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.

Other Shapes

The bright cloud and its

dark shadow, moving over

the land, much like me.

Today, I am a
cloud passing over prairie,
stingy with my rain.

I am turbulence,
rising from rocky foothills,
unseen, only felt.

I am an idle
pen, waiting for an earnest
hand to speak through me.

Inside, Outside

Inside, I'm writing checks

and paying bills, doing

mental math--

Outside, the basketball

bounces, keeping time

for a casual game.

Now, I wish I was that

kid, playing in the street,

wearing long pajamas,

whose most pressing

deadline is when the

streetlights come on.

Full moon haiku

Full moon, and a cat

patrols her perimeter

down the quiet street.

A slap of shoes on

sidewalk, and a runner is

home, quickly inside.

Full moon, high and bright--

even the streetlights cannot

outshine that blue light.

Remembering Roads

Following these sinuous roads,

I recall trips that ended in embraces.

My weight shifts in the corners and

my body feels it. No short strolls

or straight shots: serpentine,

windy ascents over

the pass and the state line;

long straights and steady,

even grades, truck lanes

and deep forests, roads winter-

slippery and summer shaded,

witnesses to my earnestness in

driving to, and satisfaction in

driving from, those houses where

someone brightened a doorway,

the distance an equation of

anticipation and reflection: something,

somewhere, the spending of the now

for some then—or, distance as insulation,

sure as I am safe in a car, immune from weather,

so too my heart traveled safely, my life

sectioned off, little borderlines to cross

to get to and from the center. No way of

knowing now, even though I know each

curve, dip and twist, the ones that

bring belly butterflies and a fluttery chest,

slowing and acceleration, routes now

that are still simply roads even as

memory diverges on its own path.

LP

There's a bit of silence

as I pause to turn

over the record, that

great one with the song

about crazy lovers starting

side two—this record I've

had since I was a kid--

and with the clicks and pops

before the music starts

I'm realizing how short

a long-playing album

has become.

Screen

There's the white trim,

the brick fireplace hearth,

wood tones of floor and furniture,

and this: a rectangle of light,

showing humans doing awful things,

while children sounds filter in

through the room's open windows.

From the garnet red of my sofa,

I see blood in the streets,

a choking tear gas cloud.

A plane over my house blends with

mechanized terror on the square

half a world from here.

I can make it go away, a push

and it's over, this flat, shocking

angry chaos that our media have

marshaled into some sort of order

for me and my couch-bound brethren.
It is, after all, and by definition,

a screen.

Maybe

there was a time

we were lying

side by side

when she asked

what are you thinking

and I said

that maybe everything

is all right

and she said (a thing

for which I'll always

be grateful)

then maybe

it is

Birth Mother

So I said it like this:

You let me down twice,

giving me away, then dying

before I could find you,

and now that door will never close,

letting in a periodic chill that

makes me shiver--

little whispers, voices all around

with their cold tongues, sibilant

sounds that every now and then

resolve into this:

You're not good enough.

It's your fault.

Better try really hard or

it will all happen again.

Anything and anyone you

hold dear--

Well,

it's all conditional.

You were chosen, sure,

that's special, but

nothing's guaranteed.

The letter from the

kind woman at the agency

arrived that November day,

leafless branches creaking in

the sunlight as my trembling hands

opened the envelope, revealing

names, places, and this:

You did all you could,

got the information you were

legally allowed,

withheld your signature until

(in your heart, I imagine) you knew.

I think of our parting, that scene

you remembered, lost to this infant's

goldfish mind, and I know now

(in my head, at least) that the

sum of my years of dull ache

you felt sharply, maybe all at once

when your trembling hand shaped

that signature, or when you touched me

for the last time.

A New World

A quick flash of another is all it takes--

that other, with such gravity that your fantasy

will quickly accrete like a nascent planet,

a new world where you alone will reside,

in a castle of the mind, subconscious Xanadu,

the torment of an immortal dream you step into

willingly, this liquid amber that will hold you

tighter than any a lover--this place possessed

with star-strength gravity, or black hole better yet--

felt, not seen, making you a prisoner of physics,

your tight orbit with no escape but for the

inevitable collapse, consumption and crush.

Evening Hills

The hills are like a woman 

sleeping soundly on her side,

off in the distance, not

really getting closer,

while beneath me the

bicycle rhythmically sways

in a dance of chain clicks

and my rocking hips,

staccato breath coming

now in triplets as flicks

of rain land on my

tanned forearms

as the mottled black

pavement slides beneath

and my attention is drawn

again to those distant hills--

all blues and grays

below a sinking sun

with those familiar curves

of hip, breast, shoulder--

clear but distant, unreachable

tonight, under my own power--

so I am on this hillside here,

holding close its serpentine road,

this scene nothing like that

soundly sleeping woman--

that trust and ease of sleep,

that simple comfort and shared space--

ride as hard or far as I can, or I will,

but I can't quite get there.

It's the things far off that draw me

the most, hovering as these hills do

at the edge of my vision, but still clear

as the wind whistles over me and the

road, the ride and the wind shake loose

thoughts that become these words.

Bright Silence

Stars shine like highway glass,

shards twinkling in headlights--

reminders of past violence

yielding beauty, catching

the eye, markers of a fierce

birth or death, underscoring

the sweet time between.

Sand to glass, stars from gas,

all of us coming from somewhere

headed somewhere else--

Forget seeing, let me be

illumination, the light

that leaps through space,

that bright silence that speaks.

Haiku on the stoop

Evening on the stoop--

moths drawn to light, humans drawn

to the August sky.

Stars shine silently--

violence is beautiful

with enough distance.

A bottle falls, breaks,

as I squelch a shout, mindful

of neighbors' windows.

A meteor's brief

flash—the deepest wishes cross

our minds so quickly.

Meteors become

wishes—proof that humans' hopes

cling to anything.

A sheltered cat's cry,

doubting the clockwork of food

in her silver bowl.

Sounds reach farther in

the night—my mind, also, as

day quiets and dims.