Category Archives: Poems 2016

Hot days fade early,
black breathes cool upon thin skin
as old men leave town’s comforts

to drive the canyon, narrow
road and sharp curves gone
straight in ’68, leaving legends

on slopes of scree
where the Model T coup
teetered on two wheels

in high school, you asking
where you could have died
half-century back.

This ground has not forgotten,
each rock removed exposes
another memory

of our dead history
into a landslide
of stories hidden

and turned loose on our tongues—
old men exploring
where they’ve come from.

                               You ask why I’ve settled in these emerald mountains:
                              I smile, mind of itself perfectly idle, and say nothing.

                              Peach blossoms drift streamwater away deep in mystery
                              here, another heaven and earth, nowhere people know.
                                                      – Li Po (“Mountain Dialogue”)

To and from their peach tree roost
the quail trail in at dawn and dusk
like heavy heifers on parade

from shade to water trough
before they graze the waves of dry,
blond hillsides bent to a breeze.

An evening tree frog leaves a centerpiece
of succulents at six o’clock, short hops
to table’s edge and leaps for misters

on timers, scales the green swords of iris
for the wet scent of lavender and more—
crawls back at dawn like a drunk home.

We meet the mystery of nowhere
in a slow dance of seasonal cycles
returning new over and over again.

The weeks take wing and flutter
like coveys of quail to safety,
seasons spin into one another

as the dawn rides up and down,
north and south, upon the ridgeline,
never resting in the same place twice

no matter the year—this moment
unique. And these old eyes
still sharp at a distance, see more

than they used to—know the details
to look for. I am learning how
to talk with my eyes, conversations

accompanied with words:
reverberating murmurs in my chest
from a gentle land we understand.