Central California Poetry Journal

Volume 2000 Number 1

The Poetry of Central California Page 0014

The Poetry of Gloria K. Spurgeon-Smith

Gloria K. Spurgeon-Smith lives in Marin County. She writes during her daily commute into San Francisco on the Golden Gate Ferry. She has been writing poetry and essays for some time. Ms. Spurgeon-Smith's poems have been published in the San Franscisco Bay area. She writes because she enjoy the practice of writing, a private practice that occasionally becomes public. One of Gloria Spurgeon-Smith's poems, "Walking Up California at Noon" was published on the Electric Shards page of the 1999 edition of The Central California Poetry Journal.

Cherry Beach

The acrid exhaust suffocating
my sisters and I took the Cherry Avenue bus
after waiting on Ximeno Avenue
sitting on a white low brick
wall enclosing an even green lawn.
When the bus arrived, the three of
us would step up high
climbing into hot vinyl seats that
burned our skinny white legs, peeling off
in the heat like sticky tape, pricking tender
skin, carrying our beach towels and big
beach bags with suntan lotion and
change for fare and a hot dog, the kind
you watch roll round and round
encased behind grease-splattered glass
juices bulging from browning skins,
an ice cold coke to cool summer's angry blisters,
and summer oranges, their satisfying sweetness
engulfing momentarily our untried world. We
thought we were quite the thing slipping
down the aisle, flip flops slapping our heels
off the bus, thunk, thunk,
the sidewalk like to fry an egg
though I never had the nerve;
too much the good girl.
We would walk down Cherry Avenue
to the tunnel under Ocean Boulevard
avoiding summer's traffic roaring like dragons
to descend the concrete steps into
a damp darkness, ambient cold stench
of old sea water in puddles of wet sand,
walls covered with dark hieroglyphs
in the lingo of the street, hurrying
before the blackness trapped us below, an evil grabbing
though we were still innocent of danger,
our sisterhood with Persephone an unknown myth,
to emerge into the white sun, blinding hot sand burning
our feet, toughening them for the journey we were yet to make.

We made slow headway to an open space
on the beach to stake our sandy claim,
struggle against the backward pull, pushing
hot sand back with our feet, to witness our
common baptism in briny waves,
a second birth, independent
without a cause or care.
A noisy salty wetness stopped my ears, a rushing
knocked me down hard then
in slow motion back up the beach
to our spot where I plopped down
on my stomach to bury my face in
wet warm arms, salty to the taste
lulled by the heave and roar of distant waves,
muffled screams,
the Duke of Earl playing on someone's
transistor radio nearby and she wore an
itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini
my panting breath hidden in the cave of my arms
watching beads of salt water drip off slick satin
while light tickled watery eaves
warming to the beat of the sun.
My sisters and I went to Cherry Beach in the summer
south in Long Beach where the seagulls called
and we burned till we were pink as cocktail shrimp.

Muir Woods

in the cold, the wet,
the thick silence of fog and woods
and deep green moss
before crowds gather
to garble in their various tongues
take what little remains
of this native forest wood
on a hard uneven stump
worn smooth and soft
I rest

an ancient magic abides
I am quiet, still
allowed to enter in
break bread with what endures:
the spirit of this place
creek breaking on its bed
below, the chattering of rocks
shrieking jays
alarming
a warning, a delight
the whud and whir of fleeing birds
escaping in the fog
dead leaves and dirt dazzle
pick up the little light
and hurl it toward my eyes
the old earth presses close
her smothering perfume

spirits come and go
imaginations visit
I am not a stranger here
as one at home with death
cloaked in virgin moss
and wild as a star-filled sky.

With the Wind in My Face

With the wind in my face
I remember who I am
for a moment
and all thoughts for self
for tomorrow
for yesterday
for
today
are blown and scattered
dispersed like leaves
in a thousand
directions
all at once
disappearing behind who
I believe myself to be
while keeping my eyes
closed against what may
never come-if
I remember.

All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 2000. 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 © Gloria K. Spurgeon-Smith 2000.

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