Sandy Starr is a journalist, writer/photographer for a newspaper and business publications. She currently resides in the foothills of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She makes an annual pilgrimage to California. She has written poetry for as long as she can remember. She has been published locally in several publications, and in InkLit, Artisan and A Writer's Choice Literary Journal (http://members.spree.com/writer/) Starr has lived all over the country and the world. Her heart however still lives in San Francisco, where she lived for two years in the 1970's. She says that she loves the California coast, and that her favorite thing to do is drive up Highway 1 and take it all in," the view, the smell, everything." Starr wrote the poems in this collection about California. Sandy Starr's poetry is also featured in the 1997 and 1999 editions of The Central California Poetry Journal on pages 9102 and 7107. She is currently doing freelance work for the Mountain View Journal, doing arts and entertainment pieces and photos. You may wish to visit Sandy Starr's web page by using this link to Sanstarr's Page
you can't see the wind any more than you can see God
I say my prayers in ritual form to try like a windmill
the wind howls and bends to its might
but don't we know the wind is there from its force and howl
what about this invisible being in the vast nowhere
yet everwywhere
who has all these prayers thrown out
squeezed out screamed and cried out into the wind for Him
or Her
to hear and grant
like wishes
I don't want to piss off this God anymore than
you would want to piss
into the wind
and have it blow back on your face
to harness the power of God
sometimes the wind is only a breeze
sometimes it is still and where is it then
when it isn't here
it won't come when we call it
on a hot night when sweat trickles down
and sheets are damp and unfriendly
how can God answer all our prayers and be here
and there at once and be nowhere to be seen
and we pray for a benevolent being
to keep us safe
the sun is going down
the end of a millineum is coming up
that horizon waits behind a few more sunrises
Y2k this
Y2k that
up on the mountain bears hibernate
unaware of monumental days on the calendar
pages torn off and thrown into an unknown wind of change
is it hype
is it nothing
where will we fit the morning after the end of
a thousand years
bears sleep
do they dream
earthquakes rumble as they have forever
minutes tick as they have tocked through time
preachers preach and call out doom
they wave and pound and rant and rave
predict the future
claim God's voice is their own
who can believe
the self promoted prophet
when he speaks of doomsday
in one breath
then holds out a pudgy paw
asks for money in the next
your face looked up at me and those eyes
there in the bottom of a drawer
in black and white your eyes are still dark green
did the same thing they did for real
all those years ago
they melted something down deep
called primal to the surface from
way below
was your face that face that incredible face
frozen in time but not frozen solid enough
to keep the magic stilled
you were magic and mystery and an electric hum
buzzed around you like a force field
magnetized
I was drawn in
pulled into your teen age boy hunger
led by my need for love and belonging
your force field activated and I was
pushed away by your youthful indifference
memory runs like a wild river
your mouth soft over those perfect teeth
My guys have gone off to see spies and women,
Off to a movie they go. I run this movie
"The World is Not Enough,"
and I am left to my own devices.
A glorous fall has prefaced what some think
will become winter at some point
when gold is covered with dust
then snow.
I sit here thinking.
Wondering.
Wanting.
Believing that soon, somehow soon
I will leave the dry crackle of these autumn leaves behind.
This air lacks humidity, causes me to flake and shrivel, and the wind
takes up all parched things and blows it to
somewhere, hell and back, hell and gone?
All I know this early dark evening
shortly before the day we give thanks is this--
I must find a way to go where my heart feels at home.
The World is Not Enough?
My world is lovely, rich and full
and fine,
yet until my feet feel the dampness
of sand
and rock
on that far off California coast
my world will be lacking.
This desert full of gold dry air
is not enough.
The mountains here hold rocks and ridges and
dry sand.
Parched vegetation.
Cactus.
My soul holds the memory of walking on a beach
south of the Golden Gate
where the gold holds sea thoughts
sea spray
sunsets shimmering
across the water
reaching for my heart.
in my mind.
A woman dry and parched and lost
heads west
to the edge of a continent where she runs on damp sand
throws her arms into the air and gathers it to her--
feels the joy,
the joy.
I give thanks.
it's a toss up
I think of the white wine
San Francisco in the 70's holds my heart
If I went there now what would I find
once my sister came in from the desert
that is where and how I will return
the crab sandwiches in Sausalito
the shrimp salad at Fisherman's Wharf
in my mind they run neck and neck
cold and crisp
with a bite
that my sister and I drank
at lunch
sopped up with that sourdough bread from heaven
and I shiver
remembering
after fear of the strange city
a new place
was soaked into crab and shrimp and bread
and drowned in the wine that flowed like water in a river
like high tide crashing into Fort Point
would it be changed or frozen in time
that sunwashed city that held magic and mystery
said she wanted to roll in the grass
and eucalyptus leaves behind my house
like her German Shepherd on his back
feet into the air
wiggling in the joy of that moment
upside down
back to the ground
belly full of seafood and white wine
wriggling in the joy
the moon isn't yet full
the rabbits eating grass are backlit
oh bright moon
but bright in its three-quarter stage
lighting the night sky and sending us into dreams
causing us to pause and remember
fantasize
mesmerized
their little cotton tails illuminated like neon
against a dark sea of green/black lawn
what will you shine on full here soon
one more holiday of Thanksgiving
and another holiday season
then
comes in the new year with all the hoopla
and thunderous prediction
the apathetic walk hand in hand with the prophets
along a dark path waiting
where will you shine moon
in this new coming new year
a millineum ending
and beginning
setting sail on your silvery light
this earthship heads on into a sea of the believed
the believers
the questioners
the unknown
Opaque cold has painted the windows
I am waiting for goodbyes
People must come to visit and go home again
A salt laden sea breeze
people come and go and come again
and brittle fingers of a breeze reach out to grasp
anything that smacks of warm and turn it into
a chill
departures
shivering against the wind of change
that will see loved ones go
bags packed and ready
airplanes will leave contrails as they head east
and west
maybe backlit orange by the setting sun
but they will feel cold as icy fingers
pulling warmth in their wake
missing is part of life
parting is sweet sorrow
would dull the pain
if only I could reach the shoreline
a hot red sun dropping into rolling water
would soothe
the waves would sing me to sleep
though like those leaving
my footprints in the wet sand
would be washed away with tide
foam would tickle my heart
the constant ocean waits for me
a balm against life's changing times
where is my father
maybe he knows something about showing himself
did somebody else open the door wider
did somebody need it more than me
I talk to him in hard times
the bright flash of bad hard times has faded
my garden sits in winter cold
who left this earth for parts unknown
who came back in vision
to others
out there on the highway
flashing by in a red car
in dreams
dreamed in the house
he left behind
how does he pick and choose
I thought I would believe
or were they just in the right place at the right time
for him to slip through
to see something familiar
lost
and found again
and in my garden
remember things he loved that I repeat in my own actions
is that how he comes to me
to sepia tones
and more good comes back than bad
bittersweet tinges memory
and a sad melody runs through my heart
like a bubbling stream through the forest
where is my father
who went away to who knows where
yet came back to others in vision
and dream
and waits for the whisper of spring
waves breaking near or far off the shoreline
waves breaking near or far
I need a seaweed-flavored air breathing treatment
I don't care where just
break over my lagging heavy spirit now
wash that foam and briny mix of magic
over me
send that rich full mix elixir
heady with life straight to my breath
a salt rub followed by a foam bath
sand treatment for my feet and hands
how easy that would be
walk down the beach
build a sand castle in the sunset
let me head up this winding coast road
find a place for some
Light therapy for the sun deprived
play that tape Mamma N
the one with the nature sound of waves and gulls
those ebb and flow sounds
give me those treatments for my body
my soul
my heart my mind
put that mystical moisture in the air
the hell with a humidifier
who needs it?
don't send me to a spa for there is none
to compare
to Mother Nature's beach treatment
cheap fix
a beach fix
out east in the flatness of prairie
night falls
coals in the darkness glimmer
a brush fire runs rampant
a grass eating wild thing cheered and pushed
by a raging wind
go go go
it cries into the swirl of smoke
and with the leaving of sun
wind dies down
a TV reporter stands in the chilly air
shivering words shake from his mouth
containment by midnight
lucky the wind has died down
glow hot in the distance behind him
winking
giggling
reports of my demise are premature
I wait only for the morning sun
and the wind to let me loose
I came alive sometime
I span two centuries and decades
And I go on about my business
I came alive yet I don't remember
when I realized that the waves
I live now in a vast desert
I was born and I span now
in the previous century
no
not when I was born into a war torn world
but later
sometime when my soul
began to breathe
and the ocean has been there
forever?
day to day
and night brings delight when dreams
are of the shoreline
can you pinpoint your beginning
came on shore
again and again
and once I saw
that sea birds flew
and fish swam into sunsets
and out of the far off storms
came fog and wind and rain
I came alive
mountains rising from sandy-bottomed valleys
the air is dry and yet life is sustained
in pines and scrub and lizard
and I know in my heart
I am not parched
apart
from the sea
out there it rolls again and again
the sun comes up and sets
and the ocean is always there
it calls me in the night
and pulls me as sure as the sunrise
comes over the mountain
turns brilliant through the canyons
two centuries
several decades
and through it all
the facts remain
the ocean is in my blood
that runs as red as sunset
over the Pacific coast
in my heart and in my dreams
I am running down the beach
life force
breathing in
and out
not seen in years
south were the cliffs and hang gliders and
the place still held me in time
and in some part of my mind
night would find the memories
let them loose in dreams
a smell would trigger hunger for bread
and crab
a breeze that hinted fish
seaweed and salt
would stand me on Baker Beach
or out at the end of Geary
where the wild water flew against dark rocks
like whipped cream
in the wind
and seals harped and raged
black dots in the blue and foam
ice plant blowing sand
north across the slash of redrust orange
hanging in space
then west winding up Tamalpias
into clouds then sinking down
into the fragrance of age and redwoods
dainty fawns in dappled sunlight
rusty red and forest green
Muir Woods
Muir Beach
I took my son once where I had been
before he was even a thought
we rode the cable cars
met the fog
drove on a roller coaster ride up the hills and down
my stomach in the place my heart was supposed to be
my heart and soul in the wind
our laughter bouncing like the sunlight off those bright
stuccoed buildings
magic lives there somewhere
locked in a time capsule of my own making
waiting for me to come back with the key
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 1999. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for
copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their
original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Sandra Starr 1999.
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