furled

mast-stays sing
I remember a woman from Amsterdam
though not her name

the six-inch scar across her cheek
the left corner of her mouth
but not her name

her face like sun on calm ocean
the white scar   a thin straight wave
she had taken in   a solitary grace

her soft voice never told of the knife I imagined
only asked if I liked the swimsuit she was buying
she was already dreaming of sailing

and I was already with her
forever
 

found

after many years
alone in the woods
elation
brick
shame
lost rivers
a freeway
murmuration
dusk

after many years

a house missing one wall
crumbles into a banana grove
earth-red among burgeoning growth
the white linens of childhood still on a bed
as if the whole world were only a bedroom closet

alone in the woods

eleven grackles in a quaking aspen in the sun
saw-toothed yellow leaves still cling rattling in the wind
the grackles chatter high above the browning bracken
all things grown from earth now returning to earth
damp with thawed frost the decomposing grass
red berries bountiful on still-green holly

elation

alone in the jack-pines
far behind the hills
a man sits naked in a pond

a woman in black pours water
from a bowl upon his head 
it trickles through his long white beard

ripples radiate across the sky
a fading smear of peach
stars begin to fall

they're not what we suppose
but burning coals of bluish ice
the size of fists

they smolder in the pond
but pierce the ground
like bullets cutting through un-fired clay

crows fly out from smoking holes
kirtland warblers
wrens

on the edges of their wings--
fire

brick

a brick has borne a wall
so long that weight has been forgotten
like I have forgotten
the presence of so many people
who have not noticed
a bricked-in archway

I wonder how many times I have passed
through doorways un-filled with brick
how many I still must pass
and that's the thing--

most don't realize
all the doorways they shall never enter
numbering in the billions
nor do they know
which doorways they entered for the very last time
how could they

shame

I have broken the sacred bone
spilled the bloodied wine

turned the yellowed page
crumbled the fallen word
stained the dark frock

I have pounded on piano keys
and knocked the porcelain Joseph off

lost rivers

a fresh-painted wall
filled with photographs strangers have taken of places unlabeled--

black and white rivers
framed waters arrested behind glass that has cracked 

visions of unknown eras
redeemed from others' garages unpacked from lost boxes discovered in attics abandoned

silent rivers cutting through forests of deciduous trees
leaves returned long ago to soil carried away by currents forgotten

a freeway

divides
  shadowed farmhouse from red setting sun

parts that which was sold--
  hay-fields where house-trailers for migrants now rust
  creek-beds and knolls foraged for mushrooms

it severs
  the oiled dirt road still traveled in dreams
  the sand-blow where a lone tree towered--
  the maple I climbed as a boy
  to name with a jack-knife
  my first true love

murmuration

see how a thousand starlings rise--
a vast amebic cloud
above the building's broken silhouette

how a soldier stoops across a purple sky
to take a pack of cigarettes
from a dead man in the mall

see how a single ember circles darkness
scribes its empty orbit through the black

dusk

down the shoulder of a straight and narrow highway
across fields of bowed and rain-damp grass
the gravel sky hangs heavy
and from a dark and jagged forest
black eyes rooted in shadows watch

the highway leads nowhere you have been
comes from where you can't return
no one else is traveling in this weather
even the light has flown from the wide valley's folds
a brown-watered stream carries it trickling away

too late you ask where you can rest
no answer gives comfort
it's not comfort that you seek
your long-coat blows tattered in the wind
pockets worn through long ago

abandoned robots in the basement

AR.1
a voice activated R2D2 no longer responds
it used to carry cans of coca cola
I reattached its leg with a six-inch decking screw
accidentally pierced the circuit board
a kind of electronic crucifixion
its corroded batteries leak white powdery acid

AR.2
replaced by a later model with humanoid hands
a Robosapien face down on the floor
the programmers gave it only one word--
Rosebud
it spoke when powered down
the death scene in Citizen Kane
that mysterious last word 
name of the sled he had as a boy
before his mother sent him away
pet name for the clitoris of Marion Davies 

Sunday at the Cafe'

Sitting at your little table in the haze of the Sun
quiet breezes stirring the first yellow leaves

You coaxed me from my dull somnambulation
and nudged all else away-- the spiny creatures
mumbling soldiers, all the lazy moths clinging to my shoulders

A sprig of ivy tangled in a smooth strand of your hair

I played with you like a riddle
your language like a puzzle
holding each word as I turned it in circles

Until ink-made letters perturbed with my prolonged goodbye
leapt from that edgy crossword at the far side of the table
and menaced me as I fled down the street

displaced

Thin and pliable, they've been blown across fields from where the wind is unrelenting
   they have nothing to say, they've forgotten how to speak and if they could: atrocity--
where does one begin? They have slowly turned porous, nearly all have vanished
   relocating to invisible houses in countries of quiet meadows on worlds we've yet to discover
no matter how many radio signals we beam at them from Arecibo they're not coming back.
  They've traveled intentionally by indirect paths so convoluted they can't retrace them
even if threatened or tortured, even for their children; they are identical in this way.

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.