January Orange

Up through the roots come the nutrients, met by the bee’s kiss, the pollen of the flower becomes the fruit. The summer sun does its magic, the previous winter’s melting snow quenches the thirst of the growing fruit. A neighbor rings our bell and then knocks on the door at 8 am last week and presents a gift of their backyard tree’s abundance in a shopping sack. I stand in my shorts at the door and thank him. They go into a colander on the counter. Today after work and a nap, I slice down through the fruit on our breadboard, peel back each quarter and eat all the summer’s sun, melting snow, and bee’s pollinating kiss while standing at the sink and thank the neighbor once more for this lead-in title, orange poem in black and white in the local paper.
©Peter Bray 1/23/2018
All rights reserved

Waterfront Blogger

I was gonna do another chapbook
or CD of my stuff, but why?
I upload daily to Facebook,
do a newspaper column and a BLOG weekly,
a Taproot & Aniseweed
Newsletter monthly,
and have way too much of me
already on youtube.com.
A concert from the waterfront
or from The Naked Oyster is already here
to be found elsewhere:
www.peterbray.org
or its brothers and sisters at:
www.peterbray.org/pedro
and www.handymanservicespeterbray.com.
©Peter Bray 1/22/2018
All rights reserved

The Naked Oyster

Old shipwrights and ghosts of
ferry captains used to be found here,
along with cousins of early Pony Express riders,
foggily or in the clear imagination of my mind –
A combination of sea salt and old ship timbers,
waves lapping against support pilings,
aromas of grilling seafood and garlic ever-present,
vodka-tonics sliding down shiny bars
where lipstick and roses out for the night
meander in darkened corners.
– The Naked Oyster
©Peter Bray 5/6/2017
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Wingman

I fly parallel to the Mother Ship,
I am the wingman.
I fly parallel to the adult child
in the hospital ward,
two months, three months, four months,
24 years of Crohn’s Disease.
I take the notes,
have questions for authority,
contest the maneuvers,
the policies, procedures…
I am the medical historian
and the lay researcher;
the nurse with questions in training,
the right doctor not on the floor,
the resident seemingly behind the door –
I am not here to suppress symptoms
or to sell you pills for my stockholders’
ungodly profit margins,
but to heal and cure and nothing else.
I am not here to blame it
on the immune system
claiming everything unresolvable
to be an “auto-immune” disease:
no other profession hides so easily
under that bed…
How much have we NOT learned
and applied in the last 4,000 years?
Ask yourself why and you are
halfway to a cure for everything.
I am the wingman.
You may not want me
on your team,
but you don’t want me
as an adversary either.
I’m counting on you.
If I fail or fall,
you can be my wingman too.
©Peter Bray, 6/9/2011
All rights reserved

Peter Bray lives works, and writes in Benicia
and has written this column since 2008.

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