The young girl giggles –
and how could she not?
– at the small city, bustling
of bugs beneath the log
she’s overturned just to view
if what papa told her is true:
that this world is falling apart,
and the underneath is where
the end will start;
So she’s gentle
as a soul as she slips
the world into place,
a curator of extinction
with an innocent’s grace
I especially love it when clouds have outlines
I’ve always found this to be true
Something about a line drawn
an excision of the locus
from limitless dispersions of apparent form
watery blots in the thick blue of the sky
so encompassing of all that we know
we can scarcely give it a name
that is not God
I’ve received a message from spirit
A dead Blue Jay by my car
A bird who creates firm boundaries
and fears not
speaking up
or being seen
So that is my divine assignment of fulmination
… how do I? Where do I? Why do I?
and the answers have appeared
like the black and white figures
in a developing photograph
tinged with the red light of the dark room
Here is where one may draw the border
thereby escaping all that wispy camouflage
that makes words fade into the back of the throat
that creates belly aches of worry
and complaint gnash and flop to escape
or drown in silence
In the future,
let me know what you need from me
but make no assumptions about what I am capable of
Write an ode about something you lost,
I once told a class of 4th graders.
When Students began to cry
I realized that they weren’t writing about
blue marbles, books, and favorite socks,
like Pablo’s “two socks as soft as rabbits.”
They weren’t writing about toys or dolls,
They were asking why Grandma had to die.
They were remembering pets who had to be buried.
We circled ’round and hugged
and soothed, and I said, I’m sorry,
and dried their tears,
little children, who are not babies,
but not grown up, yet.
I lost my pounamu from Aotearoa,
a greenstone necklace given to me by my sister
when our father died. I searched for eleven months.
It ate away at my memories, a careless misplace,
a silent mourning, a treasured essence, a lost presence.
I imagined it silky on my cheek, its comfort on my chest,
now lonely and cold in a forgotten place.
Its smooth surface like the open ocean near Nine Pin Rock,
the pinnacle near the mouth of the Bay, we sailed
the day we sprinkled his ashes, silt spreading out below the surface
like a squall of clouds, sinking deep into a shadowy green-stoned sea.
We circled round and hugged, wind blowing ashes on skin, on hair.
We carried him away with us, what didn’t go to Davy Jones’ locker.
That’s where sailors are buried, he told me when I was four.
In a hidden suitcase pocket,
with a flashlight, hand-sanitizer,
and Hawaiian ivory fishing hooks,
I found my pounamu,
soft, deep-sea green stone,
still silky on cheek, now worn ’round my neck,
a soothing hug from another place
I once called home.
How could skin kept this soft
get so dang thick?
I’m one big, rough-worked, callus really.
But slathered up with cold cream.
I moisturize and manage
and emphasize the supple parts
even though I’m forgetting
how it feels to be tended to
all tender like.
I’m awfully bristly to be so soft.
Like a fuzzy nettle beckoning fingertips
and responding with a slow sting
when you rub it the wrong way.
I ought to be more leathery
but I smell like marshmallow root
and I will use a word like velvety
without vanity and seize softness
in a hard world, even if it’s only skin deep.
The Maddox Brothers and Sister Rose, sharecropping
Oakies like Woody Guthrie, made it to CA
and realized there was more money in music.
So they donned matching suits and played
hillbilly music in rough roadhouses:
Rose hollered “Each Season Changes You”
(and it’s pure fire like most of their tunes),
but when they made it to the Opry,
instead of their raucous
“Sally Let Your Bangs Hang Down,”
they sang two slow songs, one gospel
and it’s not as special as they were
in records–sometimes, like this poem,
things don’t turn out as expected.
(red river gorge)
gnarled arthritic
hands of god,
fingers wan of flesh,
swollen at the knuckles.
scars of iron carbuncles
outcrop sandstone fissures.
eons of exfoliate skin
the wind has whipped
and churned until
deep pocks are carved,
gnashed at the belly
of the cliff until
underneath
an arch is seen.
daylight shines
between two hollows
where a breeze
blows always.
shade and shelter
for all sort of critter.
a cradle and cathedral,
tucked under those
ancient patient
hands.
immediate
the night fills
with the notes of those songs
that were my last dream
a black mare
trotting into wakefulness
wants to graze here to nibble
on my short supply of carrots
until my fingers are next
between
her frightening heterodontous teeth
sliding over my still sleeping hand
lodged under my side
you shake me i’m still sleeping
and i throw myself at you
your lips are comfort
as i take off my wet clothes
and ask you to love me
we rumble the early morning
then sweetheart there is time
together sitting under the stars
but no more sleep my life
black this coffee
and long this cigarette
then these questions
for such dreams mean
much more than sex to you
and i hate such interviews
The sun is finished with the mountains. She has
Spilled all her paints on westward slopes
But still has her box of broken pastels
To smear white and pink over blue
Like an upended chalk drawing.
I raise my hand to the sky
Which blinded me blue
This morning in the
Chapel clerestory.
But now, mute,
Meets my
Fingers.
They come away white and pink and blue.
I had dreams
of working and flying
of drowning in liqour and glitter each night
To wake up in a perfectly messy apartment
city light pouring in
and warming my perfectly smooth skin
But that was someone else’s dream
it was never mine
I wanted it for love
to be loved
Maybe I want to build a home
do laundry and scrub floors
make lunches and art
raise babies and love on my wife
Maybe instead of a townhouse
I want some land with woods and a creek
room for a garden
and patches of strawberries and rasberries
room for dirt, sweat, and barefoot feet
away from peoples noses and eyes
I don’t know anymore
But maybe I will someday
