June 2003
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Wake Up
Poems by Gwynn O'Gara
Wake Up
Wake up
but don't get out of bed.
The first part of your life is changed.
There are pianos.
Someone put them there.
Could it be him
with his lingering music?
He's given you possibilities
that run backward
like hems of colored silk
or a happiness
that seeps into the rain
and lights each seed
left in the dry season.
He's yours. You earned him.
But he delivers you
unfoldingly
like a blind cow rubbing against a bush
or a robin
finding worms and troubadours.
South Park Cafe
A punky beatnik sips champagne and sorrel soup.
Her brown curls taste of cress, her bare legs sting.
Young without knowing it, she reaches under the table
for her retro-'60s lover with stringy hair and daisied shirt.
His eyes flicker, persimmon seeds she swallows,
dropping bread crumbs so others with follow.
Ghosts Near Bodie
Across the high desert
rabbitbrush stalks the sage
with yellow flames.
On a dusty path
up to the snow-patched granite
a meadow mouse froze in the night
curling into herself
when the storm blew through.
Beside the road a dead coyote,
legs bent, head missing,
spirit racing to ancestors' den,
children left to fend for themselves.
I Never Finished Swinging
I never finished swinging
up to the huge old cypress
fog hurling in from the sea
sun gliding into the ground.
I could have swung for a long time
fingers gripping the cool long chain
legs pumping, gaining height
daring myself to kick a branch
trying. But we moved away
to make a new family.
There weren't swings, not even
a park. I took up bike riding.
I fell off a lot. But I
never finished swinging.
Never grew tall enough
in foggy town to touch
the cypress with my toes.
The low branch has been lopped
but still I swing
pumping higher
higher into the green.
Gwynn O'Gara's poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Imaginari, The Sow's Ear, Yellow Silk, The Dickens, and most recently, So Luminous the Wildflowers, a book of California poetry published by Tebot Bach. Her collection, Snake Woman Poems, was published by Beatitude Press in 1983. O'Gara is also active with California Poets in the Schools. "I am particularly drawn to working with middle-school students," she says, "partly because I like the challenge, partly because I am still 12 years old."
Born and raised in San Francisco, O'Gara is now a resident of "Noe Valley North, more commonly known as Sebastopol." She says she loves the landscape of her adopted small town. But she can still conjure up some heavy nostalgia for the funhouse at Ocean Beach, Willie Mays and the Giants, concerts at the Noe Valley Ministry, and her first taste of Thai cuisine on 24th Street. She also still laughs when she remembers her son's windy playdates at Douglass Playground, "where I learned that an excellent gift for a newborn San Franciscan is a windproof quilted jumpsuit with a hood."
O'Gara says getting her out of San Francisco in 1996 was "a lot like shucking an oyster--it was messy and required courage, a sharp knife, leather gloves, and a surgeon's precision."
Yes, she's a poet.