Los Vatos

Domingo drives, arm out

The window, tan olive skin

Against purple metal flake,

Riding low, blue exhaust notes

As the small block

Purrs and roars with

Stoplight rhythms.

Junior and Cesar jump in,

Screw-top bottle rattles

Belt buckles and key rings,

And someone turns

The music up,

Inky bass rumbles,

Bright horns, percussion

Sass back, and the

Sun sets west of Chico,

And they roll, these

Sons of poverty, heirs

To stubborn dirt, the car

A royal robe letting everyone

Know they have arrived.

Test Anxiety

Fill out your answer sheet

With a number-two pencil.

Make neat black circles.

Do not leave anything blank.

Make no stray marks.

Your exam will be machine scanned.

Raw scores will be recorded.

Fill out your pencil sheet

With answer number two

Circle neat black makes

Do not blank anything. Leave.

Make no marks strays.

Your scan machine will be examined

Recorded scores will be raw

Pencil sheet fill out

#2 answer

Black makes circles neat

Leave. Do not blank.

Stray marks no make

Examine your scan machine

Answer raw records

Answer, out

Black, blank

#2 stray

Scan scan scan

Raw circle

Do not blank

Leave

Leave

Leave

November haiku

I just stepped outside 
under the nearly-full moon. 
It smells like winter.

Vows

I have agreed to the terms

I have been to the mountaintop

I have called you by name

I have done the deed

I have embraced

You have all of me

You have been waiting here

You have compassed this mountain

You have my hopes

You have eliminated the impossible

We have a savior

We have begun

We have come into this house

We have discovered moons

We have everything we need

I will survive

You will know

We will not be shaken

Lost and Found

I'm lost in the glow of glittery things, yet no diamond.

     First known when lost!

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all.

     What's left to lose?

Moments, their perfume lost, can't be found again.

     No, nothing's ever lost!

I have lost my back and forward. What do I do when lost?

     Stand still. The trees and bushes beside you are not lost.

(Space lost its vast dimensions and

drew comfortably around them.)

I finally lost my fear.

     Wherever you are is called here.

(She found and lit a last candle.)

     I found one of your poems today. I keep them all in an envelope.

I've seen you but I'm only now finding you.

(He found himself thinking of the green park a year ago.)

I found I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn't say any other way.

     I found you like a trinket in an old trunk.

(He found the answer down on his knees, found the great treasure standing all open.)

Free me from worry, that familiar pain, that trail lost and found.

(A clear head will find itself.)

     Wherever we are is called here. 

Here, Now

He's in a wheelchair, bundled,

shoes with generous tread that

will go unused, and his voice

is slurred, as if coming from

a shell, the edges rounded off,

the sea's soft sibilance, and

I hear it resonate through

the chair's metal frame, as

he sweet-talks the willowy

rec therapist. Next, I feel

his weight, lean into the

handles to push him through

the parking lot, where he sees

the building's exterior for the

first time, and together,

we feel the spring breeze,

life again, blossoming trees.

Then we sit on a bench, eye level,

the familiar cadence of conversation

with his blue eyes bright, recalling

years of stories, each one opening

like a bud, new again--

and today is a seed opening,

another beginning, one that

will come to me, spirit willing,

a perennial memory, some spring

--or winter—far from now,

as sure as the warm air

and sun here, now.

Re-creation

The room in which

I teach exists, surely,

but I'm miles from it,

even further in my mind,

as my bicycle's overlapping

circles of wheels, cranks

and gears turn smoothly

in the July sun. Later,

I'll enjoy the sounds of

wood and wire as I

play guitar out back.

As I ride, I think of how

every pedal stroke, every

strum or pluck marks some

incremental reset and

recovery from the

endurance activity

that is teaching, and I

add one little hyphen

and find that recreation

is re-creation.

Enough to Move Worlds

gravity and attraction are

enough to move worlds

silently through the void

purely physics atoms

doing what they do

because we have

to call it something

energy and matter

each is also the other

there are things beyond our

knowing as it should be

even light only reaches so far

the tiny slivers we see are

fragments of something

bigger like how a kiss in the dark

sends up sparks like fireworks

behind closed eyes and

warmth floods in dust of

stars taken shape summoned

up from primordial ooze

eons of living things saying

YES and the light behind

your eyes is the same energy

occult and charged deep in

the coils of the heart becoming

and willing itself out

Here, Not Here

Part of me is orbiting far out,

waves and vibrations playing

some cosmic chord--

another part is locked in tight, buried deep

and dark, some rare element in my heart

or elsewhere, something I know

by heart, by feel only, something

I'm guarding very carefully.

Two aspects of the same thing,

shaped by pressure and space.

Untitled Tanka

I crave a northbound

road to unhaunted landscapes,

worries left behind,

to where a soft wind rises

over and quiets my mind.

Prisoner and Jailer

While you are the prisoner

in your cramped, damp cell,

you are also the warden, the jailer,

the one with the keys hanging close,

their sweet music reaching in

past your own locks, the sound of

what if, of freedom, of YES. 

Home

 

The house in which I now

find myself offers up cues

to childhood, to years past

coming back as if wired

directly into my senses:

the walls of heat in the attic

and the smell of cardboard

and dust, the earthy cool of

the basement, the burbling

lawnmowers and the cut

grass coloring my shoes

and tickling my nose with

its slight peppery sweetness.

The bills come, as they

surely did then, monthly,

and I can't look at a wall

or window for too long before

deciding it needs attention.

Still, friends are a walk or

a bike ride away, no plan needed.

Still, I open a heavy door and

a basketball bounces in the

street, and the ice cream truck's

song shifts down a step as it

passes, a bittersweet modulation

as things stay the same and

we move through them like

the high, harmless clouds

in the July sky.

Free Me

Free me from worry, that familiar pain,

a well-traveled trail, lost and found.

Show me what my heart can contain.

Get me out of the canyon before the rain.

Show me the way to the high ground,

free me from worry, that reaching pain.

Lead me away from losses and gains--

not all victories will bring renown.

Show me what my heart can contain.

Let my breath be a simple refrain

as I climb higher, with a brief look down.

Free me from worry, that following pain.

Not everything demands to be explained--

mountains move without a sound.

Show me what my heart may contain.

Safe now, walking the high, calm plain,

a brilliant moon hangs low and round.

You transform my worry, that capricious pain,

and show me what my heart always contains.

Late Sun

Riding along the

rural road this evening, the

burn in my muscles

dropped away for a time, and

the late sun glowed like honey.

Ode to the Peloton

Sweet rolling

order and chaos,

sinuous and shifting,

amorphous, flowing

over the road's shapes,

shelter from capricious

wind, my friend and foe.

Hive mind, move as one,

an agile flock in flight,

tuned to one's wing flick

and subtle vector.

My solace and my prison--

escape off the front,

fade away and die

off the back.

Mercurial as the wind

you split, fast then slow,

easy until it is not,

and again, brakes like

grabbing hands preface

the fire in tight sinew, burning

red pain betrayed only by

the slight whirr and whoosh.

A Typical Afternoon

The music of the cooling

wind in the linden tree,

sedate summer birdsong,

maple-filtered light and

relieving shade in which

I now find myself

were here before I

noted them—just steps

away from routine.

So, too, in my mind,

to the I behind my eyes,

the self expanding out

from the physical, beyond

limbs, but not beyond reach.

Something within yet larger,

as the wind and air here

join seamlessly with sky,

though no one can say

precisely where.

A Simple Dance

So much was said, when

my hand was on your back,

where you placed it, warmth

beneath soft cotton, where

I pushed and released, felt you

move beneath my palm,

with the band's beat,

toward me, away, back,

in time, like breath,

unified rhythm, this simple

music as our bodies conversed

on the sloping floor, yours calling

mine back from some strange journey,

to this new, unified rhythm,

your smile saying, simply,

keep going.

Fenced

I observe my thoughts,

running loose but not far,

like dogs in a fenced yard,

worrying down familiar paths,

fretting around trees already marked.

I see them, zigzagging, crouching,

laced with potential energy,

charging, repeating. Let them

tire themselves out. They will

slow down, quiet, come to me

with wet noses and frantic tails,

right to my hands, when they

are bored and hungry.

Kids on the Edge

The faceless voice announced,

the adult swim will be ending in five minutes,

and we kids lined up at the pool's rounded

concrete edge, bent like Olympians

waiting for the gun, our shadows lunging

over the old man slowly backstroking

through the calm water, oblivious

beneath his swimming cap of

the potential energy of children

fueled on soda and soft pretzels

during the interminable fifteen-minute

wait found in every hour, with

soft rock playing from the speakers

high on poles--Afternoon Delight

to my kid mind was nothing more

than what we were doing every day

of that summer, longer then than now,

waiting by the side of that pool, always

poised on the edge of something.

Torrent

My thoughts:

Floodwater filled with

sediment, bits of what

has been consumed

blended to brown,

opaque and bitter.

No negotiating with

this torrent. Best to

give it room and time

to spread, slow and settle,

return to clarity,

this swelling river seeking

an ocean's release.