Author: Kay Foley

Last day of a decade for me.
Tomorrow will be the first of another.
Three fourths of my life behind me.
Another fourth awaiting my nod.
I feel easy and good about this.
I know I am where I should be.
A luxury many do not have
the knowing the ease the belief
right down into the core of me.  
I am lucky all the way down
to the center of my tender bones.
Lucky I will stay because 
I believe it so.

Home in my own home my own bed
with my two dogs my one quiet son 
my own yard’s population of contented crickets
quietly singing in their humble way
the men across the street hammering on 
my neighbor’s house a child calling down the block
a squirrel chittering as they do for whatever 
reason they do it bluejays shouting back and forth.
All the familiar things of home
especially dear after a holiday away
even one that itself was filled
with warmth and light.

It is possible now to wake in one place and go 
to sleep in another two thousand miles away.
This is one of the more mundane truths of
our modern world, another being the
preponderance of excellent cakes in one
place and their utter lack in another.
The standards of decency and logic
challenged at every turn.

Sunflowers lean over the top of a vase.
Blue sky exults overhead.
My sister pads through this house 
of hers in El Cerrito California.
Another readies her classroom for
the fourth graders who will pour 
in next week.  Our youngest the
youngest of us all wakes in Tucson Arizona.
Tomorrow night I will be two thousand miles
away again wondering when I will next be
shooting watermelon seeds across the table
at my sisters in a noisy Chinese restaurant.

They were here for my party
many of them the great nieces
and nephews a next generation
of family a running laughing
crying chasing crawling climbing
storytelling fabricating inundating 
ruminating obfuscating chaos-making 
extension of my six brothers and sisters
Seda Nico Hako Sasha Rowyn Sylvie Arlo Alaia
well-intentioned loving selves in and out of house
and yard to and fro with their many plans and ideas
taking root flowering falling discarded in favor 
of new exciting others that shoot forth
willynilly oh how they wake us from
the dull sleep of adulthood.

It is so easy for me to picture my mother
sitting just there in that chair 
on the deck of Mary’s house 
in El Cerrito.
 
Tapping her fingers lightly
on the arm of the chair
as if to play a tune on the piano
that she no longer played.
 
Leaning her head back
closing her eyes
loving to feel the
California sun on her face.
 
Shoes on, always, she 
never was one to go barefoot.
How can you stand that? she’d ask me.
Aren’t your feet cold?
Shaking her head as I shook mine no.
 
One of the many inconsequential
ways we were different.
I tap my fingers now, I’ve noticed.
But she always had a lighter touch
on the keys than I have.

Hibbity bibbity jibbity jo
Over the hills to the town we go.
 
Lackety hackety nibbity nob
We go to the shops for bits and bobs.
 
Hippity hoppity dimmity dim
Bobs for me and bits for him.

The dream was awful
full of old anger ancient grudges
new slights tangled twisted together
into one dark violent morass.
Waking I shake my head free
of it wondering why now why
these old angry hurts why now in
this beautiful place my sister here
with me my ever loyal kind
champion why here and now?
What odd beings we are after 
all with our strange emotions our
intricate confusing brains our frailties the 
bizarre theaters of our dreamworlds our 
overburdened hearts our peculiar 
infinitesimal idiosyncrasies!
It is a miracle we manage as well
as we do, we crazy humans.

Crows and ravens cry in this tiny coastal town.
I wonder how my life might be here by the ocean
with the salt air the constant rush and pull of the sea
over and in and back again across sand and rocks
the ceaseless crash the ennervating murmur the 
romance of it the constancy the surety.  
Would I be rendered immobile lost 
to reverie doomed to an unnatural lassitude
living here by the sea?  Is that the reason  
I never managed to settle here?

Here in my sister’s California home 
where my mother felt most loved
I do at last feel her calm presence.
My mother felt most at ease, loved, protected 
with Mary.  This I know.
While I could always make her laugh
Mary was her heart’s dear companion.
I do feel her comfortably here 
No longer anxious fretful confused
But free, plump, calm
Seeing and hearing the world around her
Loosed from infirmity and worry.
Being.
Simply being.