drycrikjournal

                                        We are taught to be
                                        moderate. To live intelligently.
                                                  – Jack Gilbert (“The Danger of Wisdom”)

From the shaded corner of my eye, I watch
the old cows follow my hands, measure pauses
between steps, hang back from the gate

trying to decide. They have learned
the smell of urgency I deny—camouflage
with monotone interposed by gentle coos

and ever-so-small handfuls of fresh alfalfa
left like breadcrumbs. They forsake great space,
fall in line, cross the threshold to be confined

as I walk among them, yet they have not lost
their fear and passion I can ignite
into wild-eyed stampede if I have lied,

if I let doubt or anxiety escape my mind.
Moderation: sage advice for slow progress
that without passion becomes meaningless.

I am not obsessed with it, despite another friend
whose eyes have rolled back behind his lids
as if to dream of something else for awhile
on new and endless landscapes: some manicured,
some wild, I imagine—it could be hell, otherwise.

There are so many ways to see if you look, and
so much of that looking is stitched in the cosmos
of your mind. Perhaps it finds a kind constellation
or star to forever inhabit, or just hangs in near space
breathing in and out of the open pores we nurtured.

A track we cannot see, but feel and understand
is real and shaped for certain places, certain
loves or things for certain human beings. Or
what good are blathering old men if they can’t
help, offer something other than a black wall?

Blessed is this slow dementia that hears voices
atop ridges and off the slick steep slopes,
around gossip rocks beneath the oaks to find
rhymes I want to hear that make better sense
of living well than what’s for sale.

                         “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.