Soaring Earth Read online

  a folk singer, my favorite poet

  of peace.

  SEPARATION

  Branches

  of

  rivers

  shift

  water

  rises

  transformed into vapor

  an airborne stream

  of clouds

  and doubts.

  Alone in outer space?

  Together on solid earth?

  No.

  Just floating

  weightless

  somewhere

  in between.

  Without my first boyfriend

  who am

  I?

  A QUIET HOME LIFE

  No more Army M., just afternoons

  cleaning a teacher’s house, and Friday nights

  babysitting to save for my mythical journey

  to India, Borneo, or Peru, and then Saturdays

  in the garden with Mom, planting trees,

  hoeing weeds, bringing nearly dead plants

  back from dry brown

  into this soaring world’s

  memory

  of green.

  I live like an old woman, sewing and embroidering

  while listening to Cuban music, smiling or crying

  depending on the rhythm and how long it’s been

  since we received a letter from Abuelita

  on the island.

  How can a place remain so far away

  while feeling as close as these blossoms

  in my embroidered world

  of silky threads?

  COURAGE

  My older sister works at the zoo, selling balloons.

  Sometimes she walks into the wolf cage

  as she studies to be a keeper.

  On weekends, she wears a seven-foot

  Colombian red-tailed boa constrictor

  wrapped around her neck, the giant snake

  that she bought as a pet and kept, even though

  it keeps getting longer

  and more powerful.

  I’m not brave enough to do anything

  but read

  and daydream.

  My only courage

  is inside my secret world

  of imagination.

  BEST FRIENDS

  Both of my closest bookworm friends

  share the same name, so I think of them

  as Short E. and Tall E., the first a delicate dancer,

  the second happily rugged, wearing men’s shirts

  and helping her father invent laser light shows

  that flash to the rhythm of rock music.

  With Short E. I hitchhike, with Tall E. I hike.

  Either way, we never really reach a destination,

  just roaming like adventurers, exploring

  the city or mountains.

  But when Short E. starts smoking pot, her mind

  slides away, first slowly, then swiftly, until she sees

  people who aren’t there, and hears threatening noises

  beyond silent windows. . . .

  Most of my bookworm friends are marijuana smokers,

  but only Short E. suffers in this panic-twirled way,

  yielding to nightmarish terrors while wide awake.

  The sweet-scented leaves just make me feel dull and sleepy,

  as I watch Short E. teeter at the edge of a cliff called

  schizophrenia.

  But we don’t drift apart yet

  not even when she thinks

  she’s a prowling cat

  meowing.

  Her long years of hospitalization

  will come later.

  For now, we are still both confident

  that drug-riding minds can always

  return.

  BROTHERHOOD CAMP

  Quakers love inviting everyone to meet,

  get to know one another, talk, listen, or sit silently,

  waiting for friendship.

  I’m shy, but when Mom signs me up for camp,

  I venture into the mountains with teens from all over

  the enormous Los Angeles area, our neighborhoods

  so far apart that we know we’ll never

  see one another again, and yet it feels right,

  like a way of belonging to the whole world

  all at once.

  When a boy from Watts kisses me, we both agree

  that if we lived closer, we’d get to know each other

  at a normal speed, instead of so

  briefly.

  BOY CRAZY

  I long to fall in love, believe in love,

  convince myself that I’m capable

  of love.

  But back at school after Brotherhood Camp,

  my next boyfriend zooms away on a motorcycle

  to visit his Filipino family in a distant state.

  I argue with my parents, begging to go with him,

  but they shout no, and when he doesn’t return

  I’m almost relieved, because motorcycles

  scare me, and courage is just something

  I pretend

  to understand.

  Still boy crazy, I start dating someone else

  almost right away, a polite and studious bookworm

  who takes me to botanic gardens and an aviary

  where a hummingbird lands on my curly hair

  as if I’ve been transformed into a nest.

  But this isn’t love, it can never work out,

  because the boy is friendly with my parents,

  but he warns me that I’ll never

  meet his family.

  They’re from China, and he tells me

  they would definitely think I’m too

  foreign.

  GLOBAL

  In between real-boy craziness

  and daydreams of imaginary guys,

  there are books.

  I’m shocked when the reading list

  for world literature class is limited to Europe,

  so I dare to read the Mahabharata from India,

  Octavio Paz from Mexico, and anonymous

  ancient poems from Japan, claiming my right

  to explore

  the whole globe.

  When I turn in reports on books

  from my own independent reading list,

  the teacher is surprised, but she agrees

  that it makes sense, and she accepts

  my suggestions, even though they’re

  outlaws from beyond

  the small-minded curriculum.

  Sometimes all you have to do is wish

  out loud.

  HONORS CREATIVE WRITING CLASS

  It sounds so exciting on paper

  but the reality is frightening,

  a critique group of teens

  from all over the city

  who sit in a circle

  taking turns

  smirking

  as they tell one another

  how much they hate

  every poem

  and each fragment

  of a story.

  So I stop writing. I freeze.

  Strangers are impossible to please.

  If I ever scribble again, I’ll keep

  every treasured word

  secret.

  SCIENCE

  Without poetry, I can still love nature,

  but the biology teacher is a sports coach

  who mostly talks about the size of his wife’s butt,

  just to make the popular boys laugh.

  So I sign up for a human physiology class

  taught by a marine biologist who takes us

  to tide pools and shows us the similarities

  between octopus anatomy and humans.

  All creatures are related, even odd-shaped

  sea cucumbers, spiny urchins, and waving

  anemones, with plantlike tentacles.

  Back in our classroom, the teacher jumps

  from the top of one wooden desk to another
,

  towering above us as she demonstrates

  how a nerve impulse leaps across a synapse,

  the microscopic gap between separate cells.

  Crossing a chasm, that’s what she says we need,

  like a leap

  of courageous   faith.

  AIRMAIL

  Letters to and from Cuba

  arrive slowly, through a complex maze of other

  countries, because nations that don’t have

  diplomatic relations

  never sit together

  listening

  to each other.

  Maybe there should be a Brotherhood Camp

  for grown-ups—politicians and diplomats

  all swimming and hiking, before singing

  around a campfire, developing friendships,

  or even kissing.

  Whenever a letter from Abuelita

  does manage to reach us, bright postage stamps

  are paper-thin proof that the island

  of my childhood

  still exists.

  WOMEN’S LIBERATION

  Feminism is all over the news, and now

  it’s somehow entered our own home.

  Mom goes out and finds a paying job

  for the first time since she was fourteen,

  when she had to drop out after eighth grade,

  because Abuelita couldn’t afford to send

  two children

  to school,

  so only tío Pepe

  was able to study,

  while Mom—because she

  was a girl—had to make money

  by painting designs on ceramics,

  while she waited to be old enough

  for marriage.

  Now that she’s working in a store, I have to do

  a lot more cooking and cleaning, but the effort

  is worthwhile, because my mother finally feels

  like her brother’s

  equal.

  FREE SPEECH

  I decide that I’ll never get married.

  All I want to do is travel and learn.

  All I need is books, not boyfriends.

  Most of the time, Short E. is fine, her mind

  only slipping away when she’s stoned.

  Together we find rides all the way to Berkeley

  to visit the university campus

  where everyone shouts all the time, demanding

  the right

  to be heard.

  War, racism, sexism, all the topics of the free-speech movement

  are so important, but later, back at home,

  I’m shocked when Mom

  speaks aloud about Cuba at a Quaker meeting, and suddenly

  she has to be escorted through the parking lot,

  where anti-peace picketers see her as a target

  for their hatred.

  Free speech can be

  so dangerous.

  PICTURE DAY

  I ditch school,

  hiding in the park.

  It will be a relief

  to open the yearbook

  and see

  my absence

  from predictions

  that divide and compare girls—

  cutest, coolest, most likely to succeed

  as a movie star.

  Someday when all of us are old,

  this yearbook will prove that I really was

  invisible.

  WALKING TREES

  I’ve read about a forest in Ecuador

  where stilt roots grow at angles

  that help trees aim themselves

  toward patches of sunlight

  by moving

  just a few

  inches

  per day

  until

  the forest

  has slowly

  reached a new

  home.

  But I’m not patient, so I aim myself

  toward Berkeley, expecting college

  and the free-speech movement

  to lead me directly to a rebellious

  form of peace.

  In April, when Martin Luther King is assassinated,

  furious protests follow news of his death

  all over this

  fractured

  country

  so that riots result

  even though King preached nonviolence

  in a time  when the   vast  chasm

  between war hawks     and peace doves

  racists                 and justice seekers

  grows     grows       grows

  wide

  wider

  wild.

  Wild Air

  1968–1969

  COLLEGE AT LAST

  The University of California, Berkeley,

  my seventeenth birthday, I arrive alone

  too stubborn to let my parents help me move

  so far away

  from

  home.

  Freak-out, uptight, laid-back, groovy,

  bummer means bad news, and bread

  means money.

  I quickly learn the language of cool

  rebellious youth, even though I also

  suddenly feel

  isolated

  ancient

  lonely.

  Home is now a bed and a desk

  in a cooperative dorm, where I work

  in the kitchen, peeling potatoes to pay

  for room and board.

  One of the other girls is only seventeen too,

  constantly sobbing for the four-year-old son

  she was forced to give up

  for adoption.

  When we speak to each other, all our words

  revolve like moons around the planet

  of her spinning, agonized, orbiting

  maternal

  sorrow.

  I’m no help at all.

  What do I know of babies?

  Years of weekends spent tending them

  in exchange for bits of money

  taught me nothing more

  than how much simpler

  life will be

  if I never

  fall in love

  get married

  give birth

  care.

  BRAIN WAVES

  My parents are helping

  pay for college, but I need a job,

  and babysitting no longer seems

  like the only choice.

  So I soon find work as a test subject

  in a psychology lab where grad students

  attach eerie wires

  to electrodes

  on my forehead.

  I look like a science-fiction book cover.

  Weird gadgets record my hidden brain’s

  mysteriously pulsing reactions

  as I watch funny movies

  followed

  by horrifying

  war news.

  If only politicians could see these results.

  Maybe they’d decide to conquer the world

  with comedy, instead of weapons.

  CHOOSING MY FUTURE

  With work and housing settled,

  I need classes.

  The world seems infinite.

  So many choices!

  Where do I start?

  First I tour the museum-like halls

  of science departments,

  paleontology and anthropology,

  the dusty bones

  of dinosaurs

  and cavemen

  looming

  like spooky

  campfire tales, as if the past

  might spring to life, clearly viewed,

  a visual

  prehistory.

  Still undecided, I stand in one line

  after another, hour after hour,

  along with thousands

  of other perplexed freshmen,

  everyone complaining

&nbs
p; that it’s too much

  too big

  so many classes

  are already full.

  In the end, I find that I’ve registered

  for Introduction to Physical Anthropology,

  Italian Renaissance Literature,

  Elementary Hindi-Urdu,

  and Freshman Composition,

  a class about writing essays

  designed to convince me that I know

  how to express my opinions.

  The simple versions of Freshman Comp

  were full, so the section I’m in is called

  Rhetoric.

  Am I really enrolled in a class about

  arguing?

  SURROUNDED BY STRANGERS

  All the students at the off-campus dorm

  are pre-med, pre-law, nursing, education,

  black and white East Coast kids,

  no one familiar, not even one person

  from Los Angeles, or one who speaks

  Spanish.

  It’s hard to explain why I want to study

  an outdoor ology that will take me exploring

  in distant tropical rain forests,

  instead of a practical, profitable,

  ordinary

  urban career.

  So I don’t try to make sense of anything.

  I just let myself be a stranger.

  Childhood travels back and forth to Cuba

  are kept secret, even from myself, because by now

  I’m an expert in the slow-motion art

  of forgetting.

  THE STRANGENESS OF DAILY LIFE

  The co-op dorm is on an avenue

  crowded with shaggy panhandlers

  who beg for spare change

  while saffron-robed dancers

  spin in circles, pretending to be spiritual

  and Indian, even though they’re just

  middle-class white kids

  having an adventure

  as they beg too.

  Homeless.

  Hungry.

  Stoned.

  Drunk.

  Street people wander

  into the cafeteria

  to seize food.

  Some of them just eat and leave,

  but others stay and talk, trying to sound

  like students, fibbing about their identities

  just so they can gobble the bland potatoes I peeled.

  I don’t care when they steal food,

  but I’m wary. . . .

  Some of these street people

  seem gentle, but others are aggressive,

  moving like boxers, always ready