Gail Entrekin: California Poets Part 8, Three Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Gail Entrekin
Three Poems
Death on the Doorstep
She’s been hanging around outside our door
for years. We step over her when we go out,
give her our take-out boxes when we come in.
She’s a little irritating, a guilty reminder
that we have so much.
But as our plenitude
begins to dwindle with the years, we take
a minute here and there to chat with her,
make the occasional query as to where she goes
when she’s gone, what time she’ll be coming back.
We begin to speculate about her when we see her
from our windows. Despite her gauntness,
her unpleasant smell, it would be wrong to evade her.
She needs us. Should we invite her in for a meal
and a shower?
We don’t want to give up our private life,
our comfort, for the awkwardness of her presence,
but now we think about her day and night.
We can feel the thinning of our happiness,
and she is wearing more coats. It’s getting
so cold out there.
Going the Other Way
At Monterey Aquarium
The shoals of silver fish, hundreds of them, wiggle their ways around
and around the huge glass pillar of water, glinting in the artificial light,
sardines, the favorite meal of almost every predator in the sea.
The fish swarm together for safety, navigate between their neighbors
with their tiny sensors, neuromasts, to keep from bumping. Turning
in synch, slipping in and out in the miniscule spaces that open and close
between them, their mouths gape serenely, effortlessly scooping up
plankton as they go.
Out there in the sea, dolphins gang up, hunt them,
round them up like wolves with sheep, into a ball of food, dart in at them
from every side. Whales show up and glide right through the ball,
their mouths open for the treat, and seabirds dive, handfuls of silver fish
sliding down their long gullets. Humans net them up by the thousands
and gulls show up at the end for the torn morsels floating on the surface.
But here in the aquarium I stand mesmerized, lost in time, fall into a trance,
watching, swimming, and then I see it: one sardine, going the other way.
Her sensor working double time, she never bumps another fish.
She doesn’t even stay at the outer edge near the glass but darts along
full speed amidst the imperturbable, endless school. What
is she thinking? My eyes follow her a complete circumference,
four or five minutes, and still she doesn’t seem to get it. She must
get it. She is going the wrong way on a 20-lane freeway.
Like that dream where I fly between trees effortlessly at full speed,
the trees moving back instantly, silently, to let me through,
dreaming, perhaps, of escape, to live another way,
where one may swim in peace, without responsibility
to the shoal, where an endless sky of sea
waits, a break-out, a daring feat of insurrection
in my tiny silver coat.
The Center of My Life
I am well past the center of my life
which occurred 35 years ago
at the exact moment of your birth.
When the old doctor said you were crowning
and retreating, he called it “turtling,”
he said he would have to insert his hand
into my body, get a hold of your arm,
pull you out. “There will be some pain,”
he murmured, almost to himself, from his stool
between my knees. I was marinating in a fiery bowl.
“And her arm may break,” he added softly. “But
maybe not. Babies’ bones are soft.” His hand
went in, another assault on my beaten body,
and you bumped out, large as a beachball,
red-faced and sleepy. You cried a little.
He laid you on my collapsed belly, and you
squinted into my face. I thought – this is
the center of my life. From here it will be
all downhill. I’ll hardly notice, I thought,
until I pick up speed at the end.
Author Bio:
Gail Rudd Entrekin taught college English Literature/Creative Writing for 25 years and has published six books of poetry. Her poems are widely published and have been finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize and winner of the Western States Award and Women’s National Book Association Prize. They placed first runner-up for the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, the Catamaran Poetry Prize and finalist for the Frontier Open Prize.
Her latest book, Walking Each Other Home, was, in manuscript form, a finalist for both the Blue Light Prize and the Richard Snyder Prize and was published in 2023 by Longship Press. Her chapbook manuscript The Mother/Daughter Papers was a Finalist for the Comstock, Cutbank & Open Box Chapbook Prizes in 2023. Poetry Editor of Hip Pocket Press, Entrekin edits the online journal of the environment Canary (canarylitmag.org).
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