Category: General

October 8, 2022

Smoke of our sadness
Loss we have yet to measure
Drifts across the hearts

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Memorial poem to the people who died in the 2017 fire:

The goodness of each one ripples down through time.
These people who have shared our life
The kindness of a word or a touch when it was needed
Flows onward
The space in time we each share
Is here like a wave
Leaving a ripple in our hearts.
And lessons recognized in their passing
Spread as rings on water, seen, then remembered
The goodness of each one ripples down through time

The goodness of each one ripples down through time.
These people who have shared our life
The kindness of a word or a touch when it was needed
Flows onward
The space in time we each share
Is here like a wave
Leaving a ripple in our hearts.
And lessons recognized in their passing
Spread as rings on water, seen, then remembered
The goodness of each one ripples down through time
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Five years after the firestorm in Santa Rosa, these are the words and the descriptions of what happened. Here are the poems that I wrote for this cataclysm. These are the photos of one house before the fire, after the fire, and after the reconstruction.

I was surprisingly blessed to be passed over for some of the sadness and loss. My neighbors and friends were not lucky like me. In January 2017 after I moved out of the house, and took all my collected art, I updated all of my insurance. So I received both an insurance settlement and had the ability to sell the property and walk away. Because I knew myself to be lucky, I took what I consider to be the excess profits and put them into SHARE Sonoma County because I believe that shared housing was a big part of the housing solution and a part of the recovery.
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Santa Rosa Fire 2017 – the response
I worked in the Emergency operations center, the SR Fairgrounds, the Sonoma Valley High School, and the Petaluma Fairgrounds.

Brookdale before and after the fire

Among the flame then ash

The fire’s path across our community

Measure of time

Ode to the place where so many memories happened.

Haiku from the fire days

Ripples through time

The post for the people who died.  This monument at the Luther Burbank Center was developed by the Leadership Santa Rosa Class I cohort, led by Carole Bennett.

The empress walked with them through the forest.
Gladness and goodwill became one.
Then she walked on.
Mists from mornings of life and light
Thoughts she spread to our delight.
Sadness held, as sadness is
Goodwill and gladness move it on.
Dark of night now light of day
Held in morning’s inspiration.
Looking for the right thing to say
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>06/08/20

Paradise is burning
Ventura is mourning
Congress is churning
The White House lies returning
The electorate is learning
All the nation is yearning
for decency’s discerning
and all these tables turning

For the optimists it is useful to live in denial

My cape is tattered.
My mind is weary
My world is small with overwhelming problems
My heart beats on as I cling to the resolve
My abilities require of me
My vision is clear but my influence is limited
My intelligence fails in the face of the crowd
Dominated by myopia instead of my utopia
My plan to go forward, despite these odds
In all these Don Quixote days
Is born afresh along with Sancho Panza’s
Mystical ideals.
Who will be my Sancho Panza?
<><><><><><><><><><><><><> 11/16/16

I saw three hawks one day last week
One sat on a pole
but a pair flew gloriously
up the currents over the hill
and down to me.

Then today a hawk was sleeping on my way to work
The hawks show me they are watching
The hawks remind me of the movement of life
Like wind pushing over the land
Is it the same spirit that glides overseeing the path I take?
<><><><><><><><><><><><><> 10/05/16

Contrite
is
humility
with
acceptance
and
a
determination
to
move
forward

<><><><><><><><><><><><><> 10/08/16

California sky
over vineyards and food
the place I call home
<><><><><><><><><><><><><> 06/26/16

How deep is the well
How deep is the sorrow
How deep is the pain
How deep is the happiness
How deep is the celebration
How deep is it to go to the bottom
How deep is it when we return to the top
How do I love you
How do I express my commitment
How far must I go
How
How did I get here
How do I go on from here
How many stories can be heard
How many sympathies expressed
How deep is this well
Into which sadness and joy is poured
Just to bring up the contents
The water of life
How deep is the well
How does the well get deeper
And still yield its contents
How can I tell I am pouring sorrow in
How can I know if I am pulling compassion out
How can I know where is the end
How can I have a new beginning
And another
And another
How can I know the truth

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 03/13/15

For * and **

I hate what this world has done to you,
Children of the desert.
Deserted in your own home by those who should love and guide you.
A child of three tender years
A child of five bitter years
Children of the incompetent
Children in the dust
God save you. And God save us.

Tears flow like rain on the desert.
The sadness of those who don’t even know you
Does not know the depths of despair which will haunt those of us who do.
My August is bitter and bleak, when the middle of the month will bring you to mind all the days of my life.
Like a little girl from my past,
who died at the incompetent hands of her mother.
My sadness is like the fire of the hot ground
on the soles of unshorn feet.
God save you.
And God save us.

The little heart of a child should not know such darkness.
Perhaps you don’t.
But the tired heart of your elders carries the weight of your lost lives.
We are not responsible for you,
we who are sent to respond to you.
Or are we?
Your parents could not have foreseen this.
Or could they?
Your God could not save you.
Or did he?

Like the summer monsoon in the barren desert.
Our tears, both silent and weak, are for you.
Can tears and heavy thoughts be salvation?
I hate what this world has done to you, children of the bleak desert.
The children of the tender and the bitter years.
The children of my heart.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 08/17/2000

Red petals
Reflected in the glass
Harbingers of beauty and the past
Hopeful or harrowing
I cannot say which
Streaks of yellow down to the stem
Like heartache and hope reaching within
Hazy like fog my memories twinged
God and I know where we’ve been
Now image moves on to solitary tree
Transformed through time passing
To growth of new things
Handing my heart yet another idea
Old trees and new things
Are what’s left for me