Are You That Woman

At the edge of Packer Lake

The window between autumn and winter is quickly closing. Only yesterday it was summer. Winds are lifting the treetops and sweeping diamond lights across the lake. Birds reclaim homesteads, crying raucous above the silence.

Human sounds have retreated replaced by the sounds of creaking pine limbs and bird voices. The lake laps at the shoreline. Boats sit empty longing for the return of spring. A doe, with liquid black eyes, moves past without a sound and nibbles fading willow and grasses.

Dry pine needles rain down.

Snow flies soon.

Barbara L. Steinberg
September 16, 2013
Packer Lake Lodge

Wild Rivers Coast: There’s a reason why on the Smith and Klamath rivers

The sun was barely breaking through when fog began rolling in across the mouth of the Smith River. Where river and ocean unite feels holy. Harbor seals – almost ghostly – gaze out across the shallow. A community of cormorants Zen(ly) attempt drying their wings. Brown pelicans and gulls share the sandspit. A lone angler casts again and again. He confides it’s been rumored salmon are running better on the Rogue and Klamath rivers. Still, he’s content. I watch with quiet respect and retreat once my camera is satiated.

Some 30 miles away, we strolled a considerable spit separating the Klamath River from the Pacific Ocean. One more peaceful world, the lone inhabitants walking or sitting quietly we reverently contemplate this sacred space. The tide is returning and waves crash to the shore. A swift undertow – the cold water just licks my naked feet as I scramble away.  The Klamath has journeyed far – 263 miles from Southern Oregon – to wed itself to the churning ocean.

These are the reasons why along the Wild Rivers Coast.

 

The Same Sky

On a moonless night,
   A jeweled sky thick with constellations,
Crowns the Eastern Sierra.
Peering into the darkness
I wonder, "Is this the same sky?"

Clouds of gray and white,
    Shadow and light,
Like atomic plumes flung skyward,
Kiss the blue and drape the peaks, 
And still I ask, "Is this the same sky?"

A blazing morning sun drenches 
    Scented sage and pine.
A still, azure plain stretches flat and clear
Above Inyo Mountains and high desert valleys.
In my eyes, "Is this still the same sky?"

Can anyone say:
    Before the Spanish missionaries;
    Before the buffalo and grizzly bears;
    Before the rush to riches and water wars;
    Before Muir and Adams;
    Before asphalt ribbons and all-terrain...
"Is this the same sky?"

Barbara L. Steinberg
Tom’s Place, CA 
July 27, 2003

I'm a big girl now

At the crack of dawn, an odyssey,
Along sleepy city streets,
My small town heart rejoices,
At my big girl retreat.
The antique trolley,
Clangs to a stop.
And I scramble aboard,
With a jump! Skip! Hop!
One would never imagine,
In my life at this time,
Such a routine experience,
Could be so sublime.
And the joy of a ferry,
That whisks me away,
From my big girl adventure,
In the city by the Bay.

Barbara L. Steinberg
San Francisco 
January 23, 2006

Olfactory Memories

The house in England
was full of pastel petaled sweet peas
that grew on the garden trellis.
Their subtle honeyed scent
wafted across my senses.

         Twenty years later,
         each inhaled sweet pea
         returns me to that idyllic summer.

Zadie, my story-telling grandfather
who lingered over the simplest meals
relishing each morsel
and called my sister, “Madam sauerkraut”
smoked a pipe.

         He died in 1969 but the aroma of burning pipe tobacco
         touches a warm inner recollection
         of his rough, unshaven cheek as it brushed against my face.

My aged neighbor
kept her doors keyed, bolted and padlocked
windows closed and heat turned on high.
The house was full of 94 years and
on summer evenings we sat on the porch and talked.

         An elderly person sat near me
         on the morning bus.
         That same musty smell tapped my memory
         and, turning, I have expected to see her there.
         I miss those warm summer nights.

When you are gone,
the remembrance of your fragrant cologne
haunts me –
on my hands, in my bed, on other men.
I drink it in
swallowing the impassioned images in
breathless gulps.

                My memories are fading…
                Pass the decongestants.

April 4, 1993