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 POEM... empty handed Desert landscape is so empty, nothing there, just sand, Wind on your face erasing miles of memory, Los Angeles flicking the odometer goodbye. Sun moving, or did you turn slightly East a while back? Car is hot, dashboard hot, hands in shade, but steering wheel hot, Sagebrush making its dotted fuzzy pattern like an orchard of trunkless trees, Dry green, on dry pinkish amber colored sand, two deserts mixing colors in the East until just before the border, where it is pink and pink and clouds are only white on the top, reflecting the sand from their bottoms. A green ocotillo appears over a hill quavering, Not bending, just moving all fingers straight, An arthritic wave, an Arizona greeting, A day fading into a border. Wasteland, feared and agile in the mind, The result of leaving home without love you can keep, Marrying yourself to danger, impermanence, Men without purpose, without money folded. No water there, no well to drink from and you believed them. Evening colors the pink almost red, and the sky is fire, The spiny greens thicken on the slopes of rocky heat, Rain falls from a high swoop miles North of your highway, No road to get there, no way to feel the drops, That may or may not touch the ground. So you believed them, and left it unopened, The man with no shiny car, No ideas on how to survive winter, Only how to drift like the rain that doesn’t touch ground. And you will never know if that water could be drunk, Could grow crops, be made to storm or fill a lake, Caught there in the sky, Water that was barely there anyway, a mist even, a veil, A margin of heat resisting its approach, its descent, its absorption into skin. STORY... Flying Dive class ended on the bottom of the sea floor. After the last skill demonstration the instructor had us sit in a tight row on our knees facing him. Mark knelt directly across from us, bowed formally with his hand on his stomach like a four star waiter. We were puzzled, but Mark demanded our eyes on him above or below water so we studied him closely. One by one, he came up to us and shook our hands, transferring an imaginary tassel from one side of our foreheads to the other. Third in the row, I straightened up a bit when he came to me. Do all scuba instructors do this? Is it an official undersea ceremony? Really, it was thoughtful and funny and just Mark all the way. He finished with Tony, my dive buddy, then signaled at us to swim away. We were on our own now, able to dive at our pleasure, we hesitated, he signaled again. Tony and I swam slowly off toward the kelp forest to our left, lightly adding air to our vests to pull us up from the bottom. I kicked my fins as gracefully as I could with blistered feet and a semi-cramped calf. Tony fussed with his gauges, looking at his compass repeatedly. I craned my head around to look for fish in the dense deep water. A school of small silvery fish I had yet to identify came like a cloud above and to my right. Giant kelp wrapped around itself up to the surface, higher than trees in my neighborhood. My own gauge said forty-two feet deep, fifty-eight degrees cold. The fish made no sound around me, but the volume seemed to be turned up of everything I could hear. The bubbles, the breathing, the tapping of the gauges were all through my head like the water had soaked every sense into me. I looked up past the fishes to the light breaking through in streaks from the surface. This must be what heaven feels like, peaceful, full of flickering light, clouds of fish and other animals moving around you. Silver caught the light like a flashbulb, they bolted through the kelp and were gone. Sand disappeared into yellow-brown leaves the size of dining tables, like tablecloths fanned out from a clothesline sideways to the bottom. Bottom? There only seemed to be middle and thick water. I looked to the surface, the sparkly flat that would tell me where it was replaced by dense blue split up into sections by the brown leaves. Another surge came and the ridgey leaves blocked the light for a moment. I was wandering through laundry hung out to dry in a wet world, sheets clothes-pinned to trees with finger thick trunks. Specks came into focus in front of my mask, I thought they were water spots at first, but they were sand or bugs or some other thing that lives in the water. Cell-like clear and white specks that hung evenly in the gel like water at thirty-nine feet. I was aware at last that I was no longer sinking nor rising, I had achieved neutral buoyancy. Something I had struggled with so far on every training dive. I was breathing fairly shallow, and realized that that was what Mark had talked about, just slowing down and not over-thinking everything. I hung there, checked my gauges, still thirty-nine feet, two-thousand pounds of air, nothing bothering me. Tony? I shouldn’t lose track of Tony so soon as a graduate of diving school. I paddled my arms and feet to turn my body, he was nowhere to be seen, the fat kelp leaves filled the water. I straightened out and faced down to clear my mask that had fogged. Tony’s kicking fins were just beneath me, good. I had made a close study of our classmate’s various swim fins so I could identify them, and felt comforted to find him below me now. He was checking his gauges again. Did he see the school of fish? Not sure what he had seen, but I knew he would navigate us back to the boat. He was good at that. I dropped down to him, and swam up beside him in the cold water. Gave the okay sign once I got his attention, he signaled back. I hugged my shoulders indicating coldness, and gave a thumb’s up sign to suggest going to a shallower depth. He nodded, then stopped himself and did the okay sign instead. I wasn’t actually cold in the deep water, but I knew he was, his wetsuit fitting so loosely. We could spend more time, bottom time, if we swam shallower anyway. He kicked off ahead of me out of the fish rich kelp. We swam toward shore, or so I figured once the actual bottom came closer to us as we swam at the same depth. Rocks with wavy plants appeared, orange Girabaldi eye-balled us closely as we swam through their respective territories. Different fish swimming slowly around a rocky reef, small gobis and big Sheep’s head, they gossiped and drifted in the current. There must be waves above I thought, the fish moving together sideways then floating back without changing position. More of their bodies became visible the longer I held still. Kelp bass appeared under the smaller leaves, their brownish yellow camouflage betraying them only when they move their eyes. Their mouths imitating the plant’s elbow connected to the main stem. Our sandy bottom was gone completely, squishy sea anenomies and red plants covered the rocks. Fluffy green sea plants like thick full trees bent sideways in an unseen wind. Watching them closely, I felt weightless, I was finally still, or was I moving? The trees held still for a moment and the ground moved instead, the water perfectly clear. I floated a while over the earth, flying, or so I felt, how different could it be? IOWA WRITER'S FESTIVAL EXCHANGE- 13th of the Month with Theme The following are the result of a writing exchange with members of the Iowa Writer's Festival class "Writing with the Senses" I took in June 2007 from Marc Nieson. On the 13th of each month, our class of twelve writers exchanges 100 words or less with a designated theme. December: Elation Elation Saturday morning she lay in bed looking to the textured ceiling, the long week, the new bar opening, the guy she ran into from school. She smiles while the rest of her remains still on the pillow, tucked tightly in the sheets. Sun comes through the window at a hard November slant, the room is warm with sun and thick blankets weighing down on her. Lunch she eats alone, leftover take out, fork into the paper boxes, kind of heated through. Phone rings. She's never heard his voice on the phone before, it confuses her pleasantly. She cradles the phone in her neck, puts her face to the bright sun, closes her eyes, and says, "yes". October: Exhaustion Exhaustion Dusty cat making biscuits on my summer pj's. Computer says London is nearly two a.m., But Burbank tells me evening, six. Am I really here? My eyes heavy, cat hot in my lap, Emitting British Thermal Units, On a hot October day in L.A., Full of fire and smoke and dusty ash. A week late on my writing exchange, A year late in my divorce, Everything wearing as thin as summer pajamas When his friends come over unexpectedly, Pizza in hand and not hearing that it is two a.m., Husband sick in bed, Other cat's white fur dark from killing a mouse in yesterday evening's wind. September: Movement Movement Vinyl sticks to her legs just below the hem, she lifts one knee over the other. Music floats through the honky tonk: clangy and sweet. Couples dance as if born in the same shape. Men fling their arms wide, their women connected by the hand, skirts filling and lifting. Wildly they spin and then turn sweetly in small steps around the wood floor swept clean of dust and spilled drinks. She waits eagerly, then not too, then just gives up on being asked to dance. Well, at least it’s pleasant to hear the music. She sips her drink fast then slow, and wipes salt from the rim onto her finger and then up to her lips. “Would you like to dance?” a determined hand reaches out to her. She is up, she is moving, she is spinning and smiling. August: Reunion Reunion Blinking her eyes, she submerges into the dark barroom, skirt licking the backs of her legs. Would he show? Her eyes fail to adjust walking through the thrumming music. Dry wood dust, freshly spilt beer, a bare bulb behind the bar, pushing her eyes to the floor. Black shiny backs of heeled shoes, then a boot pointed forward. The faint smell of gasoline and smoked cigarettes soaked into a canvas jacket softens her, an almost forgotten smell. His low twangy voice speaking to her quickly, music drowning the words. The naked light behind him blocked Melanie’s ability to see his time-changed face. Her arm reaches out to shade her eyes, to better see, the same as if she were reaching for an embrace. July: Unlucky Unlucky at Last Unlucky to have met you, Unlucky to have let you sit close to me, And tell me what I most wanted to hear. A round stone interrupting a mirror lake. Unlucky to feel fire again, And burn through traffic and rain and scorching wind, Unlucky to sleep in the next room from yours, Where I actually belong. I belong nowhere now, Not in my own house, in my yard, Feeling you in the dark empty spaces under trees, In the music soaked rafters of a dimly lit stage, Unlucky and alive at last.
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