December in California

Oranges hang on trees like Christmas
ornaments. One falls and bounces
behind me as I walk down a hill.
I think back to my mother saying,

Papa hitched the horses to a cart to get
winter supplies in town. And that’s
how Santa managed to surprise me
with an orange on Christmas morning.

Her childhood on a farm in 1905
seemed impossible when I was young:
an outhouse, water drawn from a well,
and living on canned goods all winter.

Now, at the bottom of the hill,
I pick up the orange, inhale her
Christmas morning in Kentucky,
and carry it carefully home.

by Psychologist, poet, Hospice of SLO volunteer Author: Biting The Apple Available through Amazon.com

The Bang Theory

                     for Ginny

My sister calls it her Bang Theory:
people look the same day by day,
and then, about every five years,

bang, they change. At seventy,
the Popcorn Plan takes over:
little pops happen daily.

These days, a stranger stares at me
from the mirror. Bang, pop, pop, pop—
she no longer reflects the me I know.

I look after this stranger as best I can
since she masquerades around town
pretending to be me

December 24, 1962

At age twenty-two
I parked my old Dodge,
and sat for the longest time
imagining Christmas morning:

my three-year-old would
uncover her own stove
made from an end table,
doors added, burners painted.
She’d discover tiny plastic pans,
a spatula, and sunny-side-up eggs.

I wanted to unwrap that moment,
and live two childhoods at once.