Her Book of Hours

1.

Her marriage had been like the Euplectella,
a tropical sponge of transparent silica
columns and calcium lattice,
a protective cylinder for tiny bioluminescent
shrimp who enter and feed on whatever passes by—
and each other—until they are too large to leave.
Finally, only two remain in their glass house,
mating and consuming their own offspring
to stay alive.


2.

An old survivor waiting in the maw
of darkness, she dips raw calamari pieces—
cold, slick, slightly sticky slivers of meat—
in a special marinade and has a cocktail
before her guests arrive. She looks forward
to the silence of serious conversations amid
the general party noise, the aquatic echoes and
shimmering reflections from the surface.
She always thought that distraction—
not meditation—would become the abiding
habit of her life.


3.

The night rises like the ocean at high tide,
filling up the kitchen window with sand and shell detritus.
She remembers how the Sixties
filled her with a kind of madness—
she was called the Kim Novak of Old Irving Park—
how the half-drunken company men,
with their bourbon breath, their beard stubble rough
on her neck, their groping hands
in the poolside torch light,
excited her.




4.

Our faded beauty lights lamps of Himalayan
salt crystals, balancing positive and negative
ions, bearing the burden of balance
against the turning night tide—
and the burden of memory suddenly dredges
to the surface the time he pulled all of her lingerie
from the bureau, cut it up with a fishing knife,
then sailed off to Maui with his young office-wife.


5.

The lucid interval of romantic love passes
as she leafs through the jewel-toned, postcard
illuminations in her life’s book of hours
and nibbles a sprig of mint,
the bitter taste of his sex on her tongue.
If it is the Hour of Vespers,
it is the Hour of Solace—or at least
the Hour of Mohitos—to wash away what none
of us would choose.


6.

Against her still wet skin,
the silky antique kimono reminds her to dress
before her Spiritual Cinema Circle friends arrive.
The film tonight features Azurus,
the Polynesian tantric siddha who reads soul
frequencies and charts horoscopes.
Is it fated that her grand-daughter will ask
for breast implants for high school graduation?
Of course she remembers the urgency
to be desired when who you are is not enough.


7.

To leave her children a few beliefs
instead of the ruins of an old courage,
an empty palace beneath the sea—
is that too much to hope?
Let them find wild manzanita,
purple jacaranda, and a view of Big Sur—
like the one from the deck of Nepenthe,
crowded with seekers,
drunk on the wine of God.