solitude

i went to the desert
it was like a sea

(you need a boat
to travel the sea)

walked for miles

had no sextant
lost my way

in the middle of nowhere
sat a Coupe de Ville

'58 or 9
a rusted husk

sky through bullet holes
hollows for headlights

no steering wheel
doors gone

i got in
sat on a stone

turned to
Father Anthony

“you got the keys?”
but he was gone

in the back seat
Athanasius

shouting
“drive you fool, drive.”

Autumn

In the dream a friend was telling me how in 1948 her grandmother was born on the Vernal Equinox, but September was near. "We've turned the corner. Summer's gone," She said. We stood in shadow beside an unfamiliar gas station. An old woman drove up in a rusty blue car. It skidded to a stop. The woman had crazy eyes. She came to me and buried my face in her chest, and when I looked up I saw she was a classmate from many years ago. She didn't look so old. I could see her nipples swelling behind the fabric of her cotton dress, and when I awoke I was a boy again sleeping in my old bed, trying to pull up the old wool blanket I used to use when I got cold.

bordering on cliche'

Inside the room
a painted cloud

music of
a violin

the flowers already
starting to fade

scent of incense
always masking

some odor
of death

Outside the window
clouds are real

so is
the sky

earlier
I walked

among the cut-up branches
of a beech

September
knocking at the door

I myself
am crawling out the window

dancing over
a distant hill

the grass so green
this summer

my body
in many ways denied

always telling me
it's there

telling
and telling

until at last
I have to listen

sunlight through
the window

so wonderful
this time of year

faith

inside a small adobe Church
air thick
smell of incense

a candle for Jesus
flickers in the darkness

outside
above the desert
the brilliance of clouds
whiteness of clouds
moves
across a stoic sky

in the distance
far from the empty Church
there's a skeleton
of a prehistoric fish
pressed into a layer
deep inside a stone

that darkness is no different

the coast

the days are long

cards thrown
one at a time
at a wall of gray cement
they land face down or up
an Ace
a Queen of Clubs not Hearts

is a Jack a Knave?

boats rock
on distant waves
not blue waves
gray green

1 + 1 equals something too far gone to see
the cards don't tell a thing

at the corner of the future
is the past
she knocks me flat
cards fall out of my pockets

I never pick them up

the sea is not too far from here
I can taste the salt

is there a boat out there for me?
a gray boat
on gray waves

the clouds
curtains covering sky
steel curtains
cold rivets
raining down