For Kathleen Flowers

A beautiful poem by Kathleen Flowers, my friend who passed away recently:

In These Five Remaining Days
After Hafez

In these five remaining days, I see
I’ve spent my life bellowing like a mule,
feeling broken beneath a burden
that was mine to learn to carry
or the weight of another’s I could not ease.

In these four remaining days, the robe,
that has been my body, revels in
its own unraveling. Inside, a hummingbird
hovers, half-inside a flower, then zips
away, stitching the sky with iridescence.

In these three remaining days, I am still,
knowing what ripens below, soon breaks
through the duff, finds some light––
a rose-colored mushroom, quietly
glistens in the redwood mist.

On this, the second to last day, I ride
a riptide out to sea, find myself
fixed again to the ocean’s umbilicus.
Rocked upon her heaving breast, I taste
the briny tears we share, let go my thirst.

Oh this, my final day of living,
with every last breath, I make a plea
for the chance to hold aloft a hundred more
burdens, a friendship to sip, a forest to sit in,
singing thank you, thank you, thank you!


I miss Kathleen, though I hardly knew her. A short time ago, I was taking a walk in Santa Cruz, and stumbled upon her little house. I had only been there once. I went to Emily's Bakery afterward, close by, and wrote this in my journal. Could be the start of a poem, might not:

"In this unexpected rain, I walk, suddenly discover your little house with its neat bamboo hedge, this day a landscape of lead, fog, mist, stormcloud. Here is your cherry tree with its small ruffled parasols of ruffles, here are the tall spires of lavender, the ones you wrote about from the other side of the window. I wish my poetry would bring me to such heights as yours; you knew the wild pulse under the hummingbird's throat, the ecstasies in a single opening flower. There was a time, not too long ago, when I could look deep into the creamy throat of a morning glory and joyfully translate its song.
Now poetry is my Lilith with wild red hair; she wraps me in chains, drops me to the bottom of the sea, twists me through dead-end labyrinths, old wells echoing with grievances told over and over, unquenchable longings.

The night before your funeral, I dreamed I stood in front of a dark church, waiting, afraid I would not find a place there, and you jumped out of the dark, showered me with handfuls of pink rose petals. Laughing, you gave me a gentle push down the street. "Go!" you said, "Leave here! Go have fun!" So many leaves on the sidewalk, shushing under my feet.

How strange now to me that you are gone and your house still stands, paint washed to ochre in this gray light, a flamenco-red geranium in front, all the small brightnesses, the suns you dropped like coins in the wake of your leaving.