Five Poems
by Millicent Borges Accardi
December in Topanga
Bobcats prowl, leaves froth and cook,
Like eggs in a skillet. The residents
Skulk in the new chilled and buttered mornings,
a flame here, a creek wavering there.
A string of willow tree log branches
hardening in the new 63 degree air.
Like the wall hit by a truck, the winter
Smudges our rural lives here in the canyon,
With its grit and wildlife, like the mud
That extends beyond the S curves,
after the rains, cutting into the burn scarp
like war, accelerating upon itself
and dragging everything with it, houses,
sweaters and old friends. After a barn
finch peers at the eaves with remnants
of an old nest the backyard percolates
from the silence of the Cooper hawk
triplets who dip and circle, in the exact
spot they saw movement, the prey’s
fulcrum, at a nervous rest. Like breath
held in half sips in, we exist, we live
in place, here, in that dead arena,
the wilderness corridor between late
summer and early winter, caught in
a moment’s sharp spotlight before
the camera snaps the glorious picture.
Summer in the Canyon 2003
It was nearly fall, the tail end of
what used to be called a slur that
I won’t mention here, but it was a
phrase for an extended summer
that lasted into mid-fall because
The sun was out and you could eat
Outside and gosh we even had a few
Swim fays. It was the tail end of a
time when everyone gives up
summer and eases into autumn
and Halloween costumes and orange
nearly due for the howls of thanksgiving
and Christmas nipping at your toes
It was the tail end of summer in 2003
for everyone except us because we
had formally veed into the canyon
from Venice and you had had a cardiac
arrest while on a ladder, and here I was
packing boxes of sweaters from the
closet with your aunt mary and your mom
and throwing our garbage bags of unpaid
bills and unopened mail crushed up.
While you were lying on the striped
Blue couch even then you were thinking
of miracles, in open country, with
mountains. It was the summer we had a
caravan of cousins helping us move into
the Santa Monica promised land, and scooping
unlabeled and unrelated boxes across a sea
of cars on PCH and we were determined
to move and celebrate your getting through
a catastrophe and that we were alive in the
rural canyons and starting in new place
starting out with a new extended summer
that was for us true blue. We forced cookouts
into the last weeks of a ending summer, with
an early pirate costume party where we drank
lemon basil lemonade and played bocce ball.
And you were talking to Jonathan on the deck
without a railing. With your face mask on and
we were laughing About there being no railing
on the deck and party goers could fall right off
into the still rushing creek water below.
And we were imagining how we would build
a back fence with our bare hands and heavy post
pile driver that we pounded into the soil, making
deep holes into the tight-earth one push after
one at a time, starting to learn the new seasons.
Topanga 2pm
It seeps through pages like
late morning time, there
was a man-boy on canyon road
in front of the house, wearing
a yellow Charlie Brown shirt
darted by a black line through
the front, he stops and waves
behind the eucalyptus tree
after the front door opened
a flight and a half down stairs.
The bright light outside
would have made it impenetrable
to see inside the doorway,
and, yet he waved like a child.
As Virgil said when we first moved
here, there are only two kinds
of people walking on these old
side roads, women with strollers,
and couples with dogs. The man-boy
turned and half-jumped when
he walked away, down to the dead
end corner, voicing loudly to another
person ahead of him, waiting he said
something about Jesus.
Can you Tell me True Joni Mitchell?
When you share a plate of lentils
with Neil Young, Marvin Gaye
In his domed house on the cliff,
buttressed up with three fragile
wooden poles, stretching into
a sunny glory morning on highway
27. From a rumble of Afrikan dance
music, can yiu see Lisa Bonet pacing
billows at Yoga Desa where there
is a blue line of sky on the horizon
of the open door. On Fridays she
and Jason protest in front of Pine Tree
Circle for the local Peace March
turned into an anti-orange beast
parade with signs and slogans
about fake tans and waiting on the
white house roof. Can you hear the
swords gnashing like teeth at Will Geer’s,
Theatricum Botanicum, in the
Dell, when Hamlet and Laertes duel
Or Prince Hal and Hotspur. Dashing in the
Edge of the fairy tale forest as
Dennis Hopper throws his head back
Laughing in the dirt amphitheater
Crayons like Clay Pots
You belong to the open yearning
arms of courage, as if you are
a broad-shouldered man in conflict
with epaulets are blood, an armed
soldier with fire as your walking
partner, a police action pressing on.
Next to you, inside the red rock walls,
near Old Topanga and the Post Office
Tract, with its creek tramps and
rattlesnakes, there is a dark as soil
light spreading under the loading dock,
where Pine Tree Circle gathers at sunset,
remembering Tongva and Chumash,
the ashy clay poised on earth’s forearms,
vessels like a song line, usurping the
animal-skin drum. The music of nature
has done this for centuries without
so much as a hollow second sound,
without turning back, or worrying a
thought as to how the song lines echo
still, to this day, they stretch to the Pacific
below the water and drum dance among
us along the jagged state lines of California.
BIO: Millicent Borges Accardi’s recent work appears in Paris Review, American Poetry Review, and Glass. This is me: Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four poetry collections, including Only More So (Salmon). Among her awards are fellowships from CantoMundo, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Fulbright, PEN America, California Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Covid grant), Fundação Luso-Americana (Portugal), and the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation. Millicent is a poetry mentor in the Adroit Journal and AWP Writer 2 Writer summer programs and lives in the rural canyon of Topanga CA. Millicent