UNDER THE RAINPOEMS BY REBECCA MORRISON

© Rebecca Morrison

Some of these poems were published previously in: The UC Davis Arboretum Review, Late Peaches: A Sacramento Anthology, The Third Sunday Anthology, Cache Creek Anthology, Rattlesnake Review, From the Mouths of Angels, Jewel of the Valley and eskimopie.net. Cover painting of the author by Alejandro Escalante.

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B A R N C O T T P R E S S

The Angel Spider 5

Lilacs 6

Desire 7

Beauty 8

The Olympic Girl 9

The Women of Putah Creek 11

His My 13

Bird Song 17

The All Night Drive Through the Stars to the Moon 18

Upon Eating a Manzanita Berry 21

Two Days 22

The Cabin Bed 25

The Water People 26

Out of the Blue 28

The Ocean and the Woods 30

The Kite 31

A Curve of Green 32

Baker Beach 32

Opening Robinson Jeffers 33

Vacaciones in Monterey 34

Window Panes 35

Untitled 36

From the Sun to the Moon 37

The Sink Hole 37

Quercus Ilex 38

The Pinwheel Heart 42

Written While Blind 43

Why I Come to the Creek 44

The Perfect Dance 47

Oek 'hua 'hua 48

The Sky Is Full of Holes 48

Incandescent 49

Snake of Stars 52

Mount Diablo 54

The White Osprey 56

The Most Beautiful Woman in the World 58

Rapture 61

The Eagle 63

San Joaquin Summer 63

Portent/The Flood 65

Rivers of Ice 66

Into the Blue 66

Poem for the Future 67

Serengeti Dreaming 68

Sea of Bones 69

Why I Could Never Be a Saint 71

A Flower Under the Alps 72

The Devil Mountains 75

The Three Cormorants of Time 76

Between (Summer and Fall) 77

The Dark Angel 78

The Keep 79

Memory 79

The Trunk of the World 81

The Map of the World 82

The Red Sail 83

About the Author 13

The Angel SpiderA small black spiderbody like an unopened flowersees the wrought iron gatewithout realizing she can crawl between the barswithout realizing that smallness of beingis an angel spinning her own wingscasting her spells into the May windher tiny feet whispering across brickshiding in cracks drinking angels’ tears

To the spiderthe sun is overwhelmingseeing nothing but lightshe needs the shadowsthe dark leaves of the mulberry treeone day is her heavenone sparkling webher dance around the Maypolespinning out from the centersun and shadow breaking dew on web into rainbow streamersas she turns her careful patterns ever outwardever subject to the wind a fragile net

waiting for a butterfly to eat

The spider is hard and shiny and blackshe drinks poison not nectarshe fishes in the dark cornersshe hides her hourglass on her red blood belly and dreams of flying

Lilacs increase and decrease and the sun in me is the moon in you and our growing is awkward like the hands of the clock running backwards with no vision in sight except for the lilacs and he told me he was having a crisis of faith in poetry that no one was listening not even the poets poets were just speaking and the voices are like flowers a field of poppies where Dorothy falls asleep in the somnambulistic cradle of the sun and this morning I ask another man why the poverty of the soul in Americaas if we always have to pick the flowers and enclose them in glass paperweights instead of just letting them be and he said poets have the soul of the nation

in their mouths that creativity is spirituality and god is my poem is in your flowers, your hair, your lips, your pain and "April is the cruelest month" and the lilacs' bloom is the kiss of death and spring is a sweet heavy melody that I just have to let go let rush over me pull my earth through my sun and I tell you this is your cross to bear this lilac, this mortal flowerand spring is your witness and words are your rain and my eyes are why you should keep the faith because only by letting go can we hang on and the lilacs are breeding in the dark soil of our awkward glances and I will meet you somewhere between the cradle and the last gleaming and I want to make you believe at 2:00 in the morning in the Denny's parking lot that writing about lilacs and pain will make the spring a little softer

DesireWhen I first opened my eyes I saw that all was good and I wanted everything.

When the sun stood directly overhead I was dazzled and overwhelmed and everything was bright and clear and true and I wanted it all.

But the afternoon cast shadows on bright flowers and I longed to rest in darkness.I slept on a smooth white bed covered with thin black sheets.

The moon laughed in its ancient wisdom as it rose and fell and I wanted it more than anything.

Beauty “Stay on the path" —words of wisdom from the gardenerIf I had knownthere would befine wine and rosesperhaps I would not have comeI am no longer quietenoughMy hands are dirtyBut these are subtle differences,things that shouldn't matter to BeautyIf I had knownthere was a gardenI would have been afraidIf I had knownthere was Beauty,soft light, silence,bird sounds,

I would have stayed at home

Iron gates, perfect lawnsyellow sassafrass—is this really Beauty?The birds who tell weeping stories?The bricks which sweep back and forthacross the lawn?This vein along my arm,the blood—black, blue?

I am azureI am red I am not quiet not pure not BeautyWanting water,finding insteadthe desert.The perfect gardenis no longerany kind of idea of mine.

(Written in the gardens of Villa Montalvo, Saratoga, CA)

The Olympic Girl She of the superior ovarieslost one gold medalbecause she hadtaken ephedra, lost the gold world

for the sake of a flower.Just like Eurydicelost the flowers of paradise,the parasitetaking her future by looking back, telling her the flowerswere not made for humans, not for women. But we know differently.And we never question why we love the darkblue bells of the salviacalling us at dusk.Their sweet silencebegging us to look back, to take them with,like the nutletputs on its summer dressfor the squirrel who doesn’t question his need, or the Indians who chose the ubiquitous redbud for its bi-colored bark but not the buckwheatwhose scarce paniclenow opens only on the wide Pacific.

The redbud in every nursery—Someone choosing one—perhaps the Mormonsadopting ephedrafor its allure, the cowboys growing hemp ropes, the whores dropping belladonnain their eyes, nightshade in his tea.Their superior ovaries like flowers insideflooding them with hormonic colors—I want red bluepale Daturasacred flowerobtuse or acute but always desired.

The Women of Putah CreekTo break into the night

with a handful of women, pushing down the fence, dredging up the past,as Putah Creekflooded our eyes with her story alive.

We sawthe creek split pastthe family of her body, the town of her eyes,filled with living ghostsas a bat circled by.

At twilightwe could almost seethe funeral pyre, mother and child just beneath this empty reservoir.

Patwin boneslining the labyrinth of the past, this maze of timeflowing like the creek across the valley as night settled like the Spanish ranchers (I like this place, I think I’ll stay) on the oak-studded land.

We poets,like Chinese laborers,

dig with our shovelsin the sand, unsettling ghoststo make new paths for the flow of humanitywhich rushes by incessantly like a freeway into the night.

About the AuthorRebecca Morrison is the editor of eskimopie.net, a forum for poets, artists and writers since 2002. She has published several chapbooks and performs her work frequently on radio and T.V. She hosts two reading series: Poetry in the Arboretum at the University of California, Davis, and Hot Poetry in the Park’ in Sacramento. She is a graduate of UC Davis and co-founded the Third Sunday Writing Group which has been meeting monthly since 1995. She serves as a Board Member of the Sacramento Poetry Center and is one of the founding editors of Poetry Now. She has published in a wide variety of journals including Flatlander, Tule Review, Because People Matter and Poems For All. She is a docent and gardener for the UC Davis Arboretum. She has lived in Alaska, Arizona, California, Vermont, and Switzerland.

* The full version of Under The Rain is now available as a Kindle Edition ebook published by Barncott Press. A print edition will be published later this summer.

B A R N C O T T P R E S S