Category Archives: Poems 2014

                                        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.

All grins, his hands wave clouds
over the desert of California,
palms flat over the bare Sierras,

smears them white, spreading green
into the Valley. His magic childlike
to promise and deliver weather,

godlike sure and we believe—
hoot and holler in the kitchen, tip
a glass and lift a log to the fire.

Relief in his face, I imagine
the poor bastard has friends again
speaking civilly at home

and through the TV screen—
but as messenger of the gods
it doesn’t pay to act like them.

I grow old with this forgetfulness,
waiting for the goddess
to refresh dry dirt with her caress,

                    her long moist kiss
                    to bring this flesh
                    to flush with green.

On bare ground, lost tools expose
our short history since the gossip rocks—
pestles resting for basic work

like unemployed epiphanies
to grind into a living poem
left in a trail of our dust.

I grow old with faith and hope
grown to my shoulder, whispering
their monotonous sweet nothings

that don’t arouse me—that don’t
fill the bellies of cows
with hay or babies.

I grow old with poems
chiseled in clouds of dust—
first lines everywhere I look.

We watch the weather now, ground
damp, generating life we cannot see,
yet to color cold brown slopes like

crossing frothy mountain streams
to plan each step, eye dot to dot,
timed leaps from rock to mossy rock

to gain the far bank, another perspective,
a new approach to trout. The river
in the sky has changed, exposed

new boulders and cutbanks since
I fished here last, now casting
more to luck than experience.

Heavy oak stumps, my legs lack
a willow’s spring and face the current
on cobbles I can only see with my toes.

One might think a break from the worst
be accompanied by trumpeting, bright
angels swooping low with silver watering

cans sprinkling the land, the dry tongues
of man and beast loosed to taste the miracle,
the thunderous crescendo of hallelujahs

with each strike of lightening—a time
to toss the cork from the communal jug
with jubilance and thanksgiving. But

before the seed swells to break the crust
of its deep dust bed, we beg for more
like children for cake and ice cream.

Too late to awake from this dream
we know as well as grass and water,
one might think we rest instead of feeding,

instead of bleeding, wrestling bales of dry,
fine-stemmed hay to clean-haired cattle
in their Super Bowl Sunday best.

Thick, dark clouds rest upon Dennison
as it snows on Blue Ridge, its thin, white
filigree of canyons traced across the Kaweah

as the load rocks in and out of a rut. We hold
our breath, like always, and imagine being
scattered with alfalfa down a mountain’s side.

No difficult goodbyes this year—
except for the many gone for good
we carry with us while they graze
new ground and make new homes.

Instead we gaze into a screen to reach
what we cannot touch. No warm embrace.
no eye to eye, no songs to take on
seas of sage and purple mountains home.

Seven hundred miles away and spared
the tears your voices bring, echoing
unanswered—no high-tech magic yet
better than the real thing.