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Collected Poetry
(rd king dot net)poetry and digital art
In California
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1:
Rivers, Boats, and Cities
Made special by that mottled sheet on which it occurs,
so much can happen on water. But mainly
boats race by. We watch them keenly, commenting.
For a while we are attentive to the riders in the boats
only to decide that skier and driver are the two
regarded positions.
When the skier falls a red flag is raised in the speedboat.
Black Labs take to the water. Everyone laughs.
When they see us it is two people sitting on the riverbank.
The cut-off jeans fray further up her thighs.
In the new grass, insects bite our sockless ankles.
Now that we are watching the carp mate
in a murky inlet it seems most unusual
and we wonder why. Why here? It's dirty.
And I catch myself staring hard at the dense, lush,
prurient landscape. I can hear birds in the trees.
I can feel the river hug the bank and drag it.
It is no longer clear to me what the days ask
to be. They are older now, touchy as adolescents,
and wish to be viewed in their own private way.
I know. The leaves are back on the cottonwoods.
The river seems fatter, more ready to bear
anything in the way of good luck to anyone
willing to ask for it, willing to toss a coin
or their current luck into the slow, gray-green water.
Why would it be a river? And the boats so geometric?
The little oaks sit like cats on the rolling hills.
There is a wish in what I see drawn toward the
elementary.
The way in which the light wants to keep so close
to itself and to the color it finds, bothers me.
I can't stop noticing. I see how it separates
into all the little scenes—her breasts, a cut foot,
the engines. It wasn't much use, really, to stare
at the other bank of the river. It was spring there,
too.
The leaves were so green on the cottonwoods,
so new. I could distinguish the sexes.
I could see the discernible difference.
Yet through the gray pine I can see the silhouette
of a bulldozer move. The land is getting more
expensive,
especially near the river and the interstate.
It will take some getting used to—to finding
a business center on the pastoral horizon.
(White disk grows brighter in the dusk. The music
moves.)
But there is nothing defiant in the way
these cows graze while the barns continue to rot.
In the Tuesday morning paper I found
a photo of downtown Reno, and one of the harbor skyline
of Singapore.
It was quite a surprise. It left me
feeling this, that, et cetera, all day long.
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Summer Weather
The sky broke into white, poorly defined edges where it complied with the horizon and the run of low hills across the river. Yet it passed easily through the windshield and seemed of no real concern to us. It was very warm. It was dry and still except for the tiny shouts that raced up out of the distance. The dusty whirlwinds raised by the autos were forgivable on the narrow twist and curl to the swimming beach. Young girls with brown skin got in and out of car doors; they walked in the low weeds along the roadside. They laughed and went giddy for each other among the brown glass bottles and round angel mouths in California. In pairs the men carried polyurethane coolers, children, and their cigarettes. In pairs the men played catch with a softball. Saliva dripped from long, pink, canine tongues; heat rising from the blacktop rose to window level. It danced upon the gathered engines and made the glimpse we caught of faces peering through the tinted windshields of road vans and souped-up Chevrolets and Chevy trucks seem nightmarish and mutant. The painted island we left the car on was already submerged with other cars. Were these refugees we joined in their burdened march to the beach? But the beach was too hot and the beach was too crowded: we sat in the shade of some oak trees, too hot to swim, too hot to eat, finally too hot to drink any more beer. It was useless. And the cool water was only yards away from the soles on our dirty feet. It was infallibly present for us both: this odd sort of alluring brilliance that caught as a small pain in our eyes: something which looked like an accurate delineation of the afternoon seemed content in being visible only to us. And we wanted to leave, to begin going home. Perhaps we wanted to do whatever might end or at least diminish the lurid entertainment that was slowly becoming narcotic in our eyes. The young girls in their bikinis looked neither willing nor unwilling. The speedboats rattled their bronchial engines while on the beach an assortment of young men grew older or rolled over to scratch their testes. Little boys hunted garter snakes in the lulling heat. The river glistened. It was slippery stuff: when the skier fell a red flag rose out of the speedboat. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Ornamental Horses
An hour before dusk the little boys
walk out into the rust-colored weeds
and search for tadpoles in the stagnant water
at a time when the wind often diminishes.
So nothing moves
except for the knees in their blue jeans
and the bare backs and the arms and heads
and the restless leaves on the cottonwood
above them.
I watch as each approaches his separate pool.
One boy takes a clear plastic bag from his
pocket
and the pocket remains out like a flap.
Water moves slowly and peacefully in the canal
but I cannot see it from this window.
Nor can the boys who are as quiet as the water
that passes beyond them and the vine bank.
They are so quiet I suspect any noise
will interfere in their business.
Or so it happens that
they are quiet this evening.
Yet in the end they succumb to the wet
and squirmy product of their capture.
He starts giggling. He holds out his hand
and calls for his brother to look.
The sharp, illuminating light does not yet
distract us.
In fact the boys manage to show themselves
very cleverly in this light
among the rust-colored weeds and stagnant water.
Beyond them on the land beside the canal
two horses have come up to the barbed-wire fence
and swung their heads out and above the wire.
Each horse watches quietly with one eye.
There is a golden sheen to their coats
but they are the same color as the weeds.
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The Mountains
No one thinks of the miles between here
and there. No longer is it necessary
to approach them with concern. We meet reminders
like: historical marker 500 feet, rest area
32 miles.
But these translate more specifically into minutes,
into the shortest amount of time we might remain
in the back seat of a small car. We talk
or read a magazine or think about the latest
import to our lives as we watch the highway
run its narrow plateau before us.
And it is pleasant finally
to see and accept everything as being still
except us.
An engineer would envision this movement
cubically. I assume he would mentally graph
his progress forward as well as upward.
But soon, and once again I'm assuming,
he should realize that his graph will be 80,
perhaps 90 times longer than its height.
The idea will be interesting, informative,
but it shall grow awkwardly in his head.
And besides, each mile will be bordered
by another mile. And that mile will resemble
the one preceding. The length of the miles
will not vary—except in terms of the time
needed to cross them. And the difference
will be slight, regulated by the speed of the
vehicle
and possibly by the incline being taken.
The concrete roadbed will always want to continue.
There will be the usual obstacles upon it:
the buses, the trucks, the travelers and their debris.
There will be the usual demands on the motorist's
attention.
Prompted by the scenery or the denseness of the
handsome
trees, his wife will begin a conversation
concerning the exploits of a mutual friend.
She will speak in hushed tones about the intimate
details,
occasionally slowing to spell a word
the children won't decipher
as they eat pistachios in the rear of the station wagon
—as their lives present themselves in willing and
stunningly ordinary, arboreal consort.
Now and again the mountains will afford
marvelous vistas. The trees will give way
to masses of granite rising up beside us,
or miles away; and the granite will have split
in the most likely places, basins hollowed by glacier
or uplift. The lakes will have names
that lodge in the mind. Clear, blue lakes
with delicate and graceful trees crowding beside them.
And these trees will suddenly seem more beautiful
than men. Massive peaks will push up behind them.
And the sky will help to include everything
that it can, as if this were the necessary consequence
of its great absence. But then, as we
begin to feel that we know something
about this, the sky delivers us its captives
which drift against the peaks like beautiful clouds.
And because of their shadows we notice how the trees
have segregated themselves according to height,
to sunlight, according to their need for water.
Sadness must be a part of this somewhere.
Alders grow along the stream banks until
the stream returns to the lake. Old cedar stumps
rot in the grass marsh near the meadow's edge.
The lake spills a little of that which
makes it a lake.
I prefer to take the old road through Soda Springs
and follow it over the summit.
There is less traffic to contend with
than on the broad, new Interstate
and the view of Donner Lake is better.
I have seen the early morning mist so thick
that it obscures half of the lake. And
I have seen the lake when it was a mirror.
My wife speaks of this road with her childhood fear
and the memories of the rusting chassis
that lie beneath some of the curves.
But that is in the past now. We don't
think of the miles between here and there.
There is one cabin just below the summit
with a view of the lake. And it is there
when I first become aware of the lodgepole pine.
Let me tell you about the lodgepole pine
since I know so little about it.
Its bark reminds me of the beaches we find
among these Sierra lakes. Especially
the mottled sand that is clear and bright
and lying under a foot of cold mountain water.
When I notice the presence of this tree
I think of the big mountain windows—
I think of the lakes.
In Truckee I hesitate at which way to go,
which road to follow. We could go anywhere
and we are never ready to leave the mountains
just yet. The choice arises that we could choose
not to leave, even when no choice was foreseen
or practical at this point. Nevada, the ruggedness,
we accept as inevitable as we watch the wind
tearing whitecaps into the sapphire skin
of Lake Tahoe. Behind the western peaks across
the lake,
the sun has fallen in a vivid way. The mountains
blacken beneath the orange escarpment
which brightens, slowly begins turning blue,
slowly darkens and goes black itself.
The evening settles like a fallen leaf on our hearts.
We have seen few things as clearly as this—
we are not used to such immodest beauty—neon
ringing the casinos where no one thinks
about the miles or the vertical plane
of difference at Stateline.
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The Lake
From the cabin porch it was difficult to catch much of the smaller detail as it was often a good distance away, or it simply wasn't visible to someone the detail might not concern. Even so, small things happened. There were a few boats looking keen, miniature, white—making their various ways across the lake. And if the lake's blue skin wasn't their background it was the forested peaks and saddles that banked the far side of the water. It was an open and pleasant view from the porch. The sun was setting and its light came flat against the peaks and saddles, giving them a smoky color that was bright, and still indifferent, as if the trees were only a hide that contained the beast, naked and sinewy like the coyote, with only sagebrush and greasewood over a rocky skin. And it was like that—a very fine and rainless beauty—except for the far side of the lake and the forested peaks and saddles. Here the Great Basin had been unable to climb. Things were different, watery. Sailboats kept to plainly geometric courses that crossed and recrossed the stateline with indifference. Or they moored in the pretty inlets and coves. Or they would soon dock in the gay evening at the long, gray piers of the ambient restaurants where children played among the weathered boathouses. Motorboats would race by, rocking the sailors with nearly vociferous wakes. Someone would spill her drink or drop a lighter into the sapphire blue water. And she would laugh at her own clumsiness. And her laughter would grow among the others until the sailboat shed its sails and readied to meet the pier. The children, with their dogs, would run toward the end of the pilings, laughing, shouting. The boys would climb atop the pilings and make strange antics with their hands and trunks. A last round would be poured on the drifting boat. A quiet might overcome them—even the children might walk back toward the bank and the dogs would stop barking as the lighter kept to its darkening descent. The summit's shadow had pushed to mid-lake and a coolness filled the umbra. And as she stepped off the boat and buttoned her white sweater, a wake of glassy foolishness quickly dissipated out beyond the steady pilings. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
On the Beach
All of the men were strong and the women were pretty. On brightly colored towels the girls lay face down with their straps open and their thighs glistening with oil. The sand was white. The wind was blowing off the lake and making the leaves on the aspen quiver. All of the men were tan. The women were pretty. Some of the girls stood up and walked out into the lake. The wind lifted their hair up in waves above their shoulders and their breasts. I was leaning against a backrest. A popular song was playing on the radio. The wind kept blowing—the sand sparkling, and white. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
2:
On the Plain of Smokes
The sky was neither blue nor white. It was yellow, and the small scattered clouds had appeared quite suddenly like explosions. Beside the diaphanous pool she lay on a vinyl-colored chaise lounge. It was morning. It was already warm when she broke into a sweat and then wanted not to be a part of it anymore, so she moved beneath the white-fringed umbrella where she told her desperate tale— to the boy, and the white hibiscus. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Hindsight
Weeds pressed the broad leaves and startling flowers of some salmon-colored cannas against the old fox-gray wood fence, and the walnut had grown to shade them. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Baseball
The hard-slugging third baseman has just gone after a bad pitch. Boos rise like balloons from the box seats. Admonishments fling themselves from the growling crowds. The rookie southpaw tucks the ball into the webbing of his glove. He adjusts the bill on his cap and climbs back upon the mound, keeping his back to the wealthy slugger. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
County Line
Heading inland from the north, down 101
through that last flat stretch of highway
outside Camarillo, a simple five
miles an hour above the limit, once again.
Once again from the north, into that barrenness
brought on by agriculture—long, empty fields
looking reasonable but unpleasant. There is one
fruit stand, cross traffic from the frontage road,
palm trees growing beyond the shoulders and
nowhere else.
It would seem the fields are ready
to be seeded. The grade is anticipated
by road signs.
At night the red lanes follow a fixed track,
weaving in unison toward the mountains. Moving
closer, over and into the long valley where
Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks are growing,
and the white lanes spilling visibly out.
And the red lanes moving on, in. Past pale
prickly pear in the moonlight.
Down the backside of Conejo Grade. Past Talley
Corporation.
Through Thousand Oaks, the first fifty thousand
people.
Between the tract homes and newly franchised
new-car dealers set in front of the dark hills
and the Coast range on the right, the stables
and artificial lakes, the hiking trails and wealth,
reservoirs. Lanes and landscaping
increase with the onramps. And the lanes
are spanned by bridges and signs; the freeway
grows and diminishes, grows and diminishes, grows,
flanked by broad signs with advertisements
for hotels, restaurants, gas stations, amusement
parks
with seemingly perilous rides. It is pleasant
on through to Agoura. And in Agoura
there are more visible stars.
There are gas stations at the Malibu Canyon exit
that are older than the rest—less well-lit
with less impending corporate signs: red on yellow,
blue on orange, red and blue on white.
Turn the radio on. Turn the radio on
and the stations cross and waver. It is too soon.
The valley ends with one more grade to run.
On a summer night the heat will push
out of the basin—sudden engulfment in the dark hills.
A damp, too-used heat like that in a dance hall
pushes out of the basin, unlike the dry heat
in the dark, rolling hills. It is thick, odorous,
and abused—a curtain of debris, microwaves,
and frequencies. English rock and roll.
Reggae from Jamaica. Mahler. Monk.
Music made in Georgia, New York, Tennessee.
Heat and music. Heat and music and an industry
where the night thrills itself with big hits.
Break the grade and the stations reach
the radio dial on a broad comb. They break
the grade flush: music, news, sermons,
talk shows. And the view. It starts here.
Cities pour like creeks out of the narrow canyons.
The houses, the townhouses, the apartments.
Condominiums rise above the occupied hills.
Medical buildings and malls and high-rise corporate
towers and everywhere, lights expressing tiny light.
Interstate 405, 5. L.A.
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Waking Up in Barstow
Perhaps it is this frail, columnar light
that mutes the room like in an old black-
and-white movie where no one is dancing.
It is surely the same light that goes idle
when it finds the pocked surface on the cinderblock
walls. I think this shows me where the trouble lies.
There is only an outline of light around the black-out
curtain.
Darkness governs modestly.
The wind blows. The wind blows and then it doesn't.
For a moment I sense that someone has been murdered
and now lies brightly on the bathroom floor, blood
staining the pastel tiles and, more importantly,
the caulking. The lesions on his throat make the
porcelain
seem exceedingly brilliant and cruel. And yet
the corpse looks complacent on the cold floor.
His shape is soon too austere and annoying.
The thought runs its length and goes.
A presence stays. I have woken to a presence.
As my eyes adjust the light is enough to add
dimension to the room, recent memory and texture.
Like a scent or an oasis the presence adjusts, pervades,
remains.
The range of my legs obscures the raised, cotton
pattern
in the shallow bedspread. There are dates
lying on the floor beneath the wall-mounted television.
Surely they fell during the night. That is
how it happened. The evidence chooses to remain,
to be of assistance, objective. But what did we do
last night?
The near-empty bottle of peach-flavored brandy
looks gaudy on the cheap, blond-wood night stand.
Above the bed a desert landscape glows from the wall.
Its artist used such unusual colors: pink, lavender,
gold, sky blue, gray, and white. I am intrigued
by them, by the way they sequester upon inspection,
and by the round, orange glass-stain beside the bottle
on the night stand. How delicately these colors
impress their strength and leadership upon the room.
How easily they seize the light!
My wife stirs from her side of the bed. Our first glance
leaves us feeling like strange, sudden lovers
with a lamentable past. Even her fingers
are white imposters searching through her hair.
What did we do last night? What did we fail
to discover? I watch with interest as she walks
toward the sullen bathroom door. And when she opens it
an army of light rushes in. And then she make it
brighter.
These pale green tiles in the bathroom remind me
of a fictitious time. The sanitized glasses amuse me.
I remember now. I remember feeling this way before.
Steam builds like a sweat on the cinderblock.
I disrobe before the opaque mirror and wait
for my wife to leave the shower. To be naked here
in the bathroom of the cinderblock motel
makes me feel quite charmed. The overhead globe is warm
and bright. When I crank open the window I see
sagebrush spaced in an open, natural pattern running down
to the railroad yard, and then up to the base of the calico
hills.
For a short while I keep my eyes on those hills
hoping to catch something the late winter might
have done to them. But it only looks nice—nothing
in the air—clear and sharp and cold enough to wear
a sweater.
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Possession
When we left the interstate in Baker
to buy gas at a Shell station, incidentally
owned and operated by a man called
Failing Herron, no thoughts occurred
except for a feeling that the consequences
of my life would be splendid, often raw
with an obvious flippancy of divine
excellence, and occasionally impaired
to the point of having no consequence
in my search for a daily contentment.
It was not something to think about. I was
more concerned with the two, weedless lots
between here and the turnoff to Death Valley,
and in trying to imagine the ambience
of that highway known as the 127. Yet
the real issue, the pressing cause or motive,
was what we suspected we desired—that
internal allurement which would inevitably
lead us on.
I took it for granted that we were a different
sort of pilgrim. Obviously not Conestoga, yet
exactly what sort I took for granted
we weren't to know—surmise, maybe.
It was winter and the desert was even more
beautiful than I might have expected, seeming
confused in its own seasons.
Two hours later I was feeling more fragile
than I normally do. Sitting in the back seat
of the patrol car, unable to realize a comfortable
position,
I was thinking about deadlines
and the little bag of buds we got busted with.
On the outskirts of Victorville,
a river and aqueduct nearby, taunted by
the arms of Joshua trees in the landscape
we were suddenly cast as partners in crime
as if, in some way or in some place, we
had tripped that invisible line.
But I found a way, an open space—my charge
and protectorate—sentimental fool
that I am. What kind of women could
inhabit the jails of this arid locale?
What arcane strangeness could be elemental
in all of the wrong choices that masquerades as
their fate?
What could they do and be so deserving?
I, of course, would much rather face the men
even for a few timid hours. Unequivocally,
separation was at hand.
So I felt the need to look at you
and caught a relaxed profile with your back
against the seat, glassy-eyed, a soft blush
of rouge defining the bone beneath your cheek.
How beautiful you were.
And the San Bernardino Mountains.
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3:
By the Motel Pool
Outside the windows of room 313, by the door to 319, young palms are in bloom. The round, wall thermometer reads ninety-eight degrees. Most of the guests seem quite sure of what to do. The middle-aged woman in the white and blue swimsuit slips out of her thongs and walks down the white, glimmering steps into the pool. Gold hoop earrings. Her sunglasses and sunscarf. Yet the retired couple can't stop rubbing lotion into their skin while a man talks with a woman on a chaise lounge, and scratches his chest. In a white uniform, stockings and shoes, the indian maid stares. From the third-floor balcony she stares down at the pool. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Outside Modesto
She was black and he was white. They rode in a big car with bad paint and the muffler was tied-up with wire. She was driving. He was stretched-out in the front. A little wind was stumbling through the nut orchard. Evening was coming on. There were snakes on the road, languid with the heat, and she drove over them. They stopped at a burger stand off the county road. It was hardly a town. He went to the window while she combed her hair. She got out and walked up to a white truck with two black men inside. They said nothing almost. She got back in the car. He had bought her a milk shake—a coke and a burger for himself. The wind kicked up dust from the plowed field and blew it across the road. Almost nothing happened, but the sun went down. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Farmland Near Point Sal
There, the earth wells up and rises
in a long, lateral hump—a green hump
with drainages and hillsides worn smooth
and gentle by aeons of weathers: time:
time, winds and waters which have led
to a lifelessness distinguished by nothing,
no trees or rocks or even a chaparral
to upset the basal undulations
of the land's skin as it stretches
across the old uplift of land—not even
livestock grazing on the bright, new grass.
A white parallelogram floats at the base—
the north-facing roof of a barn. A house
sits nearby: it, too, painted white
and stern-looking, and old, able to grow
where other woods have been unable to grow.
And before this lies a long, wide-open field.
There is cabbage growing in furrows of great
volume
and a mass that finally reduces itself
to one: there is cabbage growing
in the distant half of the field.
Nearest the road, the land is once again
empty. Here the field has been plowed
in the denomination of furrows. And even though
each furrow is detectable to the eye,
they too, like the cabbage, tend
to reduce themselves to a single vision—
a moniker that is quickly precluded
into a larger aspect, a generic whole.
What you see, aside from a beauty, is this:
an old fence stands above the roadside ditch,
some old posts and barbed-wire, blackbirds.
A wide rectangle of fertile brown with darker,
horizontal shadows stands before the green
palette of cabbage. The light diffused, soft—
the cabbage a weak rainbow of green
and green only, until your eyes move
to the grass which glows like an alien thing
upon the hillsides below the colorless heaven.
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Estuary
On the black ledge of the sand bank black silhouettes pass arm in arm against the thinning, crepuscular sky and the metallic water. The rocky point has gone black to the water's edge and back along the beach to the cypress, to its wind-shorn, black silhouette. A dozen gulls bend their black wings into the failing, yellow-orange sky. Pale smoke rises from bonfires scattered around the cove. Through the umbra a man carries a cooler down the beach. A child screams, then giggles, waving madly two sparklers burning silver and green— and when her screams reach across the estuary they are muted enough not to disturb some gulls standing about in inch-deep water. Little fish are feeding on brush gnats. Little splashes pop from the estuary but even this does not interest the gulls. A rocket whines through the smoke and bursts above the cove. More rockets whine. The moon rises above the mountains to the south and goes full. It back-lights the conifers on the ridge in a yielding way. Boom. Boom. But who needs the moon on Independence Day? [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Still Life with Jogger
The bay at the end of the block jumped up blue. Above the street in black thickets the cypresses rose. Small, neat houses stood together with their rock walls, ivies, and weathered fences—white curtains drawn against the morning sun. Too weak to dry the condensation on the windows, the winter light splashed the houses' faces where it crept between the cypress trunks. On the front step collecting dew this morning's paper waited. Atop the garden gate where sunlight sparkled in her fur, someone's cat waited, watching nothing. The street darkened under the canopy. The bay at the end of the block jumped up, the blue growing, getting stronger. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Our True Story
Briefly,
when we were young we lived in a small court
in West Hollywood, much like the one John
Schlesinger used in 'The Day of the Locust.'
We led a sort of real life based loosely on fact
and the oddness of time. By day we worked in a
westside bookstore—
she as the receptionist while I waited on stars
like Vic Morrow, Jane Fonda, and Nancy Feldon;
even Fay Wray once appeared briefly, weakened
and brittle, at the top of the mezzanine stairs.
At night we strolled to the Oriental on Sunset
Boulevard or drank red wine and watched the shadows
from the poinsettias turn Marlowesque in the evening
light. Ours was a living largely made of longing
charged by desire. Ours was a life patterned on
lives sometimes fictional, and sometimes not:
while she slept my seed swam to the depths
of her ocean; I dreamt I lived in Hollywood
in 2020-something in an old boarding house
that looked very much like the one
outside our kitchen window where ancient palms
were overgrown with luxuriant morning glory.
It was the evening light that fell ( that fell )
at such an untenable angle as to make all of this
extraordinary in that articulate sense of drama
we all readily accept. I shared this ocular life
with a troop of rapscallions and one, tall, stern
woman who ran the house. For one night of fun
we pulled the legs off of our mechanical servant—
who was notable in his mimicry of our appearance,
affectation, and who was exceptional in a cameo role as
I awoke shaken, euphoric, and deeply, deeply moved.
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4:
Beneath the Tree of Heaven
At my visionary and foolish request my wife took our daughters and stood with them beneath the Tree of Heaven. She held our youngest in her arms while I coaxed them to smile, teasing Hillary and taking color photographs to send to their grandparents who live in a small town on the coast— not caring so much if they smiled but trying to get all three looking into the lens, hands not covering the mouths, all eyes open. Rain was dripping from the leaflets above them. The weeds were still standing after this first rain. Droplets had collected on them like dew and also on the spider's web that hung there between the two mulleins, now almost backlit by the sun. The clouds had broken enough to allow the light to streak in around us. It was our first look at the new autumn. We were happy to be with the rain again. Some clouds were still dragging against the crowns of the ponderosa and most of the oaks had yet to turn. The rain had cleansed the leaflets on the Tree-of-Heaven. They were as bright and new-looking as they had been in the spring; and so was the silk tree except for the pods which were now turning brown. We inhaled the ozone and that new smell of wet weeds, but there was no wood smoke rising from the chimneys as yet. Then a wind came and shook the Tree of Heaven. A shower of big droplets fell on the young Hillary—and that started her running through the august weeds and the reservoirs she met through the spiders' webs and the heavy august weeds. She was trying from her face the water to rub; she was chasing a cat around the dripping brush pile. The sun slipped again behind the cloud cover; the wind, again, came upon us. Our youngest broke into big, cheeky tears—all her spirit suddenly loose. And now Hillary felt the cold reach through her clothing. So they left, bound for the warm lights and registers of their small bedrooms, my wife pulling the layers off their cold, pink limbs. I braced the tripod against the wind and wiped the mist from my beard and nose. I cocked the timer and took my place, smiling, relaxed, wistful, smiling. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
In November
The sky was stuffed with black-gray clouds brooding
over the little valley, the cloudmass
aground on the hilltops, laboring,
raking the velour of cedars and pines
and now-empty oaks—the push of trunk and branch
reaching,
reaching cloudward and catching, combing the mist.
It had not restarted to rain as yet, the air
exceptionally clear, lucid, bringing to my eyes
a little vision: the little valley, the pastures
and their fences, some poplars rising
along the gravel drives, the hills,
the trees laboring up the hillsides, quotidiana.
I could not remember it looking like this
before—the cloudmass aground on the hilltops,
the pavement wet, wet, silver with light.
Towering up almost to the cloud-blanket, two,
old, black cottonwoods—still holding their vibrant,
yellow leaves—stood like sentries or ambivalent
goddesses.
Rain had swollen the cow pastures around the ranchettes.
So verdant and ample they were, they looked like
carpet rolled-up to the porches of the country houses
lingering
at the end of the gravel drives. The cows had moved,
under the tree canopy where the fences butted
the hillsides. The pastures were brazen with color,
the cottonwoods billowing overhead. The clouds
keeping everything postured beneath and lit with a
most
intriguing light. The ranchettes seemed captured
in a little diorama, off, there to the right.
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In December
Through the sharply-lit brilliance of windsong
December
I drove my little car. Burning joy
and refined petroleum in an effortless,
computerized combustion,
I traveled the inclines and downgrades
of this most recent version of the emigrant
trail.
In primordial source could I, did I
brave the brake lights and lane changers
of the stupendous, on this miraculous, modern
road.
Unencumbered, emancipated by convenience,
I drove the seven miles into town
aggravated only by the morning light
which seemed too extravagant for this season,
which seemed keenly diligent for December
as it bounded through the windshield sparkling
in a vintage that overpowered the pupils in my
eyes
and ultimately devoured my senses. My senses
were corrupted; yet I had to look. I had to see
this remarkable display of aboriginal presence
and be captive to its power and irreproachable
dominion.
I found myself thinking. I saw myself, asking:
how could I live here—here in the great extremes
of the ordinary world? How could I not
have been aware of this cryptic elegance
before now. The trees did not need their leaves.
The conifers were not trees. The brown lake
was only a reservoir. The sky was an obtuse,
vertebrate
conception. And why did I trust in the acute
but inert sensitivities of these other drivers?
Did they not see this mnemonic, yet ordinary,
obstacle
that endured this drama of time and space
between them and their articulated destination.
Yet in a very similar way my foot could depress
the gas pedal; my eyes could scan the landscape
while my arms compensated with minor adjustments
to the steering wheel,
as it now seemed a ponderable and quietly
comforting question that I began to consider.
The big trucks were decipherable and neat as snow
occasionally fell from their wheel wells. Birds
did not cause me alarm. And I could recognize
the golf course and the abandoned orchard
as the golf course and the abandoned orchard.
Why did I not trust the acuity of these other
travelers,
these pseudo replicas of myself? Why would this
sudden paranoia
seem justified in this light? From what environment
did I carry this sense of doubt? Here was a landscape
I could not rid myself of, that I could not penetrate,
or cease to indulge with my participation.
Here was a tapestry that existed in all forms
of time, made of a fabric so intricate and
majestically correct that even the defects
were a sign of perfection. And here it was,
immodest, generally open to inspection, at ease
with itself. It just sat there, spinning.
Two ponies, one roan and one painted, stood
in the only piece of a half-acre pasture
that wasn't iced with snow. There was some browse
still struggling up, but the ponies were still
warming off the frost. The sun had yet to top
the ponderosa that darkened the pasture
and the oddly new structure behind it. There was a
white
satellite dish and a rock wall from some other time.
There was a beauty and a quiet history and a sense
of hardship exacerbated by the lovely snow
and the ponies' frosty exhalations. I envied
the two ponies, their aloof compensation,
knowing the browse would continue to grow—
knowing that my itinerary would continue to roll
down some road, fording creeks and crossing
great expanses of ice and snow, heading somewhere
specific, going to join some untamed, exhaling thing.
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Winter
Over the white lake the white birds find refuge. No reeds. No stony weeds grow where even the hunter will not trespass. More than the snow's beauty he fears the snow—dumb snow after the wind has died and the serene quiet enchants the fairies. On this evening a dry, north wind pulls the sleeves off the oak trees. The winter stars look on, grinning. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Snow
Snow rises like lather at the edge of the glassy blacktop. It lies like lace on the cedar scales. Austere, replete, more delicate than I would have imagined is the chain-link gate with its lattice-work of snow. It catches me and I almost stop as I pass the laden broom and open the office door. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Spring
Spring fetches another life to the grassy meadow. The sun sends its warmth to free the snow from its sterile kingdom so the waters flow. The waters thaw and flow. And the night lays down its frost—its hard, hoary discipline. It can seem unkind. It can seem unkind to know: a red-winged blackbird has landed in the blue oak. At the edge of the green meadow a red-winged blackbird finds a branch offered by the blue oak. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
5:
Rural Melancholy
Rain falling against the windshield is a soothing thing. The wipers are like a heartbeat. Each tick continues and clarifies that easy drama that lies, most clearly, ahead of me. Things slip out of the big dark. Things confront me—black trees, little bridges, cutbanks and berms, old possum staggers in my headlights. And the rain falls. My melody passes through this place quickly. It sounds like rain spinning off a tire. I like the rain. I like how it brings on my melody. With no words and little effort it sends me home, unharmed, to my wife. The rain knows its part. But what of these lesser melodies—the little trees, bridges, cutbanks and berms, the red fox dancing in the culvert—what are they like? What thing sings for them? What song? [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Big Assed Cows and Barbed Wire Fences
The mountains are a barrier, august and wide, with snow-capped peaks and a velvety fur that we see and recognize as the forest. Clouds catch on the trees. A sly, dense fog buries the valley floor. Gray houses, gray coats and faces. Leafless ash. Leafless cottonwood. The river reflects its red steel bridges. The farmer looks over his farmhands in the green rectangular fields. Linear copse and slough. Black Angus ranches roll into the foothills. An old black Ford kicks up mud on the country road. Blackbirds line the old barbed-wire fences. Big-assed cows, fat-assed pigs, big-assed horses. Blue-jeaned women straddle tall stools in the little old-town bars where the neon winks and the elk can't shake off the cobwebs. The elk and the sheriff and the cowboy and the stools. Both the moon and the cowboy are black and blue. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Sitting at the Bar
These old bricks in this old barroom
don't look steady to me. Even the metal
reinforcing plates that hold the trusses
to the old brick building next door
seem more like a courtesy to drunken men
and building inspectors kind enough
to allow these walls a token gesture
to continue their mute history. From this
stool at the bar I can still feel the dirt
hidden for a century beneath the wooden
floorboards
still moist from booze and spittle and
long-bad pipes. So as the band begins
and once again the chalky mortar is put
to the test, I realize that I enjoy this
every time it happens.
A young kid dressed like somebody
who dressed like the early Elvis
has started to dance in a mean,
moody way. His partner
is a thin-waisted girl with big hips.
She spins and jerks like the rest
of his life. So a crowd moves in
to watch and to drink and to dance
their awkward, heathen dance.
Some of the men are already drunk.
The air is hot and the music is loud
and twangy.
Against the cigarette machine I pressed
letting the women rub past me, smiling,
on their way to the john. I knew I would
not be drunk until I left to meet the air
outside. So I bought another beer and watched
people drink. Smoke after smoke I watched
people smoke. She might have been forty
but she was dressed like a little girl.
She danced and she danced a crazy dance
with young men and old men and with
the well-built negro who otherwise
kept to himself at the bar. In a pleated
brown dress that came down to her knees
she danced that crazy dance; in white
cotton socks turned down to the ankle straps
on her round-toed shoes she moved
her crazy feet—and still I was not sure.
The cut of her hair and the collar
on her blouse made her look as if
an important part of her was not there:
was this some local goddess I should meet
or a week-long member of a halfway house
nearby. When she danced she move her
chest
in an alarming way. Her small breasts
fluttered in her cotton dress. Those green,
green eyes rolled across a chalk-white face.
She must have been forty but I saw
a little girl dancing her way through
a hot, hot night in a dirty, little gold-town
bar. All of the men were drunk
and some of the women were pretty.
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Summer Nights in Roseville
Her father, with little coaxing
and no apparent feeling of regret,
would hand me the keys to his old, four-door
for reasons that were both functional and absurd
and then something would begin in the subsequent
evening light. I would watch his face. I would see
his smile and each time recall
the sincerity of what he had said
the last time we entered
with solemnity and grace
into this arcane ceremony—even after
we crossed the tracks and left old town
and drove out of town and into the heat,
now exposed and big and fiery as we lay
sprawled across the vinyl seat, already
confounded, and made anxious by the presence
of the weed-filled creek. The cinderblock wall
the developers had erected with precision
and the hope of utility was like a thing
we could not fix in our lives. It bordered
our road that went nowhere, and stood witness
to the sidewalk no one found occasion to use.
Robin Annalee turned the radio on low, fell
back in her seat, and for some still time
looked across the still-perfect fence
that kept something contained in the flat,
empty, and enormous field that ran unchecked
across the blue road. Grass grew knee high
and in June was already long dead and yellow.
The only thing that seemed brute and captured
were the colossal pylons striding across the great
openness—
and even they must have been slightly amused
by the barbed-wire and the neat cinderblock.
Like farmers
we kept somberly hidden in the dashboard the remains
of a much-used hemp-bud cigarette, which she lit
with only the glow from the lighter, and
from which we each shared three moot and hissing
hits.
Robin Annalee turned the radio down lower
until the song we waited for began, knowing
a song would come; knowing the wait
could be strange and pierce us with indifference;
it could throb with heat and be awkward, it could
extend far, far beyond our horizon—until then
we stared at the pylons and let the sun go down,
wondering why the heat always failed to leave
with it—sweat running down our necks, sweat
collecting on our bellies. Too hot to touch. Too...
When the radio could not be made louder
without paranoia settling in, Robin Annalee
cut fat wedges with a knife from her mother's drawer
from a lemon pulled from her mother's tree. Her
father
kept a half pint of gold beneath the seat: tequila
that tasted like dishwater and salt. Time then
wandered by. In minutes, in hours, in listless
eternities
through which my one wish was not to feel my heart
beat:
I would be reminded of how good a breeze could feel;
I would talk to Robin Annalee until the floor mats
left patterns on our soles, our faces heat-worn
and lovely. When the sky turned orange and idle
Anna would tell me her dreams in a soft voice.
The pasture would confront me; I'd want her
and not much would matter after that.
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Street Lamps in Daylight
As if held captive to its own aspiration the utility pole rose into an open space and there, by design, conspired with the assembly of powerlines and street lamp arms to affix that layer of life upon itself—life without life, ardent and enthused. Into that emptiness, unclaimed, unchecked, ungarnered, they grew. From the left-turn lane where no living thing could boast of an indigenous presence, and from where even the tailwind of passing cars was aggressive, and unsettling, and dangerous, I could see through the powerlines and beyond their space to the sky, where small planes struggled to fly away and every journey was a very great and perilous one untethered by a footing or beneficence—as if the purpose of its aloof existence was to spark the visionary, briefly; in that to gather this information was enough by itself, no matter how stony or senseless it might have felt, but just to carry it home and ponder it was the destination of the journey. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Girls
Sitting on the back of a flatbed truck in the flat light of late September I watched some girls walking home from high school with their books held cross-armed against their chests and their faces bright and animated with the animation of young school girls. And in that way I could remember those new potatoes pushing through endearing pastel cashmeres— that pushed a melancholy into me as I leaned back against the cab and opened another beer and watched those girls lose a little of their brightness when they crossed into the shade of some poplars across the street whose leaves were beginning to yellow. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
6:
Still Life with Clouds
Around the trunk of this old, sweet-scented Jeffrey pine small pieces of bark lie scattered like pieces of an old jig-saw puzzle. In the shadow from the light, now the shadow from the cloud. Locusts grind their electric whine. The mountains crest into ridge, into ridge. The ridges swale and knob. Snow. In the shadow from the light, now the shadow from the cloud. Like big, burdened ships moving slowly the clouds pass overhead. Precious little fawn. Little still-life fawn. In the shadow from the light, now the shadow from the cloud. The earth and rock dam is a good barrier. It holds the glassy reservoir fast, pressed to its delicate edge. In the shadow from the light, now the shadow from the cloud. And the clouds pass over. And the clouds pass over. And the clouds pass over. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Los Osos Valley
All day the cows in twos and threes have drifted across the rolling pasture like little clouds beyond the chip-seal road. On the big couch I have sat and gazed through the living room window. I've hardly moved. I fixed a sandwich for lunch. I could not watch tv. I went out for a brief moment in the moderate afternoon to see if one of the cacti had bloomed. The phone never rang. It was crazy. It was crazy and sweet. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Across the Arroyo from San Miguel
In sheets a light was; the sky had already fallen behind some sullen, beige hills, leaving an edgeless gray expanse. Full was the floodplain with black cottonwoods, many leafless willows in robust, aerial excellence, and a tree I could not identify had burgundy-colored bark; their combined and clustered upreach filled the sunken confines of the arroyo, and, like bronchia, ripped and channeled the breeze as it caromed through the mission canyon; and below, this town, this fully unsuccessful town squatting across the arroyo with small houses on small lots and very small vegetative successes, only the opuntia was vigorous among the abandoned autos and the billowing tumbleweeds, the green winter sage and its undoubtable urge to grow: I could not escape this striking and plaintive landscape. The hills were so smoothly weathered and barren. Where the river had cut against them the land dropped away, exposing yellow sandstone and pebbles and rock—native and eventless history. The trees concealed the river; they were liege to everything, and relentless. Before town they rose and below town they rose and past town they rose to the edge of the arroyo: skeletal deciduous emancipations; I watched them stand. I drove while the light spread in sheets, like postcards, causing me to address the fractured pieces, and to question with impromptu earnestness my ability to travel this land with such ease. Was I being duped by these cattle-colored hills? Instances of pastoral harmony herded my thoughts: I lived in an adobe hut and did not drive to work each morning. Horse thieves hid in the draws of the ranchos and sometimes brutalized the inhabitants of town. This land was familiar and I was aware of its articulate plainness: yet, dusk alarmed me and I had visions in the half-light patterns on the adobe walls. I wore a loincloth and threw stones at those things that upset me. I stood on the bluff before the new tract homes and chanted prayers across the arroyo. Emissaries from the mission struck me with canes and spread dung in my hair. A light spread in purled sheets and adhered to the adobe and caused me to have visions upon the weathered bricks. I worked hard in the fields of the mission and worshipped the land and cursed their names and cut my feet upon their rocks. I stole a horse and gave up my name forever. I rode through the many trees and crossed the river where I was honored and welcomed and a seeker of refuge: I detected no change yet everything was reduced to earnestness and it was not spoken; boys made all of the music. The light fell in sheets and a foiled town stood across the arroyo. God had a fine name and it was not spoken. Some men drew signs on their bodies and some did not. Some men sat beside the campfire and stared at the adobe walls. It never rained. It was very difficult for the river to flow. Trees fractured the arroyo into pieces; and everyone was requited and poor. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Two Tacos
There the tacos sat on a little bed of shredded lettuce between the refried beans and the Spanish rice. If I were feeling like myself I would be quite pleased to devour these brown-skinned beauties, belching openly— but something secret has me feeling estranged with this life. How to behave? How to behave against this alias: tacos. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
The Sun
We were born beneath the sun. And the sun is tempered, sometimes bitten by the wind. The same wind is tempered by the water, that same water that freezes our mountains in the high and lonely winter and brings good life, in spring, to the once barren but now pleasant and fruitful valleys. In this land where the sky can seem as litanical as the elected speakers, millions crawl here and there, unfettered, riding the slow slide of this great behemoth— some languid with fecundity, some now free from foreign nuisances, each taking his evening meal, the sun slipping away, the wind nil, the waters running. [ close poem ] [ next poem ] [ refresh page ]
Quail
1. All day the cows have drifted in twos and threes across the rolling pasture. I could not remember it looking like that before— the cows had moved into the long umbra of bronchial oak trees. It did seem unkind but not unpleasant. The creek could barely whisper to them. Lupine bloomed purple-white-blue spots across the pasture and down to the little, sandy beach where the creek was dammed. Evening was coming on. 2. A thought ran its length and went. Something was bothering the quail, something behind the bunkhouse—but I could not see what it was. The wind blew. The horses watched us quietly with one eye. The wind blew and then it ceased. Some clouds had caught on the cottonwoods. It was an open and pleasant view from the porch. It was warm. Sadness seemed like a part of this somewhere as the little oaks sat like cats upon the rolling hills. The moon started above the mountains to the south and looked like it would go full. The locusts ceased. Some of the men were already drunk. Most of the girls were pretty. I leaned against the cab door and opened another beer, something quiet was still bothering the quail. [ close poem ] [ refresh page ]
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