Mendicino May Weekends

Spring after spring      redwoods and ocean
look unchanged      but not our bodies
now in their sixties      which      stuffed
in the same skintight bike shorts & wetsuits
as decades past      shamelessly      no regrets
still cycle      boogie-board      &      hot tub
bare-assed      feeling a bit stiffer each year.

"Busy Being Born and Dying"

She spent her last years in bed or a Barcalounger.
As time when by, to the end at ninety-nine
our matriarch slept more and more.
The hired help took on the role
of transferring to and from
the easy chair in front of
the television (watched
less and less, slept in
more and more) into
the bedroom and
then back again
and again
'til dead.

Before
and after
she passed
at dawn, my wife
her only child, and I
lay in the bed opposite.
At six, I assisted the men
from Chevra Kadisha prepare
and move the body to the hearse. I lowered the electric Camelot to flat
and rested there until the morning came.
Anticipating our grandbaby's arrival, I pushed
the top grain leather chair over to block the stairway.

When the two year-old toddled in
and looked around, the first thing
he did was slide his own little chair
smack into the living room's middle
just where the Barcalounger'd been.

Gerard Sarnat splits time between his San Francisco Bay Area forest home and Southern California's beaches, where he and his wife care for their first grandson. Gerry is a seeker and Jewbu, a father of three, physician to the disenfranchised, past CEO and Stanford professor, and virginal writer 'til the recent tender age of sixty-two. He has been published or is forthcoming in print and electronic literary journals including EZAAPP, The Hiss Quarterly, Pens on Fire, Poets Against War, Thieves Jargon, Underground Voices, Flutter, Jack, Atavar, Wilderness House Review, Aha!Poetry, Spindle, Defenestration, Black Zinnias,The Furnace Review, Stonetable Review , Bird and Moon, LoudPoet, SoMa, SNReview, Subtle Tea, Language and Culture, River Walk Journal, and Juked among others. "Just Like the Jones'," about his experience caring for Jonestown survivors, was solicited by The Jonestown Annual Report and will appear later this year. Gerry is currently working on an epic prose poem, "The Homeless Chronicles." He has been accepted into a four person writers' cooperative by The California Institute of Arts and Letters; Pessoa Press plans to publish his first book.

Email: Gerard Sarnat

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