Author Archives: John

                                        A music composed of what you have forgotten.
                                        That will end with my ending.
                                                  – Jack Gilbert (“Cherishing What Isn’t”)

I remember now, that grand epiphany at 18
on the border of Watts and old town pressed together,
writing in my fifty-dollar stall in ‘The Jungle’—

the Doheny Stables, L.A. in the 60s—absorbing it all.
Fuzzy faces and names who will never know
how they shaped a wide-eyed colt, never hear

the music I whisper now breathing. How the dream
seemed so reasonable, as smooth as wooden-handled tools
I can still use—our each faux pas, a forgotten secret

at the heart of every song. Soon there will be no time
for musing, no tinkling bells for the wind to move
in trees. Soon we will have saved it all for more activities.

They disrobe beneath a damp cloak of darkness
between us and the stars, between us and the gods
gone on to other tasks, other games to play
to leave us incubating, once again, with another test.

So it begins after years buffeted by weather, like
Jeffers’ stone outpost grinning through clenched teeth
as the sea roared, battering the cliffs at his feet,
the windblown beards of cypress twisted permanently.

They are finally naked now along the creek, limbs
undulating upon the tarnished gold of old clothes
strewn beneath them, reaching for heaven in unison—
the white tangle of sycamores in Dionysian dance

begins as their backdrop of brown slopes germinates
in grays at first, but as their feathered fingertips green
prematurely. No water in the creek, no prolonged
orgiastic celebration—they dress for an early spring.

                                        The wind keeps telling us something
                                        we want to pass on to the world:
                                        Even far things are real.
                                             – William Stafford (“Whispered Into The Ground”)

She lingers yet, tending every canyon, every wish
as if she’d never left—and we appeased like
suckled, scattered babies dreaming upon tall green.

This ground inhales her, swells with seed in the dark
overnight to root and reach for daylight at once—
out of the old dust, trillions of little heartbeats race

with wanting the same lush and steamy dreams
we all share, as the earth comes alive, like it has
every year. And for a moment, we are one

explosion free and full of hope for the world.
Her breath lingers in a mist within the limbs of oaks
gray upon the ridges, as if she’d never left.

Redwood 2 x 6s drinking in the dark beyond the eave,
before steady sprinkling puddles to reflect gray dawn,
before the sorrel horses find new games to play

waiting at the manger for the slap of a screen door,
the deliberate movement of humans, hats tipped to the sky.
Thin rain, a second dose to a perfect prescription

to bind the deep and loose, grassless dehydration
of hills to hold their shape, promising color
we can only imagine after six-months of loading

and unloading hay to cows. Late to bed, the goddess
has returned—timid and quiet under covers of clouds.
With no excuses, no wild promises, she stays all-day.