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Written by Joan Safajek
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Wednesday, 15 August 2007 |
Editor’s note: Every month GT features the work of a local poet. This month: Joan Safajek, a retired psychotherapist and former English teacher. Safajek’s poems have been published in several anthologies, and she is the recipient of the 2002 Mary Lonnberg Smith Award for Poetry.
On Our First Anniversary At Sphinx LakeWe walk for days
up river and steep
side canyons
past the massive
stone sphinx to reach
an alpine meadow
where we make love
naked in the August sun
among columbine and purple
shooting stars that grow up
out of the wet tundra.
Looking down into my eyes
you do not see the curve
of glacial basin peaks
above and all around us.
Already I know
you wish to leave
the marriage.
I don’t want to vanish
into pleasure. I keep
my eyes open wide,
and when we cum
together, with almost
unbearable concentration,
I look out into empty sky
and place our joy
in that blue
granite silence
forever.
Todo SantosI hang green bananas
to ripen on the mango tree
outside my tent,
more than I can eat
before skins blacken
and split open,
a feast for orioles,
yellow and black,
that come to feed
at dusk, undisturbed
by my presence,
as if I too belong
here with bats,
nighthawks
and sky
on fire.
El TomatalOn the lonely beach at El Tomatal,
so perfectly blended at first I barely see them,
pelicans roost on grey rocks at low tide.
Conch cones and the bright peach
surprise of sun burnt mussel shells
decorate the campsite dunes.
All night a coyote dog guards our tent
in exchange for a leftover fish burrito.
Nothing wasted here, five hundred miles
south of the border, near a lagoon
where whales come to make love.
August HeatWearing an old white sombrero,
José trowels kitchen counter concrete
for my casita in Mexico.
We speak simple Spanish.
“When will you come to live here?”
When I retire. [italk] Maybe next year. [ital]
“Where do you live now”
[ital] Santa Cruz, California. [ital]
“Take me home with you.”
Bold words, said with a grin
big as his belly. In silence,
other workers pretend not to listen.
Teasing I tell him he wouldn’t like it,
too many people and cars.
“Mas tranquilo aqui.”
I agree, it’s more peaceful here
and wonder, looking into his eyes
what it would be like to touch his brown,
muscled back, his silver hair. I turn away
and go to sit in the garden. Water drips
from palm thatch being tied to roof rafters.
Frigate birds soar in air pungent with the smell
of rotting mangos. I pick up my graph paper
and draw bathroom details, aware of José
in the kitchen, the two of us like cats,
crouched and careful
not to look at each other
in waves of blue
August heat.
UnderworldI believe in the darkness of caves,
trust in the terror of doves
listening for the falcon’s call.
I have journeyed to other worlds,
have seen deer and wild horses
in their blue light at the window smiling.
Asleep I have been warmed by the moon.
Stones speak.
Turtles sing in the sea.
Be still and listen.
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