Visitation (for Andrea Gibson)

I wake in the night to the knowledge that you are here

if you are anywhere, you are everywhere now

and your presence writes itself onto my soul

my body throbbing with a pain like being punched 

right in the bullet hole that pierced my heart 

like a brother in the back seat of the station wagon 

who won’t stop the game where he has me by the wrists 

saying “stop hitting yourself” as he manipulates my weedy limbs 

and like a marionette I’m pummelled by familiar hands 

I awake thinking I’ve gone deaf in one ear forgetting 

I’ve stuffed an earplug in only one side to keep the spiders at bay 

having woken in a startle sleep as I lay down trying to remove 

the sensation of insects and arachnids walking into my mind 

staying deaf to the messages on the right side only 

leaving the left side - the side that is left - vulnerable 

so you crawl into the sinister ear and whisper 

your expansive love straight into my limbic system 

your queer joy for living with that crooked smile 

the one you laid onto the lips of my cis male lover 

when he startle woke from a meditation visit yesterday 

saying “wake the fuck up you sleepers and get your living on!” 

I’m blessed by your Santa Claus visit racing the world 

to gift us all in that one hard night, hard candy spilling 

from your joyous fists stuffing our brain stalkings to the brim 

with sweet sweet tidbits, magic words, small toys 

that will be broken in a matter of hours

lost between the corduroy couch cushions of time 

only to be fished out like a princess pea 

when we wriggle in discomfort at something absent 

something that we were sure was right here a minute ago 

car keys promising to start up that vehicle that will carry us 

somewhere, anywhere into the fresh night 

toward a promise of love and first kisses on a slough bank 

reflecting moonlight even as the forest burns 

and in the knowledge of your ever present absence 

that when the sun rises revealing the oil spill on the water 

even in the disaster of it all, the iridescent shimmer 

of petroleum rainbows grace us with hope 

in the face of the unthinkable

~Andrine de la Rocha    July 2025

 

Rich

The crisis continues

The oligarchs continue their dirty work
Of destroying the country.

And yet the lights and heat still work.
The internet still connects.
The day of world wide protests
I spent at home playing cars and
At the playground sliding on the slides
Wet with snow melt.

The flicker is awake
Cackling in the holly tree
Drunk on decaying berry fruit
Like a Mardi Gras jester
On their prideful perp walk
In the dawn of Ash Wednesday.

They don't know,
Have no need of Social Security,
Are oblivious to the ongoing
Anxiety of the middle class.

The sun rises and I am privileged
To go to yoga class,
To visit my Chinese doctor
Drink herb tea full of strange sticks
Desiccated vegetation bitter on my tongue.

I shuffle my electronic values
From one digital container to another,
Preserving their imaginary worth.

Our freezer full of grass-fed beef,
Fresh water for now,
Packets full of seeds
And five raised beds ready to plant,
A fig and an Italian prune,

Volunteer apple and pear trees
Laden come late summer.

I am rich with time and air,
The love and joy of small children,
Rich with ritual:
Planting and nurturing and harvest,
Bird song and light.

Crossroads

In my dream 

I met myself at the crossroads. 

There was conflict and crisis. 

I was intractable. 

I met myself at the crossroads and 

I refused to compromise or give an inch. 

I would not yield, dug in my heels, 

made a scene, owned the road, 

leaned on the horn. 

I met another at the crossroads and 

felt compassion, mercy, 

empathy for their journey. 

I met myself at the crossroads, 

assumed the worst, 

flipped the bird, 

was a dick.

The Heart

Heartfulness by Katy Boynton

I have an over-exercised heart 

balancing on one ventricle

making micro movements 

that will keep me stable.

It tones the heart in a way 

it's not intended to be toned. 

The heart is built to beat in perfect rhythm, 

to race when hit with adrenaline and 

to swell in the face of joy. 

It's designed to pump so much blood 

to the lungs and limbs and then 

recover and rest, but to keep on beating. 

It's never meant to be ripped from the chest 

and thrown on the floor; not to be rebuilt 

with barbed wire or rivets like 

the one on the playa full of cargo netting 

baking in the Nevada sun, where I slept 

having run away from our camp, 

feeling so alone and abandoned by my tribe, 

the ones who were supposed to 

help protect me and my organs. 

Aren't the family, the chosen ones 

- or birth family I suppose (I wouldn't know) - 

supposed to act like a protective sanctuary, 

like the ribs? A cage to be sure, but fashioned

to hold and protect the kishkes from harm? 

Not a cage for imprisonment, no.

Not a cage for fighting, like Thunderdome. 

Not a cage for refugees fleeing a war-torn land 

waiting for resettlement in some golden Medina. 

Ideally a real refuge like sanctuary cities 

where one can be protected and heal over time 

in the presence of the Divine. 

I have been searching my whole life 

for that place, those people, 

the circle of beings, a safe-house for me. 

Not those who prey upon me or bleed me dry, 

but who surround me with comfort until 

I'm well enough to stand and 

be a support for them in turn. 

We take turns ideally, I suppose, 

each giving according to capacity 

and receiving according to need. 

Room for every heart.

Andrine de la Rocha

February 2025

Chickadees

photo by Marie Read

Chickadees

The nature calendar photograph above my desk depicts

two black-capped chickadees riding the carcass of a sunflower. 

The bird above is perched on a straw-colored, bowed stem,

its tiny feet barely able to grasp the thickness enough to find purchase. 

Behind its chevroned back is a desiccated leaf, dark brown, 

hanging pendulous from the far edge of the stem. 

One can almost see the leaf tremble in its fragility and precariousness. 

The second chickadee is poised upside down 

beneath the nodding head of the flower, clinging 

by its right foot talons - if you can call chickadee feet 'talons' - 

holding fast to the remaining sunflower seeds, which seem to be half gone. 

The bird is horizontal below the seed-head and has one sunflower seed 

still encased in the shell, clasped in its tiny black beak. 

I can see the whole of its snowy white underbelly. 

The photo's background is a blur of yellow and orange blotches 

punctuated with specks of white blur that might be snow. 

Maybe that's why it's the picture for February. 

Also maybe because there are two birds 

and those assembling the calendar thought: this is a pair, 

a couple of lover chickadees who are bonded, a Valentine's symbol of romance. 

This is a date: one bird has invited its mate to the sunflower restaurant for 

a romantic dinner of seeds from a dead flower-head, somehow 

left over from late summer and, beyond disbelief, has managed 

to last until February in the snow. It seems suspiciously unlikely to me. 

Birds may appear to be monogamous to the average person, 

but I'm convinced they too fuck around. 

From a distance and at a glance the picture looks almost like 

one chickadee looking at its own reflection in an unseen mirror, 

a pool of still water, or frozen puddle, but there's the slight difference in their stance, 

plus a seed in the beak and, of course, the flower head between them. 

But maybe that's what love is anyway: finding another that serves as a mirror, 

with a slightly different stance, clinging to a meager nourishment, 

the remnants of summer, as a withered leaf shudders in the icy wind, 

the chill of dead flowers the only thing between you and your other self, reflecting.

~Andrine de la Rocha

February 2025