Work
My day begins as the owl comes home for sleep.
Exhaust-ed I drive home in single file four lanes wide.
Workers swarm to the smell of the midnight taco truck.
Five o’clock traffic on 101. Tired faces.
Evening on 101 is like a dancing dragon.
Laid-off, got job - hummingbirds are back at my feeder.
Uprooted to jobs here, not quite fitting in ever.
Field workers and roots became tech workers and wires.
Seeking Sikh sells almonds fueling poet at fuel station.
Walgreen’s clerk sneezes mightily, spraying me with germs.
Fading start-up tee-shirts fill Gold’s gym.
Three months of work, now and then. Be in good health.
Footnote to line above:
(Contract jobs don’t offer any health benefits.)

Jackie Coffin, Merribea Berry, Daniel Tran, Emmanuel Eusebio,
Hoa Nguyen, Manu Rao, Yoo-Yoo Yeh, Al Reynolds,
Steve G. Davis, Susan Paluzzi, Shari Barnett, Ari Cohn

People
Bus stop, Story Road, man waits to go somewhere.
Chess parents, waiting: some friendly, some not.
I grab one ripe lemon from the tree and run.
High tech, low riders, and everything in between.
Neighbors barbecue wafts smoke tendrils. Can I come too?
I have grown accustomed to people talking to themselves.
Their neighbors could never tell when they were there.
“Green tennies, yellow cap - Long sideburns are where it’s at!”
The weathered face of the homeless Woman allowed fear.
In the early evening unknown neighbors stroll.
Full moon night. I cannot sleep. Outside a siren wails.
Oh, to be so old in the green world! And yet....
Children are beautiful here - as everywhere.

Christine Richards, Leigh Klotz, Mary Langenbrunner, Dorothy
Reller, Marianne Salas, Bret-Jordan Kreiensieck, Clair Schuur,
Bev Gutierrez, Vicki L. Harvey, Erlinda Estrada, Laura Mello,
Margaret Withgott, Fred Jacobsen

Our Lives
Morning awakes with the chippering of birds.
My morning paper, THE MERC, shrinking, shrinking.
Haystacks of aluminum cans. Hot beer. Car fumes.
Languages spoken loud and soft. “Buy rims out of box.”
Peppered with sushi, tacos, and falafels.
The tandoori oven breathes fire, warms our diverse tongues.
Tacos, pho, and falafel - how to choose?
Currying the smell of garlic, ginger, soy and beans.
A tweet, a text, a finished thought, thumbs rest.
We import smart people; Prop. 13 killed our schools.
Talk slows, twitter grows, clicks impede our skill to read.
High tech hotbed covered with liberal comforters.
Freight Train Rumbles. Bedroom Trembles. Earthquake Dreams.
Like ants in a rush: parents, kids, the bell.
Spines worn out; classics among common; the Library.
Where many roads diverge, in goodness and greed we merge.
Joy! Reverse commute on 85 during rush hour.
Milkman, Newsboy, corner stores gone; service now on-line!
Thousands of dot-com paper millionaires once roamed free.
Some fly away, some come to stay we’ll come back some day.

Regina Esparza, Gloria Elizabeth, Marissa Zuniga, Mike
Camren, Alfonso Villasana, Romina D. Saha, Beverly Jacobsen,
Jaya Padmanabhan, Wayne Caccamo, Arthur Keller, Pat Kreitz,
Clysta McLemore, Dave Whipp, Hunter Klotz-Burwell age 11,
Kavya Padmanabhan, age 13, Natalie Panfili, Jody Glider,
Sylvia Loran, Larry White, Madhu Kopalle

What Was Lost
Low water at Lexington: the ghost road to Alma.
Where trees grew in formation, information reigns.
My father’s tractor billowing dust, now 280 covered.
Sunnyvale cherry orchard is now Starbucks.
Dwindled island of mustard grass, still ablaze.
The old timers all say this valley was paradise.
No more lights in the night sky; too many lights down here.
Crows, flapping and cawing, have banished my songbirds.
Ghosts of cherry trees watch rivers of people rushing.
Browsing books about cherries where orchards once stood.
Apricot blossoms forgotten, my heart rails at change.
From plump, purple plums to shiny silver apples.
They were bussed out of the Valley of Our Heart’s Delight.

Ken Weisner, Judith Ogus, Clarice Mazzanti, Gordon Garb,
Dennis Noren, Dennis Richardson, Alex Rodriguez, Catherine Miller,
Natasha Vinnichenko, Barbara Saxton, Ellen Murray,
Addie Hosier, Patricia Machmiller


What’s Here
I thought it would be almost like Kansas, but it’s not.
Home of garlic fog, traffic bog and many who jog.
Sometimes the earth shakes beneath our feet.
A hint of garlic seasons the morning fog.
Showers - what I once called drizzle.
Hills wrap long arms around the valley.
Winter rain stops; chartreuse gingko leaves finger the sky.
Hawks glide and dive, melted sunshine poppies spill downhill.
Morning doves coo softly from rooftop antennas.
A hummingbird whirrs through roses; jet lumbers above.
A woodpecker pounds the dead madrone, as I walk past.
Eleven ducklings in mom’s wake down Coyote Creek.
Paired for life, two geese fly over Camden before rain.
Two lizards doing pushups - Qui es mui macho?
A dog barks...bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark.
The street cat has a wild and holy light in his eyes.
With my wet laundry, I startle a doe.
6 AM: the mockingbird sang all night.
Squirrels playing soccer with walnuts on the roof.
Ocean cool morning, filigree snail trail on doormat.
Mountain lion hit on 85. Whose valley, this?
Above Silicon Valley two bluebirds are mating.
And crow, county jester, finds a way to thrive.
The Giant Orange. Not razed, just moved a mile. Hot dog!
“Two eighty south becomes six eighty north?! What?”
Moffett tarmac – white blimp, the floating skywhales return!

Annie Deckert, Gwen Hacker, Dawn Haskins, Bonnie Home,
Martha Sterne, Millicent Kellogg, Mimi Ahern, Amy Meier,
Cookie Curci, Margit Look Henry, Lucy Salcido Carter, Maureen
Alexander, Erika Goss, Karen Booth, Bret Mannon, Floi Baker,
Katie Welbourn, Katy Huber Grischy, Conne Shaw, Catherine
Shinners, Sharon Nelson, Maureen Draper, Sally Ashton,
Larry White, Jennifer Swanton Brown, Stephen C. Wetlesen


The Look of Our Place
A broom left on the gray shingle roof: bright blue handle.
Honeysuckle vines like stained glass etched on Bird Street home.
Wild poppy bouquet rooted in the rough sidewalk crack.
Rain, shine; velvety tulips pop through green grass.
Open weave of reeds show gold flecks from sun in creek.
Cherry blossoms busting out, raining on lightrail tracks.
Itchy eyes, runny nose, pollen, cherry blossoms.
Mustard and golden poppies spread sunshine at our feet.
Daffodils bob nodding yes, yes, yes!
Bare suede hills of winter don a bright green coat in spring.
Jacaranda trees drip purple blooms on park benches.
A susurrus of oak leaves stirs the day awake.
See-thru buildings yearn for people to hold.
Heading west on Hedding and this road looks like I feel.
Spray painted graffiti screams from highway overpass.
Dark branches weaving shadows through fluorescent moonlight.

Stephanie Pressman, Pushpa MacFarlane, C Flanders,
Sarah Harrison, Brenda Cherami, Brenda Lee, Mitsu Kumagai,
James Kenney, Cheryl Levinson, Susan Dyer, Bonnie Home,
Kelly Cressio-Moeller, George Conway, Katie Carter,
Pauline Chand, Tam Ngo

Reference to: Gallego Z

by Stephanie Innes

Tucson, Arizona (AP)

For traditional worshippers in a remote Tohono O’odham village, the 25-mile trip to a sacred site across the border is about to turn into a trek of more than 70 miles.

The U.S. Border Patrol plans to seal Menager’s Dam Gate, a cattle crossing Ali Jegk, Ariz. residents such as Ofelia Rivas have used all their lives to reach a ceremonial site in Quitovac, Mexico, and to visit tribal members who live south of the border.

The tribe asked the Border Patrol for a vehicle barrier to stop the cars and trucks that illegally barrel through the open gate at all hours. The decision, tribal officials say, was unfortunate but necessary to protect public safety.

Standing along the international line directly behind her home, Rivas, 50, points to wooden stakes painted pink and marked with green tape, demarcating roads the U.S. government uses to monitor the area. One stake is steps from the graveside of a migrant woman and her young daughter that Rivas and her relatives have tended since the 1960s. On All Souls’ Day, Rivas sets places for them at her dinner table.

For the nearly 12 million people who live along the U.S.-Mexican border, the line is an unnatural divider, splitting cultures that are otherwise alike. Sealing the border would forever divide communities and tribes whose strong cross-border ties are integral to their identities, an Arizona Daily Star investigation found.

In border towns such as San Luis and Nogales, Ariz.; Calexico, Calif.; and Sunland Park, N.M., Spanish is as common as English. Families and friends travel back and forth, especially American youths lured by the music and discotheques in the bigger cities on the Mexican side.

When barriers go up, travel time can stretch from minutes to hours. But border fencing doesn’t close legal immigration channels and therefore shouldn’t be viewed as culturally divisive, says Joe Kasper, an aide to U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a longtime advocate of border fencing.

From his ranch house just east of Jacumba, Calif., 58-year-old Raul Gallego can see his parents’ house in Jacume, Mexico, across the rolling green hills.

He and his wife, Monica, 50, used to walk 20 minutes or drive 10 minutes across the border two or three times a week. After his parents died, he and his wife continued to make weekly trips to check on their house.

But in the post-Sept. 11 world, border security trumps convenience and tradition. Border Patrol agents no longer allow crossings at Jacumba. The Gallegos and others who came andwent there now must drive 40 miles west to the Tecate Port of Entry. It takes an hour and 15 minutes to get there and up to four hours to get back, they say.

“It’s just made everything different,” Raul Gallego says. “It hasn’t done anything good for the community.”

Jacume residents used to walk two miles to the Mountain Sage Market in Jacumba each morning for fresh food unavailable in Mexico, such as bread, milk and eggs, says Norma Jean Espinoza, the market’s owner.

At first, Border Patrol agents who knew the residents of the town of 500 would let the older women cross to buy food, locals say. But, eventually, they stopped that, too. They added corrugated-steel fencing and erected vehicle barriers.

“I don’t think it was necessary to stop the Mexicans from coming over here, but I do believe in border security,” says Jacumba resident and World War II veteran Norman Blackwood, 76. “It isn’t so much the Mexicans I worry about – it’s people from other countries.”

The Tohono O’odham Reservation has 75 miles of international border. It’s one of three American Indian nations that sit along the international line – the others are the Cocopah Tribe, near Yuma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, near Eagle Pass. Another 23 U.S. tribes have members in the border area and often members in Mexico as well.

Indigenous people emphasize that tribal lands existed long before the border split them.

“The Earth is where God put us since time immemorial. But suddenly you can’t go visit your cousin anymore,” says Louis Guassac, executive director of the Kumeyaay Border Task Force in California, which advocates more open borders for the 3,500 members of the Kumeyaay Nation who live on both sides of the international line.

Four years ago, the tribe obtained renewable travel visas for several hundred of its members in Mexico to help them cross back and forth to visit friends and families.

The Tohono O’odham Nation has been trying to obtain U.S. citizenship for its approximately 1,400 Mexican members, similar to an arrangement the Texas Kickapoo made for a limited number of its members in the early 1980s.

Tribe Chairwoman Vivian Juan-Saunders says most residents near Menager’s Dam Gate favor the vehicle barrier for safety reasons. But the tribe would oppose something more solid since the O’odham in Mexico need transborder crossings and sensitive archaeological sites exist along the 75-mile stretch.

Ali Jegk resident Margaret Garcia, 68, is bothered by the high-speed chases and worries about her relatives in Mexico who need to travel to Sells for diabetes treatments.

Because she was born at home and doesn’t have a government-issued birth certificate, Garcia has no passport. That means in less than two years, when the government will require passports for everyone entering the country, she may not be able to visit friends and relatives in Mexico at all, she says.

Garcia and her neighbor Ofelia Rivas are two of about 25 O’odham who drive across Menager’s Dam to Quitovac for an annual rebirth ceremony in July. In March, about the same number of people take a two-day spirit walk to the site as part of a ritual to bless the land.

The tribe’s 2.8 million-acre reservation – the size of Connecticut – has other cattle crossings on the border that will remain open, but Rivas says they are on rough roads that are too far east of Ali Jegk to be used to go to Quitovac.

“We’re going to have to behave like the illegal immigrants, sneak around so that we can get to our ceremony,” Garcia says in the O’odham language.

Either that, or they’ll have to drive from their village to the nearest official port of entry at Lukeville to get to Quitovac, a trip that’s about triple the distance of their regular route.