightshade, castor, the garden’s poisonous brood. I was admiring the eggplant’s waxy skin, its tender flesh, when a farmer thrust a tomato into my hand. I bit into the firm, red fruit, belladonna’s passionate cousin, and ate it under his watchful eye. He looked at me and nodded, as if he knew how far I’d go for pleasure.
***
I took the children to pick berries, and their fingers and their faces were soon stained red with warm, sweet juice. There were mice running ahead of the children in the furrows, and overhead there were hawks, waiting for them.
***
The roads were closed, and the power was out for six days after the storm. I tried to work by lantern light, but what’s the use? There was plenty of wine, and after two days, the food in the freezer began to thaw, so we cooked it all. We fed the neighbors chicken with garlic, then herbed sausage with wild rice and beans. We ate by candlelight, and every meal tasted better than the one before. We emptied the pantry, but there were potatoes, a pound of mushrooms, and the last of the raspberries floating in the cooler when a friend walked in with a dripping bag, and said, how do you want to cook this lamb?
***
Three women walked toward me on the street, and all of them were lovely, but one was more beautiful than the rest. Her breasts, loose under a gauzy blouse, swayed with every step, and her nipples carved little circles in the air. As she was about to pass me she dropped her keys, and stopped just an arm’s length away. Before I could move, she bent over from the waist, and out of modesty, or courtesy, I might have turned away, but I looked.
***
I couldn’t find the mushrooms under the begonias in the garden, then I remembered I had seen them growing there in a dream. The flowering thistle, dewdrops clinging to the spider’s web—it wasn’t all a dream. That’s coffee I smell, not wood smoke; and here’s the glass vial where my wife has saved all our children’s teeth.
***
Since dawn, the dove’s melancholic repetitions have haunted the air. Melodies from childhood, oh, please not that. Some memories I can feel in my body like a bruise. Mothers walk by with their little ones, and the dove keeps singing. A mockingbird starts up on a branch nearby: it’s call and response—the pitiful piping of the dove, and the giddy exuberance of the mocker. Their music is a clairvoyance. Who knew I’d be whistling by now? Who could have guessed I’d be singing such a happy song?
***
I took my son into the forest. He is a fearless child, but he was frightened by the woods and never left my side. We found chanterelles under the oaks, and carried them home for dinner. Even in the kitchen my son clung to me. We cooked the mushrooms with a handful of garlic in olive oil and butter. I added chicken, seven lemons, seven limes, and a scoop of cinnamon, why not? Steam from the noodles fogged our windows, so the moon that night was vague, mysterious, but available.
***
A warm current moved up the coast and brought albacore to our cold waters. I bought a whole tuna at the docks, and took the fish back to my home in the mountains. It was winter, but Brad wanted to cook outside, so we stood in the rain smoking cigars under umbrellas held high above the fire. We grilled the fish in a crust of ginger, lemon grass, cayenne and basil, but we left the meat raw inside and drizzled it at the table with lemon juice, wasabi and soy. While we ate, the rain turned to slush, and long before we had finished, the fire beneath the metal grill sputtered, steamed and went out.
***
An owl called out from the orchard, and I called back. Three more owls hooted, and together we began a chorus. Later that night, my son woke up when I kissed him in his bed. He wanted a story, and I told him about the cold, about the owls and the footsteps I’d made in the snow he didn’t know had fallen. He wouldn’t sleep until I promised to show him in the morning, and in the morning, though it was quiet, he could see the footprints were still there.
***
The signature mark of autumn has arrived at last with the rains: orange of pumpkin, orange persimmon, orange lichen on rocks and fallen logs; a copper moon hung low over the orchard; moist, ruddy limbs of the madrone, russet oak leaf, storm-peeled redwood, acorns emptied by squirrels and jays; and mushrooms, orange boletes, Witch’s Butter sprouting on rotted oak, the Deadly Galeria, and of course, chanterelles, which we’ll eat tonight with pasta, goat cheese, and wine.
***
Two ravens call from a redwood after the storm. Two black stones, they skip from one branch to another, and when they do, raindrops catch the failing light, and a shower of sparks falls from every stricken tree.
Bio
Gary Young’s honors include the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of American, grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Vogelstein Foundation, the California Arts Council, and two fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received a Pushcart Prize, and his book of poems, The Dream of a Moral Life, won the James D. Phelan Award. He is the author of several other collections of poetry including Hands, Days, Braver Deeds (winner the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize), No Other Life (winner of the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America), and most recently, Pleasure. His New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from White Pine Press. He is the co-editor of The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place, and Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California. He has produced a series of artist’s books, most notably Nine Days: New York, A Throw of the Dice and My Place Here Below. Since 1975 he has designed, illustrated, and printed limited edition books and broadsides at his Greenhouse Review Press. His print work is represented in numerous collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Getty Center for the Arts, and special collection libraries throughout the country. He teaches creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also directs the Cowell Press, and lives in the mountains north of Santa Cruz with his wife and two sons. He was recently named Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County.
‘Santa Cruz Poets, Santa Cruz Inspiration’ is edited by Robert Sward. Contributions are by invitation.
