#42

The silver maple was shorter then

and more sun surely reached in

the windows and the old lady

wasn't so old, and maybe

her husband was here too

in this house where I now sit 

and wonder. Words gone up 

like the heated air, through rafters

and out, scattered and diffuse,

sounds of laughter, love, life, loss--

for sure, grown children came

and took stock, discussed, maybe

argued about this or that antique,

the house empty and clean,

bereft, waiting for a new set

of stories that grow sometimes

as slowly as trees but just

as deliberately.

Dusk at Round Lake

The rain of tires on Route 9

fades to abstraction as

wind stirs water, light

reflects here and not there,

subtle mirrors, pink fragments, and

the cold air's rousing call

on my skin—a turning

from the linear, from the

rush and crawl, to Round Lake,

clouds like calling fingers,

and a rounding moon.

Light's Travels

How many lenses have we

passed through, how many

times have we bent in darkness,

felt gravity's capricious hand

alter our course, all the while,

light driving out dark,

one thin strand at a time?

What The Light Says

That moment when I

enter your eye, know this:

I am not the light you see,

this wave from deep space,

this beam of particles

pin-pricking your night sky--

I was molten hot, swollen,

roiling, violent, swallowing

worlds like yours, then

collapsing inward,

dark, dense, inert, spent.

All I am now is energy, a thin,

unbroken reminder of what

was, what is. It matters not.

My wisdom is this:

You are dust from us,

deep in a red-shifted past,

and you will again be light,

in this universe of

flight and capture,

running and returning.

River

I am a river,

cutting across man-made right

angle roads and fields,

willful, stubborn, to be worked

around, and not to be changed.

Peaks

Granite mountains rise,

evidence of violent collisions.

Sandstone erodes, the

patient work of wind and water.

Either way, peaks at which

we gape. What else is life

but adding and taking away?

Wind Thoughts

Mesas of my mind, arid plains

and the jutting forms rising from them,

sunlight and heat rousing the air,

causing my wind-thoughts to sing those

familiar songs of love and loss,

friends and joys, fears and comforts,

over and over again. 

Time and Landscape

Once, Paiute and Navajo lookouts, surely, perched on
the edges of these mesas, naked sandstone now
colonized by cell towers.

That cross carved on the hillside over there symbolizes
nothing more than four-wheelers’ earnest scramblings,
rubber into soft stone and rusty dirt.

The layered mesas, banded in shades of color like a paint
sample, are working on a different clock, saying to anyone
who will look long enough, that time isn’t what you think it is.

Zion: Only the most recent name for these gorges and walls,
lush green life next to barren stone, enough of a temple for
anyone of faith in anything, sure as sunlight.

More comings and goings. Close to the road, a recent strip mall,
stone over wood frame, holds a drugstore and mortuary—
no euphemisms here. A sign out front, billowing in the wind,
says FINAL DAYS.

True, for some, but not all of this. 

Mojave Study 2

I am the fine curtain of rain, out of earshot, pulling my grayness over iron red mesas, corrugated, layered shapes, echoing ancient ocean origins.

I am the rain on the fine dry dirt, collecting now, carving and cutting a path as I go; water on dirt—even stone—always wins.

I am the rock in the path, there for you to go around (and leave you wondering) or over (and leave you knowing).

I am coyote, here then gone. You see my gray flank quartering away, a flash of tail.

I am the root reaching blindly down, deep, into the soil, seeking what I need.

I am vague disquiet brought by the mountains’ mass, making humans small, at nature’s mercy.

I am a low swath of green, fed by unseen water, familiar shapes of pines and deciduous trees.

I am the wind no longer swirling dirt, but

swaying the tall grass like a gentle hand.

Mojave Study 1

The vaguely unsettling desert frame of few colors,

terrifying mountains, all hard rocks and sharp angles,

reaching out through the dry air, playing tricks with

distance and depth—up close, easily scaled one moment;

impossibly remote the next.

Here, things flow from one to the next, features changing

slowly—There weren’t yucca trees like this back a few miles,

were there?

Roots reach blindly into arid soil,

seeking what moisture they can, and

now, a swath of green in a low spot, fed by unseen water,

softens the view: familiar shapes of pines and 

deciduous trees, the wind no longer swirling dirt,

but swaying the tall grass like a gentle hand.

Deepening

Along I-15, eastbound, dust fills the air,

clouds the color of ground, a brown rain.

Dry riverbeds cut through the dull desert,

snaking under the dusty highway.

Pavement thrums under us as the mountains

stand distant and aloof in their reptilian

rocky exteriors. The washes and channels

are dry. Between us, however, things flow:

No chattering runoffs, no murmuring springs,

just silence—just now--this deepening water

of siblings growing ever more at ease.