Just Passing Through
Tanka by Jeannie Lupton
when she called
the moon salmon
I saw it
arc upstream
in a river of sky
riding beside me
on the Oakland bus
the old stranger
presses his leg against mine
oh why not.
I saw this
at the café tonight
two young women
powerful, innocent
already crones, already dust
staying alive
in the nursing home
by not eating,
writing poems--
things she controls
at the casino
with Francine
I sip tea
while she wins and loses
forty dollars
the pueblo drumming
woke the wind woke the trees
woke the crickets
woke the coyote woke the dogs
woke the night woke us
blow-out
on the interstate
my pot luck pie
lacks one jagged piece
by the time I arrive
sand
everywhere
even
in my
sandwich
wordlessly
my curved spine
tells it all
no need for poems
about suffering
breeze
blowing my armpit hair
sparse since chemo
not just to be alive
but to feel alive
I feel her laugh
when I spill the blueberries
just like
something I would do
whispers Aunt Mary’s ghost
meditation
teacher
screams
BE
QUIET
* * *
at the end
of a hard day
listening
to the crickets
complain and complain
breath rises, falls
thoughts of sausage and apples
breath rises, falls
my window wide open
to the fading autumn sun
at senior housing
roars of the Cal football crowd
from across Berkeley
a day so beautiful
solitude turns lonely
at senior housing
a lover from ‘67
is my neighbor
in a wheelchair from a stroke
he has a crooked smile for me
my elderly aunt
visits me at senior housing
and sits straight backed
her most dreaded fate
would be to live in this place
making fun
I call it the old folks’ home
how can it be
I too grow white whiskers
when I’ve always been sixteen
with cable TV
and rubber draperies
to make it dark
my home’s like a motel room
just passing through
from my balcony
at senior housing
a crone’s eye view
of earth and sky
this world I love
Friday night
I watch TV in the lobby
a neighbor
brings me a special treat
his last chocolate Ensure
the gypsy told me
I belong to the world
I send it poems
and keep to these hills
scribbling in the fog
when I die
play Bobby Darin’s
“Beyond the Sea”
for my soul, always sixteen
looking forward to love
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Jeannie Lupton moved to the San Francisco East Bay from Northern Virginia in 2002 and has been active in the poetry community there, and in the tanka community more generally worldwide, ever since. Her work has appeared in various journals and booklets over the years, culminating in her collection, But Then You Danced: Tanka (Raw Art Press, 2007), followed by the publication of a second collection, Love Is a Tanka (Blue Light Press, 2021). Jeannie hosted the Second Saturday Poetry and Prose Reading Series at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda, California, for over 13 years. She has also given several short solo performances at the Marsh Theater in Berkeley, as well as leading a memoir writing group for seniors on Zoom. She is a member of the Fresh Ink Poetry Collective and Bay Area Poets Coalition, and writes with Clive Matson's 2-Busy-2-Write group every Tuesday night. She lives at Strawberry Creek Lodge in Berkeley with 150 other elders and her cat, BB.
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