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in memory of Andrea Lewis, 1957-2009

“When you flush the toilet, when you brush your teeth, the water just goes away. And nobody really thinks about where away is, but that’s where I work—where ‘away’ is.”
– Ingrid Hellegrand,
Orange County Sanitation District
(“Toilet to Tap” — Living on Earth, Public Radio International, 2008)

With no away, you can’t get lost or drown.
You can’t just disappear; you’re trapped right here.
This sticky, spidery web still holds its own.
What does it mean when we think far or near?

What do we do when we throw stuff away?
What happens when we flush? What follows what?
The other ends of dreams unfold. You stay
in place, right where you are, yes, you stay put –

or so you think. Imagine how the sun
felt back in feudal days, when we assumed
our earth was flat. Imagine everyone
asleep in such belief. What insight bloomed,

what twilight rose to open people’s eyes?
“I’m up here moving, folks,” the sun might feel.
“How long before you Christians realize
there’s more than gold that shines? Light shines for real.”

And where does sunlight go? What does it do?
Light feeds each breath we take, light circulates
and in its round-and-round produces you
and me and everything that jumps or waits.

Away, away, away — what does it mean?
To fly away means sailing out of sight,
but who or what is racing from whose scene?
Perspective reigns. Day never knows it’s night.

— Al Young

© 2009 by Al Young

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© Al Young

The falling chill of light on flower and fruit;

the sound and feel of it October’s,

November’s. Their slowing hushes

warm shadows of whisper and touch

— ch, ch, ch — shhhhhhhh

– Al Young

© 2009 Al Young

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On another October day when heat raged
in San Francisco and home-eating fires
attacked Southern California, you, in love again,
stepped out into the glory of another afternoon.

Clutched in the utterly solar caress
of this endless embrace, you saw yourself.
In everyone you greeted or benignly ignored
you saw the same unending birth of light
die on daylight savings time. You saw
the steps you’d have to take to move
from momentariness back into eternity.

You wandered into this dwindling October,
where you’ve dwelled for ages. Eternity
and maternity share more than earth-
churning cycles; both turn on the moment
just ended. Each spins on the moment just begun.

Never out of step, advancing Pied Piper style,
her slowing march on winter made a rat out of you.
Almost over now, October spread herself
across the landscape, cocksure of getting over.

As warming to the eye as to your touch, October,
moreover, no stranger to the flash and shimmer
of gold and burnt sienna, red and sunburst
green, October reminded. “Time may have
a stop,” she said, “but life does not. Life goes.”
And at her gung-ho go-away party, you hoisted
your glass: “To moist October, quencher of flame.”

© 2006 by Al Young
from Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006

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In memory of Michael McGettigan
(1956-2009)

Where does it say you have to play your cards
the way you played your horn? Where did it say
the road you’d walk would shrink to miles and yards
of first-class golf course holes up in Coos Bay?

I knew you when you spoke to me of songs
and dreams. Leave California. Settle down.
New Orleans was the place. A sad heart longs
to beat a whole new way — you heard its sound.

You played it all by ear, threw down your heart,
bartended nights; by day you owned the club.
Golf kept the wolf at bay. Golf let you start
again from scratch each day. Was this the rub?

Since when can’t life be one big hole-in-one?
Where did it say your hurt was yours alone?

– Al Young

© 2009 Al Young

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Swee: “Rainstorm”  |  © Malaysian Watercolours

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Overhearing her peppery, gray-eyed cry of “Get off my ass!”
– part gringo, part Mexico — you guess she’s undressing,
addressing her boyfriend, her partner, her lover, her spouse;
stranded, winded; all of us hostages to this gangster storm.

Your translation, flawless in any lingo: “Hey, lighten up!”
All space between spaces softens; you clearly hear the fridge,
its on-off friendliness, the binary push-pull of life and lull.
the way the full love-hate, pass-fail, love-leave yin-yang swings.

Parked (maybe arked) till morning in our sudden, rain-bashed
no-star motel — no wireless, no email, no female connection –
alone with ticking blood and heart-swept buds, you flower,
renewing your lifetime membership in Club One Another.

– Al Young
Antioch, CA
May Day 2009

© 2009 by Al Young

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