Moon Over Marlboro 1987 Tia Ballantine
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'Alewa Drive : for my sister
In May of 2001, I moved from a city apartment with kitchen and bath to a windowless doorless ruin standing against the wind that daily flushed the lava cliffs above Nu`uanu Valley in Honolulu.
The ruin had no plumbing or electricity, but a ramshackle termite-eaten shack nearby did. Both were situated in the middle of three acres of wild land, home to bougainvillea blooming in the high reaches of pine trees, an endangered Hawaiian owl who greeted us ceremoniously when we first arrived, and a tribe of native Hawaiian bats.
My artist husband -- now my ex-husband -- had been using the ruin as a painting studio for the past two years, and when the shack went empty, we moved in, ignoring leaking roofs and crowds of insects. From the empty lanai, we could stare out to sea and look across Punchbowl to Diamondhead.
Each morning the forest birds were ecstatic, and every evening the sky applauded. After the second week of this new life, my younger sister, with whom I share a birthday, was diagnosed with serious breast cancer, requiring both radical surgery and chemotherapy. She is now cancer-free and living happily in the north country.
These sonnets, printed below, were written for her and are part of a larger collection entitled 'Alewa Drive.
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Published: The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 46.1 (Autumn, 2004): 49.
FORCE FED
Wind interrupts spoken words. Bird song fails:
clear music translates as noise. I’m alarmed
by one blind eye and by this god who harms
for no reason. I’m stone, curled head to tail
protecting my skull from angry fists. Pale
lights fly past windows, doors. I can’t stay warm.
I shake. Outside, night wraps in thunderstorm –
fringed dark ragged sharp – rain invades – wind scales –
Lava walls collapse. Inside, emptiness.
My porcelain web-girl figurine circles
from her ceiling leash – head thrown back, rope curled
around her thigh, spangled roses on her breast,
lips a painted smile, feet that won’t touch ground.
I can’t swallow storm without breathing sound.
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Published: The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 46.2 (Winter 2005): 140.
FLEDGLING
I climb cliffside trails to address stones.
Earth kindly offers me a place to rest –
fits me into worn rock. I’m unimpressed
by city views. Noise slips away, along
with centuries of rust. Ancient love songs
seep from lava cracks as dawn confesses
to the innocence of birds. I undress,
drape my shirt on nearby brush, and walk on.
I’m naked in rain. How quickly skies change.
Beneath a ledge, I find a broken egg –
empty and smooth, its inner curve accepts
my thumb: skin pressed to skin. I wait for rain
to cease, my hair to dry. Small red birds drop
from nests like stone, discover flight, untaught.
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Published: Living Water 9 (2003).
RICHES
At home in Nu`uanu Valley, I panic –
May Day – 6 AM – grey steel rain distorts
the ridge, 2500 miles from granite
coasts, acres above the ocean floor –
I look north through unrestricted rain, orange
heights collapsed into the Pali gap. Hands
are ice against my thigh – damp winds stay strange.
I can’t swallow all that distance demands.
Convicted by my heart, I’m ignorant of birds,
and turn this dawn to history way too fast –
Suppressed confession leaves me stripped of words.
If I had diamonds, I’d scratch the window glass:
Much suspected by me
Nothing proved can be.
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TREASON
The thunder drum hovers, stays very still
like some spider dropped from clouds suspended
miles from its web inches from dry ground.
Behind me, sky fades to washed-out red. I’ll
separate myself, drown my mind, distill
my reason. When dark and dreams have ended,
I’ll scrape away the demons night has sent.
Yesterday, I planted parsley and dill,
some basil, two summer squash. I sorted stones
by weight by feel. Wind spilled rivers. Dirt
packed between my toes. This morning one lone
basil plant remains – the rest: ripped apart
by snails. I pile heiau stone, assembling
pyramids. No fear, but lots of trembling.
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LULU’S SONG
I’m angry with the sun. She reached down
and grabbed my heart, attached it to her breast,
flew away on tornado trails of sound
that rang like bells of ragged beggars dressed
in the lace of muddy ice. When she left,
I touched the cavern in my chest. I’m skinned:
blood and nerve removed. Broken spine undressed.
I can deal with flesh exposed to rain, wind
scratching on my skull, but the threat of death
slammed against my bones: that’s too much to bear.
Fear takes me out. (Anger’s just a pretext)
Heaven’s war cannot be won. (I’m aware
of my collapse) Hell, when push comes to shove,
I know that fear is opposite of love.
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PRAYER
I lack the delicate instinct needed
for lyric. I stay curious rather than
amazed. I don’t belong on sacred land,
yet I sit still for hours beneath trees in
shade, watching rain turn mountains liquid green.
I listen to language I can’t understand:
bird chatter, wind. I aim for innocence
but find color’s grammar, culture’s scheme –
grids drawn with harsh precision as lines thrown
across vision (another way to read
this ancient landscape: stones as words.) I need
the circumference of birth, but alone
I can’t read the small print etched on the ring,
can’t calculate wilderness. So it seems.
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REMEDY
Beside this light attached to ribs, a beast
sinks its teeth in muscle, displacing bone
and eating flesh of aging breasts. It’s real,
you say. I can’t dislodge this thief. I’m stone
I’m steel I’m wire I’m strong I’m none of these
I break. Why am I so tired? I’m not sick.
You’re fighting cancer, not me. Night keeps
me from describing gardens no longer
there. I collide with music and bridges:
distance leaves me wrapped full round by Schumann’s
song of lotus bloom. If music fixes
wrong in ways that prayer won’t, why can’t
this alto voice erase this unyielding sorrow?
Flutes fast overtake me. I can’t breathe concertos.
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