Monthly Archives: July 2013

                         “It doesn’t matter,” the better angel said,
                         “they have been dead for years.”
                                   – Jack Gilbert (“The End of Paradise”)

All the goodbyes we never said come to mind
with jumbled names and faces framed
in other times and places. We had our moment—
touched the tender part of innocence, grew stronger
for it and survived, or not, somewhere out there, yet
that moment lives, revived as they come visiting
when I have the time to entertain and be polite.

You see what we have done, my friends—so easy
to deny those passions that enflamed us then,
the fires we shared in dance and song that rose
with smoke to these same stars that hold our dreams.
I write notes for envelopes without addresses,
because no one stays in the same space anymore—yet
that moment lives, revived as they come visiting.

The Tiger Swallowtails arrive
the day before the Monarchs
floating to hibiscus, hills

yellow or dirt bare.
Calves come in a month
as evenings turn breezy,

flies thick and annoying.
At a distance, the top tomcat
entertains upon the welcome mat

to your mother’s trailer.
Over a month of 100 degrees,
everyone’s ready for a change.

I hear the vowels but miss
the consonants of my bird talk—
hear ‘awe’ or ‘ah’ instead of ‘caw’

from crows. What intonations
of breath reside beyond
my ear? The Cooper’s hawk

crows like a rooster at dawn.
All talk clear enough, but
enunciate what I’ve yet to hear.

Much too eager to be innocent,
we pressed years of letters together
and lay upon a putting green pressing hands

before the summer moon rolled behind
the pines of Sequoia Crest above
the Rio de San Pedro, its prickly silhouettes

in a golden glow before an ascension
that burns behind my eyes yet,
as bright as fifty years ago. Naked

winter oaks with us stand and wait
for the pendant to rise and illuminate
her supine flesh while she sleeps,

from her throat or soft breast, she stirs
alive as you and I hold our breath—
from her toes stretched to Sulphur’s peak

to her long hair spilling into a dry creek
bed. Native women gathered here
for and by this same old moon.

Do not count the souls that rest
upon your attentiveness, the pump
that failed that must be fixed
to fill the only trough for miles.
Hundreds wait in shadows
while cattle graze unknowing.

A dragonfly watches from the edge
of emptiness, woodpeckers attach
themselves to nearby trees—hawks
roost and rabbits check for leaks.
Do not count the souls
you never knew before.

All you need to know
is how it works. You can
jerry-rig a poem to hold water
with few tools, or fix it right
so it will last, but don’t count souls
come just to watch the dance.