Rifle asleep in its case under the seat,
he reads me through the windshield –
winter coat at dawn alone, calves
too big to bring him down – now,
squirrel towns busy cleaning burrows
after rain. Free in February to fill
the seams, he reinvents our deserted
homesteads as we move closer to more
comfort and speed – front door jam
his scent post, our rusty bucket, home
for mice. He lopes the other way,
laughs over his shoulder, going back.
Dark, about to rain
(confirmed on NOAA) –
there is no poetry today,
no sweet metaphors left
on the watermelon wagon
as we bump along.
Instead, I listen for
the whir of early drops
upon the roof, ready
to fall into a long sigh
and broadleaf grin,
too edgy now to write.
The grass will come
on stronger, hold ‘til
the Ides of March –
until another, hopefully.
It’s dark, about to rain
buckets-full, they say,
promising for a week.
Slow arriving, late to stay
awhile, or miss these
gray south slopes
altogether – you
never know in California.
Only now, does she allow entry
up Ridenhour as dawn glints
off goosenecks through bare oaks
below, rumbling of aluminum –
saddle horses brace the rutted cut
after weeks of rain, month of sun
on the steep, south slope – small
poppies first to rise in welcome
to her refurbished hall, narrow
draw with water pooled to fall
off boulders beneath nearly-naked
buckeyes posed: green feathers
upon gray fingertips. We drink
deeply and hold our breath,
climbing higher to brand calves.
Posted in Poems 2011
She woke on the edge of a clear stream and made her way to a mansion built on pillars of gold, whose silver walls glowed like a lantern in the sun. She ventured inside to find floors of precious stones, rooms of treasure and art, and comforting voices that she could hear but not see that invited her to dine, to bathe, to sleep, and to enjoy every imaginable comfort. She fell asleep to a chorus of angels, accompanied by a harp. – Teresa Jordan, (“Cupid: The Soap Opera”) http://www.yearoflivingvirtuously.com/?p=1649
VALENTINE
‘Tis Cupid come in darkness
to dance in dreams, dear Psyche –
how we yearn like children
to unlock deep chests,
to comfort and confirm
our richest vulnerabilities,
our nakedness in the light.
O’ to be so simply mortal
is the envy of all the gods!
We are cast of stone, all kinds,
no two the same, amalgamations
worn by time’s erosion, by
wind, sun and rain – warming,
soothing, eating away towards
the core of our ultimate humility.
Even the lofty falcon’s perch,
gray-haired, exfoliates into the sea,
the Sierra’s teeth crumbling and
the cobble found to fit a hand
are finally sand, gravel for highways,
particles of dust stirred and inhaled
as strangers remembered, carried
in our chests. What do the eyes
truly see, searching for that mystic
connection of great and small, those
depths we explore where details meet
and fall in love, or lust, or like –
or as we gird for battle? Here,
in that moment there is no time
to relive the past or dream of some
future futility. The real action churns
with it all at once, in the current
like a river rushing, pooling, soaking
richly within us, before moving on.
Smell of salt upon the sand,
endless stream of pelicans
tracing waves, translucent
blues and greens returned
from golden times, as we
absorbed the sun, charged
the naked flesh, strangers
off the gravel road
to San Quintin in the 60s –
when there were no signs
of people, except for you
and I – philosophizing,
boiling it all down
to a native awareness
we hoped to cultivate.
– for Peter Forsch
It’s still a funny world of mostly men
among men in front of women, old
bulls with half-bowed necks, that
awkward uncertainty searching for
a postured cure, a familiar stance –
we give them space, let little voices
from unruly classrooms fade as if
not listening, as if nothing was said,
hoping an echo rings in their heads.
Pawed dirt with bellow and bluster,
some wear bald spots on thick skulls,
spar for hours in a pasture of cows –
yet the unemployed, when sequestered
together, can harmonize their grumbling
from the comfort of distant shade trees.
Posted in Poems 2011
The scene opens around a fire,
shadows of huddled men dancing
to white coals stirred for another chunk
of tamarack, bell mare grazing
distant darkness by granite starlight,
sweet and damp in her nostrils,
to the snowmelt’s murmur
leaking down into another world.
You are there among them now,
young and listening in thin night air,
following a herd of horses from
Cuyama up the Kern, over Farewell
to the miners in Mineral King
by yourself at seventeen – Onus Brown.
If lucky, you may be a story only,
a far-fetched tale of discarded truth –
short chapters of wild accomplishment
that will not matter in the future,
but for the embellished retelling.
The camera zooms into eyes a glint
beneath your brim, cigarette inhaled,
jug tipped, passed and burning still –
nothing worse among these men,
than to have nothing left to tell.
Posted in Poems 2011
We are, of course, quite common people,
wrinkled and scarred – not yet immune
to dreaming, to the private illusions
we wear like subdued tattoos that tell
more around the eyes and hands. We move
with habit calling to be fed, searching
horizons at first light, filling mangers
from barns built to keep us busy
circling in the same place. Always
other lives off-stage in the wings,
like ladies-in-waiting to the queen
who rules the barnyard, we protect
near borders from wild encroachment
pressing, always pressing-in – we adapt
by adopting a most common sense.
Posted in Poems 2011
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