These three poems, excerpted from “Father Daughter Poetry Book Club Redux,” are dialogues between me (MDS) and unpublished words written by my father (MS), found after his death.
1.
MS undated
Let trouble
soon be over
Let sorrow
have its say today
—
I don’t really care
about the gophers
let them have their fun
w/ their mounds of earth
the grasses & flowers & bushes
that grace this natural state
windless / sunset / sound of ocean
that mockingbird’s insistent song of beauty
MDS 6-23-23
Noe said blocking their nest with a rock, or
pouring gasoline, would work best
thinking of children stung and fearful
I couldn’t, though, so
let them waspy be —
pulling a table cross the burrow to forestall
the wasp and bee, the moth and butterfly
these pairs our apophenies make signify.
Mother & father, sister & I, the gophers & the roots
all twining.
10.
MS undated
I love to listen
to the roar of wind
rattling the timbers
at every corner of the house,
waving the long limbs
of the cypress
blowing everything away.
The answers
and the questions.
MDS 11-15-23 Winslow House
When it rains
it’s water and petrichor
and it doesn’t mean anything
but rain
12.
MS undated
rattlesnake
in the
rattlesnake
grass
rattling
in the wind
MDS 11-27-23
What is a garden
without a few
snakes in it
MARTHINE SATRIS studied Irish experimental poetry at UCSB and received a PhD in English in 2012. Her work on this project is very influenced by her studies of experimental poetry, especially the use of found texts and the collaging, collaborative approach that has been key for many groups of experimental poets, even though the style she is using here is more lyric in form. Ms. Satris has worked ever since grad school in independent publishing in the Bay Area and is currently senior acquisitions editor at Heyday, the nonprofit press in Berkeley focused on nonfiction, where she particularly emphasizes acquiring books about California’s natural world and our relationship to it. Ms. Satris grew up in the Bay Area and currently lives in Oakland.
