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1:

    Beating Heart

I want to eat some food.  I want to eat
some food in town with a quiet group
of men and women who have chosen
to come to the diner alone—
some in suits, some in pantsuits,
some in work clothes and boots.
I want to eat the simple pleasure
of eating food, enjoying the moment.
I happen to get sick.  I want to get
sick and then I want to feel better.  I want
to feel the importance of feeling better.
I want my illness to fade into strength
and the incipient qualities of well-being.
I want my heart to beat.  I want my heart
to beat hard at the appropriate moments.
I want my clothes to fit.
I want my hair to grow.
I want my hair to grow into something
that will be admired by others.
I want to be admired by others.
I want this to happen in an offhand way.
I want to know goodness.  I want my heart
to be good.  I want your clothes to fit
and your heart to beat in a quiet way.
I want you to have food and to be merry.
I want my smile to greet you.  I want to see
you standing in the yard, in my yard.
I want to see you standing there with
your heart beating in an offhand way,
brown leaves scattered about your feet.
I want to think how appropriate your
boots are.  I want the yard to accept you in
an effortless way without sarcasm or grace.
I want to find you standing there
and not hesitate to meet you
among the brown leaves and the cloudy garden.
I want not to remember
that I saw you in the diner among the tableware
and the napkins and the vaporous, winter food.
Under the clouds I want to greet you
with no thought of your heart beating
or your clothes fitting in an admirable way.
I want the warmth to reach my loins
in a slight, soft-spoken way.  I want you.
I want you to want me.  I want us to share
some coffee in a warm room with broad windows
curtained with rain.  I want to smoke
my pipe in front of you and the open fire.
I want to take care of you when you're ill.
I want to brush the hair away from your temples.
I want to feed you when you're hungry.


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2:

    White

Let it not be considered otherwise:
I drove an expensive car
with a delicate music system

through the enchanted city at night.
And the pleasure I gained
was articulate and simply proffered

like a poem, or a movie that is
loosely-structured, lineal,
and escalates from a beginning

that is outside what was beginning
now:  a very fine rain was falling—
a rain that could not disturb

the windshield or the shop windows
or the few wanderers admiring the night
streets.  A pleasant dimness controlled

the second story windows and balconies
and all things that rose above.
The trees grew into a rain that seemed

almost unwilling to fall and be ended.
From the handsome restaurant doors
little crowds issued—laughing,

lighting cigarettes, pressing cheeks
together—the women seeming madcap,
the men influential.  To them

this rain must be the pleasure
that neatly follows the other pleasures
before returning to their shiny cars.


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    Gray

In the evening, in those first moments
when the heat breaks and dusk
begins its smooth drain into the night,

a coyote might leave, perhaps
an opossum or a reptile might leave
that edge of ponderosa rising

above the dense-pack manzanita
to venture out upon the loose-chip parking lot
of the computer firm where your mother works.

And surely that image will be seen
by the firm's methodic security device.
It will cause a brief, yet satisfying

sensation for the guard watching the monitor.
By this time your mother will be enjoying
a glass of wine after dinner—of course

I will look at her and not listen
to the complaint she is grieving, but
instead, sadly wish she wasn't so

good looking when she smoked cigarettes.
You will be in bed with your many bears
and the moon will be breaking in your window.

It will be years before you come to this place
I now find, where the trick is just
to realize what your mother is tonight

as she reclines into the gray, pillowed sofa,
and to know that this is all you will need,
ever, to achieve.


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    Black

Few things can be more stirring than
a well-selected string of popular songs
screaming from a loud, car radio
on a wet and twisting, rural night.
Wishing there was something simple,
something that was akin to something
like a push-button, or a menu,
an icon, mouse-click, a subordinate
menu astutely hidden
down a path that is hard to recall.
But the moment will come, ambient
and a port to some place ineffable, when
it appears—there on the evening scene—
and I call it up, and it comes to me
and it wraps itself around everything.

There must be a man somewhere, sitting
in the dim, late-night studio, intently
smoking a cigarette.  And while he smokes,
songs are called up in his mind.  Songs
that are suddenly regrettable to this weather
or something his girlfriend said to him
that afternoon.  The threads of his life
begin to do a slow twist in melodies
and ribald lyrics:  men and women finding
love and lust, booze and drugs:  old times
lived, lost, or shared opaquely together.

I love the night while driving through its emptiness
in the company of rain.  Tail lights bleed
across the windshield as the road struggles
to keep its shape.  Trees seem wicked
and if there are houses anywhere
they are set back from the road
and everyone inside is content and paying
attention to some sure-footed thing,
a television or the oven or a wood stove.
And there I am again driving a bit too fast,
turning the radio up louder and
knowing it will all end soon enough
when I meet that stop sign outside of town.


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    Orange

When the sun finally enlivens both the wrinkles
in those hills and these row crops squatting
on the valley floor, the Holstein find themselves

standing, freely, in a flushed and retracting
light.  All things—except the river—again
have their shadow and the heat is both five

degrees over one hundred and five degrees cooler
than an hour ago.  Sweat catches in the fibers
of my brow.  Sweat runs down our breastplates.

And in the loose effort it demands to be
in this place, one suddenly realizes a wish
to praise some thing for the relief soon to be

delivered as the day ends and the light sends
a kindness most splendid and attractive to behold:
we see other men in their trucks and cars

as fixtures at the wheel, intent, and enduring
this exceedingly heated series of unheralded events,
making their way somewhere certain, in salty awe,
      and alone.


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    Yellow

Diverse, electrical, many structures stood
upon the rolling, yellow hills—some
tethered by wires, some guyed by wires,
some standing in close, powerful groups
devouring the wind.  In this land
where the land appears almost barren
of anything except hills, aqueducts follow
lazy, blue contours across coyote trails
and dry, fingered gullies.  Wind surfers
race upon the forebay in bas relief
on the gray concrete face of the power plant:
diverse, electrical, industrial filigree.

Everywhere else the yellow hills rise
in dominion.  Reptiles hiss in the dead grasses.
Raptors soar.  Alfalfa rises in robust, green
rectangles.  Black cattle spot the foothills.
Cattle crowd the water troughs.  Wind surfers
race beneath the stretching pylons and
the endless yellow hills.  The wind tears
whitecaps in the forebay and waves
in the long, yellow grasses.  Cattle rest
in the hollows, cattle and old farmhouses.
Tracks from fire trucks appear as cursive
on the hills where the ground has burned black.

Oddly diverse, modification, terse coexistence:
many structures stood among cattle and grasses.


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    Green

One day my story went on in this way:
there were white egrets walking
on the kelpbeds offshore, with
sure steps and psychic attitudes

toward the surface of the water.
Undulating with each swell they showed
a queer respect for my presence—
brightly colored and standing

above them on a yellow and eroding
finger of the bluff—that was
unacknowledged and far more distant
than the distance we shared.  And

I too gave much less thought
to the majesty of their form
than I might to a handsome
and tanned women pushing a near-empty cart

through the stunning light of a supermarket.
As if the barriers that edged our lives
were so powerful and abstract, I left
what seemed a half-hearted search

for nourishment and returned to the exit
of my sleek, green car, thinking only
of the half-hearted traffic I expected
to meet at this hour near the edge of town.


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3:

    Driving Home From Work in an Inexpensive But Very Satisfactory Foreign-Made Car with My Young Daughters Drifting Near Sleep in the Backseat and My Mind Awash in a Failed Computer Run That Had Occupied the Greater Part of an Otherwise Inarticulate and Surely Unmemorable Day

There was a ranch which was quite regular and neat
yet smart-looking in the right season and with
the occasional special light could seem especially
compelling as it now found itself straddling
the new state highway just after it left town
and into the suddenly rural landscape as dusk grew.
The time-change was still dissimilar and a weak front
was spread above the lower foothills:  two events
that I found pertinent as I passed through
this suddenly renewed but very familiar place.
And woefully I thought:  how soon will a change
come to remove this unrepeatable beauty
that I knew would dissolve as soon as the sun
fell below the Coast range.  There were headlights
rising above the contours, heading into town
in a procession as natural and correct as any
sunset or weakened front, and the state highway
carried this burden as wearily and as well
as you carry yours or as I sometimes carry mine.
There was a ranch with two pastures that straddled
the improved state highway just after it left town
as my daughters slept in the backseat of a fine small car.


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    Barbed Wire

If you made me string barbed-wire
through the rocks and yellow star thistle
on your father's steep, cow land
I would wet this old bandanna
and tie it around my neck.  And if,
when the sun was high and the wind
was hot, you brought me a beer
and broke it at my feet, I would
still watch you turn and walk
bare-legged down the brown pasture,
waiting to hear the screen-door slam.

If you were to demand I change the oil
on your old truck each evening before supper
I would change the oil each evening
and I would shower before sitting down
at your table.  I would comb my hair
and attend to my nails.  I would bring
a rose from the garden and compliment
the very fine quality of the meal.
And I would not show offense if
you chose not to speak to me.

Let's say you thought that a good man
should do dishes.  I would wash dishes
for you.  First I would clear the table,
then wash and dry the dishes before I
put them away.  I'd start some coffee
on the stove.  And if you felt lonely,
like leaning against the porch rail
to smoke a cigarette, I might turn the radio
on low.  Your boys would need a bath.
I'd comb their hair and put them in bed.
Kiss their cheeks.  Each evening I would be
earnest and willing to wait for you to come inside.


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    Heaven's Gate

The angel of mercy for this herd of meat cows
was a big, cement mixer.  A clear, winter morning

on the old state highway as I followed behind,
the mixer found some ice, leapt the ditch

and vanquished the fence that had kept those cows
in pastoral servitude.  But the cows that morning

stood six feet from the road.  The big mixer
met them broadside while angels sang in fortissimo.

Blood flowed and their bodies broke; mud flew with
hooves and viscera.  Seraphs lead them through the fence

and across the highway and beyond the rancher's house
to that other pasture where they had longed to graze.


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    Still Life with Stop Light (Light Upon Itself)

I was driving to a movie once, alone
in the City of Angels, when the light changed
and I sat at a stop light long enough
to behold a deeply personal moment
of a rather odd and very impersonal nature
as if I had witnessed the lack of meaning in life.
This only added to the growing sense of doubt
I then had about the true nature of things.
The light changed and I drove to the theater—
a grandiose version of a life now passed—
very disturbed and finally sitting alone
in the thread-bare dark, shaken, unable to connect,
blinking the lone wink from a darkened balcony.
And that was it.  That was all there was.

Why such a thing would happen to me
on a weeknight in spring on Santa Monica Boulevard,
I didn't know.  I was in the habit at that time
of seeing a movie alone, weeknights after work
at a theater not far from home.  Single,
unattached, living the disparate life, I was
twenty-five, desperate, desirable, desperate
to be desired—unsure if the root cause was my mind,
insight, or a lack of sexual activity; I don't remember
the movie I saw that night, or who its stars were
and what they could or could not accomplish.
It was something that happened while I was broken
at heart and all I remember is the light turned
red and I brought the car to a stop
out of habit, out of mind, fully empty of emotion
as some arcane thing moved slowly across
the crosswalk, alien, unkind, immense, and also alone;
there was no one singing, no one raising a horn.


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    The Evening Light Against the Pines

1

Made both special and acute, flagged by the rotation
of the earth on its axis, the evening light falls

in late spring with a strong and unmasked clarity
which seems to break against the pines

and reveal them in a strictly vertical candor
showing their trunks and crown ratios

and the reach of their branches in an intimate way
much the same as the reach of a woman

pouring coffee in a restaurant or the breast
of a man pausing on a gym floor—sweating

and unaware of the opportunity being seized
to inspect his well-lit presence.  Each year I find

I meet these days with more excitement.  I revel,
decidedly not in my accumulation of memory

but in my appreciation of the beauty of spring
and the coming of summer.  I have grown to love

blue sky and to stand bare-chested in the yard
in June, seeing the flowers arrive—my children

dispelled upon the swings as I acknowledge
my practice to see this acute and special light.

It arrives and aggressively takes the pines
each evening the sky is warm and the wind is blue.


2

These are inchoate descriptions that reference
a memory while driving home the country road

through an intense, natural beauty that appears
suddenly, a certain time of year, a certain

time of day when the air mass is correct
and I have chosen any of two dozen reasons

to leave work inadvertently and then catch
this mannerism of spring and its light at this hour:

unsettling manifestation.  The actual is suddenly now
so real that we inspect it for clues; we get attentive;

we notice our occlusion and it absorbs us, sucking
us up in different ways.  I look at the trees

and see the same enigma that dispels your doubts
and fears.  You see the same light.  You see

similar trees and the spirit hides and shows itself
alternately.  The light recedes.  The flowers arrive

as simple gifts.  Each opportunity presents itself as some
thing to be seized.  We spend our intimate excitement

and go on from there, shimmering as we leave it,
barely able to stay our trembling, illumined shapes.


      for Sherod Santos


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    Still Life with Streetlamps

Into an open space the utility pole rose
as if held captive to its own aspiration
and there, by design, conspired with the assembly
of powerlines and street lamp arms to affix that layer

(as if held captive to its own aspiration)
of life upon itself.  Into the emptiness, unclaimed
by powerlines and street lamp arms to affix that layer
where no living thing could boast

of life upon itself; into the unclaimed emptiness
of indigenous presence, and from where
(where no living thing could boast)
even the sultry tail wind of passing cars

(or from their indigenous presence)
was aggressive and unsettling and dangerous—
even in the tail wind of cars passing
I could see through powerlines and beyond

the aggressive and unsettling and the dangerous
struggling to get away as every journey
could flee through the powerlines, and beyond
was a very great and untethered, perilous one

struggling to get away as every journey
of its existence was to spark the visionary:
a very great and untethered, perilous one was
enough by itself, no matter how stony or senseless.

It's existence was to spark the visionary
in the utility pole rising into an open space—
enough by itself, no matter how stony or senseless
and there, with design, conspired by the assembly
(and there, by assembly, conspired with the design).


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4:

    Homage to Georg Trakl

The pull of two planets cannot be abated
nor deferred.  Even the tides coalesce

in rising abeyance:  mutual insinuation occurs
and the knowledge of this, the insight

toward a celestial speculation, is finally
an urge to malinger.  A hawk takes its prey;

shells fall on the ancient city; the restless
wander from triage to tavern to quiet glen.

The moon tears through leafless trees again, losing
itself in blackness; in a splendor the sun rises

and is defied by the frost.  The chosen one stands
in an empty field, regarding some distant mountains.


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    Affinity

And he used his eyes, in supplicant,
pilgrim wonder, to question the divine presence
      and its insistence upon signs clandestinely
      revealed by angels with dark wings.

And he used his eyes; he used his widened eyes,
weary and bell-rung from rough life and warm weather
      to sing the simple songs his wanderings had
      taught him among the crestfallen and the newly-blonde.

And he used his eyes, his sullen receptors,
to monitor the mythic moonrise, febrile and airy,
      through a lace of black pines, above a little
      lake, cloud-curtained, snow-lit in February; oh!

And he used his eyes and they tricked him
and threw him down where striped horses raced—stony
      and barefoot upon an ancient trail, hounded
      by wolves, hounded by coarser men, hurt,
      sleepless, and still lovely.

And he used his eyes and his eyes worked the fields
for him like animals in domestic service, seeing
      the day as the day shed its light
      like sheets in harness, sending a light,
      reflecting a light, conquering these sweating beasts
      with only a color.

And he used his eyes as he used his tired eyes:  (chorus)
Over the footbridge of bone, and the boy's hyacinth voice
      Softly reciting the forest's forgotten legend,
      And more gently, a sick thing now, the brother's wild lament.


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    Morning Cento

Our traverse through the morning light was this:
past ample oleanders with their rising mist of bloom,
leading to more sober ordinarianna, to copper
and viburnum—both quite effusive—and frankly not

our expected pursuit; so these dervishes drew us
through to a weedy road that ran straight out
to a weedy countryside.  An aria, almost beyond
our hearing, lifted and rose as we felt something

slip near the heart of things...   If the unheard
was spoken less softly, and all else was again
motionless with the sudden exit of desire, we might
again recall just this:  some girls hurrying away

from the rain as if in startled response to some other
unrevealed, unkempt, and not-yet-issued aspiration.


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    Someone Much Like Us

What did they eat?  What did they treasure
enough to build churches or statues or plazas?
What did they do through weeks of bad weather?

What was forbidden and still gave them pleasure—
that kept them confounded and not asking questions?
Where did they eat?  What did they treasure

enough to revere and so sent the peace maker?
What did they love that kept them amused and
where did they go those weeks of bad weather?

Whose scale was used when they needed a measure
of what had been lost, or who'd been too eager?
Who could they cheat; could they steal their treasure?

Did God rest above like a kindly caretaker
or were they aggressive, abstract, or dim-witted?
How did they travel in times of bad weather?

How did they spend their moments of leisure?
What clothes did they wear?  What traits did they favor?
Where did they go?  What did they treasure?
How did they live through those months of bad weather?


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    Even Then

 

Looking back (looking back at then), it was a time of great happiness, quiet awe. All things, as they chose to present themselves at that hour, were pleasant. It was a time of much love and idleness; a time in which money seemed abundant and we spent what time we had like money. We spent time with the unfurling of each day and each other—often as pageants of light, thought and time; often as days at the beach watching the waves break and the surfers upon them—the sand, the foam, drifting thought and thoughtlessness drifting (the thought of love)—this handsome landscape. We spent afternoons with children and dogs, young cousins, inarticulate tourists, found coins, driftwood and seashells, thoughtless winds. We headed home with reluctance and a tiredness and that sweetness of love. Also we spent days in the airy mountains, days adrift, heady, lakeside or from the boat dock and sometimes from the boat upon clearly empowered waters. From the cabin window we watched the night come to us aloft, accompanied by herbs and tea, eventually by moonlight or fire, toyon and smoke. We spent nights at the casino, nightcaps in the bar (the waitress recently blonde), tossing our mad money like stolen kisses and giggling at those moments remembered as moments of our scene. We spent nights with the photo album, nights of quiet tenderness, thinking back—and occasionally, the night spent thinking (drinking) alone.

We listened to Van Morrison sing "A Sense of Wonder" again and again and again (O Solo Mio). We listened to Mozart and Joseph Hill. Sometimes one of the children would sing and we would pause to listen. We listened to the wind chime from the chaise lounge on the patio and all things then seemed in consort with one another in a way we could only embrace and desire. We listened to each other, although never close enough or soon enough or with patience enough to hear clearly the song.

I turned my head from the pastoral landscape and looked in your eyes. And you, reflecting the oak limb and its possessions, looked into mine. What else was there to do? What more was there to consider? We loved the weather and its penchant for rain. This thought of love, of our love, hung about us like a ripening fruit, aromatic and burgeoning with fluids, often gainfully attired. You laid on your couch and I laid on mine. We had time to kick about and we kicked it about. You took hold of the remote and changed the channel as I looked out the window at our neighbor gathering his mail in the mist—a rough, old song accompanied the commercial, one that we liked.

What I remember most was the shine upon standing water, a breeze upon that, a memory in its shimmer. Even then (looking back at then), we knew to remember.

 

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    Pageant

It begins—a murmur humming in the backdrop
as we sit by the handsome pool and marvel:
the evening light spread upon the veranda.
To rekindle the trembling undulations

we sit by the handsome pool and marvel
at the apparent wish to continue this
peculiar quest to rekindle undulations--
to a clearing, among sagebrush moving with

the apparent wish to continue this
little breeze stumbling through the locale
to a clearing, moving among sagebrush
while all things seemed content in being.

A little breeze was stumbling through
quietly and not quite revealed
where all things seemed content in being
set between the horizon and these hills--

quietly and not quite revealed
she combed her hair, while fixed
between the horizon and these hills--
it began as a murmur humming in the backdrop

while she combed her hair, fixed
with the belief we can live with hope which
begins as a murmur humming in the backdrop
and the little spaces.  Sitting quietly in

the belief we can live with hope which
begins as a murmur humming in the backdrop
and the little spaces.  Sitting quietly in
the evening light spread upon the veranda.


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5:

    County Fair

Big pigs dreaming of gopher snakes.  Small,
shapely blondes screaming on the tilt-a-whirl.
      Big,
big youths stalking the midway, dumb as darts
—testicular triumphs, nubians, colored balloons,
	  soroptomists
sell corn dogs, corn, and beer in tiny cups.
Beside the exhibits, the exhibitions, the growing

excitation—cheers from the grandstand reach
a hearty applause above the cotton candy

and the kewpees and Herefords on fresh straw.
Resting my forearms on the ferris wheel bar,

resting my eyes, I leave my soul to unwind,
to unsorrow, as I rest these aging wings.


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    Uncle Bill Fixes to Ready the Evening Light

Articulate and simply proffered, the light
was never errant or misplaced. It was, to us,

of simple interest—like a summer dress, shiny
new shoes, or a hair ribbon. Even so, we joked

and made wishes and felt privileged to be witness
to this release of autumnal light. Light like

a thin blanket, light on our opened palms
and on the geese by the cow pond and
      the brown leaves
crowding our abundant garden—Aunt Sarah
brought out supper and soon Uncle Bill put

his pipe down on the fabric of the tablecloth.
There was something in the space between them

that I could clearly see, and feel, and know
it was where I might always find them.


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    En Route

You rode your shiny bike
through the shade of big

shade trees and across blazing
pavements and plazas en route

to your destination, your t-shirt
tied to the handlebar, your feet

spinning in a high gear, your spine
curved and catching the sun

in your aloof and effortless sweat—
the bill of your hat shading your

neck.  The dark signs of manhood
still blond on your breastplate.


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    Summer

I like summer because it is hot.
Boys drive around, bare-chested

and browned, in little trucks
while the girls pretend they don't

foresee the future.  It's a great time
to get drunk and dance to music

or sit by the quiet lake at dusk—
spirits knocking at your skull—

and marvel at the lithe strength
and beauty of our children.

It is the only fair thing: to let them
stand about, idly, on vacation.


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    August

I used to sit in the arbor
with Grandpa Dan, while

Grandpa made his morning noises
and the bees took to the catnip

in the house shade.  Dad and Ken
would leave the kitchen for work

and Ken would have his window down
and the car would break into a shine.

Everything was so neat
and clearly empowered with abundance

that I would be held in place
purely by the notion

until Aunt Sarah brought out breakfast
and Mom set a hose out in the melons.


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    Sandy Arroyo

It first issues as light above standing water,
desirable and disarming—our unacknowledged host
with her captive horns and their amenable notions
that look to chastise you at first chance—desirable

and disarming is our unacknowledged host,
her light catching you square on the jaw.
She'll look to capsize you at first chance
on a Sunday in late spring, morning:  beauty incarnate,

the light catching you square on the jaw as
opuntia bend their blue pads in this breeze.
Beauty incarnate:  morning, a Sunday in late spring;
the light rising in sheets.  The sky has already fallen.

Opuntia bend their blue pads in this breeze
yet everything is reduced to an earnestness and
the light rises in sheets.  As the sky falls away
you hear a music and the arroyo draws itself in
      to listen.

Everything is reduced to an earnestness yet
why this concealment of the adobe's caress?
You hear a music as the arroyo draws quietly in.
The softened edges of your scene eddy slowly by.

Why this concealment of the adobe's caress
and of what you might discern as your weathered self?
The softened edges of your dreams eddy slowly by
like a landscape with sycamores, boulders, driftwood
      on sandy banks.

What might you discern as your weathered self
if first it issues as a light above standing water
like a landscape with sycamores, boulders, driftwood
      on sandy banks
with captive horns holding their desirable notions.


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6:

    Reading The New Yorker While My Father-in-Law Tries to Decease

Sullen spaces send my heart
awry.  Small remembrances,
grave forebearances couple with
the long lost, long ago—odd

moments rekindle.  One more
labored breath, one more drip
of the harrowing sublime.  The
hope is:  the consenting moment,

the short good-bye.  Instead, a
procedural surprise,  insistent tears
(everyone talking as if they knew),
the brightness pointing to regret,

remorse, resign; for whatever
question that might remain, the
      unanswered answer.


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    Serial Melancholy

The level of sensitivity with which one
pursues his or her life, or, from which

he or she views this life is not something
we share.  It is certain we do not share

equally.  What else could be the lasting point
of justice?  For instance, when I was young

I thought I was immortal.  And in some sense
that was probably true.  But there were so many

queer things about this world, so many people
whose demeanor seemed moot or too-charged that

I watched them until I could see how a person
might grow sick from this life, or even from
      the thought of it.


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    In the Beauty of May

There the teenagers stood, puerile
and classic, trying to look tough,

trying to look very cool against
the bright and natty wickedness

of the suburban mall.  Moot questions
they asked of one another.  Moot looks

hung on their sweet, bitter faces.
When girls walked by they stared

a hard stare that meant almost nothing.
When Jane and Sheila walked by

an indifference fell upon them all, each
side knowing maybe half the hard story.


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    On Business in Another Town

The women in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel
were unusually attractive and effectual

which caused some men caught in laborious
situations to pause and to watch them

with admiration as they walked among the sofas,
lamps, and chairs.  Outside the hills were green

from spring rains and seemed in contention with
the cleaver housing tracts crawling across them—

a freeway barely shared that small space in the valley
where the creek ran and then, in the distance

above the bay, disappeared between the hills
set softly upon the risen horizon:  everything

seemed in some form of earnest hurry to get
to that place where a pact could be stricken.

Some form of signed agreement seemed always at hand;
some form of courtesy seemed always to accompany us.


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    Desert Life

And what if...   you found yourself this winter
coming of age in an arid, windy, northern town—
your face lightly blemished; the encircling hills
littered with brown stones.  Working weekends

at a voluminous, discount factory-outlet store
with an unintended innocence perfectly at odds
with itself.  Often losing yourself in daydreams
among the clothing racks; losing yourself again

in strip mall lunch breaks, and catching yourself
staring at a whirling cityscape marred by over-lit,
behemoth casinos—and then again, finding yourself
carefully replacing the trampled items retrieved

from beneath the over-burdened rack displays
as if the act withheld a conspicuous purpose.


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    Lunch Music

Between jointfir drifting off in small collectives
those things that happen become malevolent
like a thrill.  And this was and would continue
as the accompanist, the ancillary arpeggio

to those things that happened to become
   our morning.
It is surely the same guilt that goes idle
as the accompanist hums the accompanying notes
and the newcomer's karma is suspect.

It is surely the same guilt that goes idle
as all of the young men are feeling a bit gritty
while the newcomer's motives are suspect
with her captive hopes and desirable motions.

All of the men are young and feeling gritty
or harbored by the sudden lover's hands
with her held intentions and desirable motions.
Like the man who visits a woman for lunch

and is harbored by the sudden lover's arms
while cacti impale the feckless tumbleweeds.
The man who visits a woman for lunch
may have shared a lamentable past.

As opuntia impale the feckless tumbleweeds
you hear a music as the arroyo draws quietly in.
You may also have shared a lamentable past
yet it was articulate and simply proffered.

You hear the music as the arroyo draws in
between sagebrush drifting off in small collectives,
articulate and simply proffered
like a thrill, which it is and will continue to be.


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7:

    Island Romance

Any river, any
of many rivers
could be the river
that she drinks from.

Down by the riverside,
down by the placid,
slow-running river
flower petals fall
upon the startled water
and drift slowly to sea
like many-colored skiffs.

Any river, any
of many rivers
could be the river
that she drinks from.

Ah, big white bird,
big-winged white birds
climb up and into
the cloud-drift, blue sky
and the coco-palms sway
their dark, heavy dreadlocks.
As the coco-palms sway

any river, any
of many rivers
could be the river
that she drinks from.

I will find the sandbar
where you fill your clay jug.
I will leave you a mango
and a tart, passion fruit.
I will split a coconut
and place them inside
by a red plantain at water's edge.

Any river, any
of many rivers
could be the river
that she drinks from.


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    Dread

He left his presence on the lawn

and then walked behind a native bush
where he relieved himself upon the roots.
But nothing else was spilling from him
which caused him to tremble and feel ill.

He returned to cut some roses

but the roses looked unkind and alien;
there was not a likeness in his mind
to accompany the rose, no manifestation.
He left the roses to themselves.

He turned the handle on the hose bib

and pointed the nozzle toward his garden.
Water darkened the earth between the lettuce.
Some finches lit upon the silk tree
and let their chirping cause him wonder.

He watched the finches in the silk tree

and found their lives to be like his.
He cocked his ear and listened.  He watered.
He viewed the silk tree and the finches
and the other pieces fixed upon his yard.

He looked beyond his yard and marveled

at the beauty of the foothills as his heart
kept beating while he cut some roses.
Something terrible was yet to happen
at some point in time—something certain.

He remembered a dream which woke him

that morning.  He lived in a fine house with
his wife and daughters in a mountain jungle
at the end of a fire road.  Outside he ran
in panic, but some thing had only frightened them.

He fixed himself on the veritable likeness.


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    After Bathing at Baxter's

The mud people, handsome and smiling, wandered
across the pavement and onto the open field.

Some bead people were already there, sitting
cross-legged on the grass and talking amidst incense.

Still outside the park, leggy flower children piled
in muchly redolent poses against a grafittied brick

wall, and against each other.  Soon a pale woman
began to wail.  The mud people found this pleasing

and began to dance.  Then the bead people gathered
their guitars, and their tambourines, and tiny

drums and hand-carved wind instruments.  To the north,
in astute prehensile energies, the city rose above them,
      juxtaposed and listening.


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    Dance

The ant people of Xanax-Tranxene surely were not
the most noble beings.  They regurgitated

their meals thrice.  With coaxing they would
mate in public.  In prosperous years, as a sign

of prosperity, they might eat their young.
Culturally, an extreme tribe:  ancient intelligence,

political deftness, and loyalty beyond reproach.
I admired them.  I also loved to watch them dance.

Their music—tonally bizarre—held heady, Caribe
rhythms that broke into base passion; percussion.

Picture them rolling their heads, spilling their
six eyes, antennae swaying, abdomens stomping feet.


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    Saturday Afternoon in America

Dragged swiftly you were, kicking weakly and barely screaming
through the always super florescent, over-stocked aisles
of this giant-sized, dwelling-like variety store
by the charred and flaking emissaries of the carbuncular Death—

who are often the first to glean when a heart struggles to beat;
and shaken we were by your sudden and heartfelt distress
and the cashiers did shed some selfishly authentic tears;
but the fire truck could not put out your fire

and the firemen could not mop up your water
and the ambulance could not quiet your siren
and the paramedics could not talk to your heart
at all;

so we were, again, reminded of our sole purchase
as the wicked went their wicked ways, armed, wary,
	and unrested.


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    Sipping Moonshine at Dog Lakes

Given the gruff failings of moonshine
and big dogs in irons barking,
your boat fills with wagging dogs
as the lake grows rough and tired.

Big dogs in irons barking and
baying, short of the red summit,
the lake grows rough and tired
of snow and barking and moonshine

baying.  Short of the red summit,
squaws tinker with candies made
of snow and barking and moonshine
that dogs the northern lakes.

Squaws tinker with candies made
from the warming advance of mosquitoes
that dog the northern lakes;
old miners not given to melody

from the warming advance of mosquitoes.
Dogs stop to tinker at big station
with old miners not given to melody
and snow so big, the lake barks.

Dogs stop to tinker at big station
but Red is not given to tinkering
or snow so big, the lakes bark—
it comforts the cabined men to howl.

But Red is not given to tinkering
given the gruff failings of moonshine:
it comforts the cabined men to howl
while your boat fills with wagging dogs.


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8:

    Dancing Feet

I want to visit your house.  I want to see
your place of habit and feel the walls
and move idly through the rooms
that you live.  I want to sit
on your couch and watch TV, eventually
resting my feet on the coffee table
as we chat.  When you leave to boil some tea
I follow, now admiring your china.  I smell
the fruit ripening in a bowl and also,
after drifting into a darkened den,
read the titles on your bookshelf, head
cocked, head bobbing, before I excuse myself
to seek the privacy of your bathroom.  On my way,
I glance in your bedroom to see the pillows
on your bed before returning to your kitchen,
ashamed, where I smile at you.  Music arrives
as if a gift from some kindly background.

I ask you to tell me how everything
happens.  I want to know what you know.
Absorbed, kinetic, I look out the window
while hearing your views—and then I see
what you see.  I agree it is simple
and ask for the details.  I ponder your worries
and consider the frankness of your questions.
Yes:  I sit in your kitchen, with its exact
place in the universe, and move through the starry
night while sitting alone and talking with you.

Hearing your heartsongs I soon feel
rakish; then I confess—faltering,
wary, broken by the thought itself:   godliness
fills my being with a lowercase 'g' (and my feet
move).  Breaking the silence I suggest
to you an unsteadiness to my presence.
I submit that I cannot cease this display
of feet and movement.  Nor can I suppress
the plain holiness of my being, this longing
which causes you to blush.  I offer profuse
apologies and purse my lips.  I set the teacup
upon the saucer and begin the long wait
for you to consider.  And then, when your eyes
have risen again to touch with mine, I take one
of your hands and place it in mine.  I ask
the question you have invited me to ask:
let's dance.


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