Ensconced

For a moment I sat beside a small wood stove
which had stood many months unfired in the shade of a room
whose only light came square framed in turquoise
from seven Black Eyed Susans rocking on long stems visited by bees.

That moment still hung in first light of the next morning
easing like an otter into cold waters where the Sun rose and set
without passage of time between the far shores of coming and going
lingering still while the Moon and its reflection in calm water shone

two brilliant blind eyes over an echo of a loon calling out from dead quiet
Even now, left with words I can never possess
words caught in the hollow of a mouth that can claim no hope of speech
having lived beyond speech for days in the simple labor of moving

from one place to another not to arrive but to continually emerge
from forest to field to ridge where I came upon a crow calling
a weighty shadow inhabiting a high roost—
an aspen beyond age clinging to stone.

Long after the Sun was carried
beyond the west ridge and hidden in cool shadows,
and the Black Eyed Susans have curled,
and the sweetness of pollen taken

into hives, hidden in capsules, and sealed in wax,
time has ensconced that moment in the labyrinth of past
where it has ceased and been refashioned into an indelible photograph
my eyes still claim as mine.

Paved

Maybe the young poets, like a growing list of dirt roads, are being paved over. Asphalt is easy, doesn't muddy your feet with innumerable words, but I am writing about myself again. That's why I order the wrong things to eat. It is non-sensical to sit at a bar so early in the evening while the Sun still shines. No one expects a middle-aged blue shirt to ask for hummus. It is my own fault for not ascribing the order a number, maybe the 8th in the Fibonacci sequence or the 5th because it's not cliche', but since all the young poets have been paved over, so what? None of these fit the formula nor factor into the equation that seems to want a series for input. Am even I being paved over by something as impersonal as mathematics?  The real question is do I want to finish my beer? I suppose there is no answer to this unless I want to give it one, which leads to a related question what answer will I give? One from a vast forest of unusual trees laden with all manner of strange fruit. Some of it is surely poisonous. Some will outright kill me, some will make me vomit, still more may only make me wish I was dead. Here I am with all this black skinned fruit that's oozing milky white pus. I'm tired of it. I've got a whole dirt basement full of this fruit. I've stacked up bushel baskets of it on the second-floor stairs. Maybe It's time to vacate, stand in the field with my head over my shoulder and watch timbers writhe in flames. Is there any difference between a growing mass of black fruit and a billowing tower of dark smoke? It's the feta cheese that's going to kill me tonight.

ghost

abandoned face
an empty wheel
don't tell me this shit

sunglasses
an old photograph
obviously blonde
cash

it's so much easier
depending on no-one

that's the fucking truth

Invitation

I cooked a strange ratatouille with tahini and curry and ate it with quinoa. Now I stand alone in a cool breeze beneath asterisms I’d invented in youth. I'm hoping for a perseid or two. Can I blame those who misunderstand me? It's unimportant. Won't you taste what I have made, and stand with me awhile? We can watch falling stars set the fields ablaze.

Surrendering the un-named

The last clear vase taken down
from a white sill and emptied
overflowing into a dark urn,
that lone sweet hour poured out—
the hoof print of a young doe,
three leaf-shaped pendants
fashioned from mother of pearl,
once the past, present, and future
all now seeping into earth.

don't want a coffee

It's 3:07 under a slate colored sky. I'm wasting my time in this bookstore. Pine needles still cling to my jeans. Out on the dunes I sat in half-lotus and fell asleep. Was it a wren that woke me? What do tourists do on cold July days? Why do they walk their dogs to a bookstore that only sells romance novels? Who would want to work as a barista in the back of a dime store? There used to be a bowling alley across the street when I had friends here. Once while camping in Montana I had a conversation with a Vietnam vet. We sat on the shore of Lake McDonald in the Rockies.  He lit up a joint and blamed all my problems with women on a restricted gene pool.