Here Hear
Incessant tinny crickets
someone’s named tinnitus
ringing high-pitched in the ear, sotto voce
allelu-u-ia in the wake of last night’s
choir, crunch of radish and romaine,
meets the bubble-bump of
eggs boiling, bird cheep, long swish thunk
thunk of car down the road with boom-box blasting,
squishy slaps of wetsuits, squeals of laughter,
constant rush-hush of waves on the shore,
faint woofing, yelping, bang of screen door,
mommy, where’re my . . .?
flip-flops flapping, then these
rackety scratches rolling around the corner,
skateboards, neighbor’s wind-chimes, more
hammering with banter in Spanish from the roof out back,
high up, a small plane’s buzz, and this
scratch scratch of writing, clump it
in a notebook for later . . .
the sky clear blue now, my feet tell me, move, out the door,
and happily the weeds are calling—
tickly foxtails, pungent fever-few, the tiny orange
not-so-scarlet pimpernel,
the stringy-rooted runners to get down on my knees to—
and with a leaf of mint for taste—
in the pulling of weeds
merciful silence.
Rosie King grew up down the road from Theodore Roethke’s family house in Saginaw, Michigan, had his strict sister, June, for 9th grade English, and went on to graduate from Wellesley. She moved west in 1966, taught at San Francisco State and UC–Santa Cruz while writing on Shakespeare and the late poetry of H.D. for M.A. and doctoral degrees. Her broadside poem for the Roethke centennial, “I Flew Low Over Gratiot Road,” and her first collection of poems, Sweetwater, Saltwater, published in 2007, are available from Hummingbird Press.
Local Poets, Local Inspiration, edited by Robert Sward, appears monthly in Santa Cruz Weekly.
