woods encounter

Convergence

The glowing buck hovers buoyant, ripe orange

emerging from the steaming emerald broth,

stirred at dawn to see us off, sole silent

witness to our disappearance into

the leafy understory, pausing in

murmured prayer or whispered incantation,

flare of exhalation hanging in the

cool morning air before circling back

to our vacated perch high above the

lake, a fading snapshot, our mingled scent

lifting like migratory birds, barren

boreal compass point once again and

yet, if only for a moment sacred

point of convergence, spirits colliding

in a comedy of errors late last

night, warm bubble of our tent pitched astride

a deer run spooking the lingering ghosts

of dinner:   four fat small mouth bass destined

for the gravity of our frying pan.   

Sea shanty

Down To The Sea

I bolted cans of beer one after another,

a rickety bridge project spanning rivers

of shame that found the beckoning sea

(as all rivers must) my silent plunge a

cannonball, blind shot across the bow of a drifting

scow, bosun’s chair vantage hidden high

among luffing sails, crew to my captain,

Boswell to my Johnson, a thirsty Chinese

Brother full to the very brim, long hard pinch

to the bridge, sailors ward against Fear.

I’ve given it up for good, the sea.  Tides

obey the moon in a keepsake tea cup.   

36 Hours In LA

Southern California

June Gloom smothers us with her mercy on

the Pacific Coast Highway, a pillow

pressed down on our slack jawed faces like Will

Sampson's Chief Broom gently dispatching

Jack Nicholson's R.P. McMurphy

in the movie before making good his

escape, both characters set free while we

mill about in the day room awaiting our

relentless cloudless meds, prisoners of

our quaint notions of L.A. - a lifetime’s

worth picked up willy-nilly like bits of

leaves, twigs and dog shit stuck to a good old-

fashioned mid-western snow man:  these winding

canyon roads infested with laid back ghosts

of long haired country rockers, Neil Young doomed

to gaze forever west from Zuma Beach,

the riddled Band, addled vapor ringing

the eternal flame of a Malibu

beach fire, Gram Parsons smoldering like

a votive in Joshua Tree while a

wry Randy Newman professes his love. 

Meanwhile, coffee at the hotel where we

gawk at John Irving, our only confirmed

celebrity sighting, a dour Yankee

warming his bones on Ocean Boulevard. 

Star gazing

Stars From North Manitou

Slender driftwood femur stabs the sand, marks our spot

small rotating claim

just out of reach

lapping notes played delicato, hushed windward stage bathed

in blazing molten honey

sweet on halting tongues

throats burning with pleas cast like flat stones

that dance away and slice the waves,

drawing beads of cobalt blood

that gather overhead.

Words, only words to the spider

already hard at work at the forked pinnacle of driftwood

thrust high into the band of prey orbiting above the beach

tacking an elegant array of spot welds

wielding slender batons in concert

rendering a precise constellation,

the only mantle of stars that matter to her. 

By morning she’s gone

bare driftwood marker

casting a long shadow

toward South Manitou

and you, still asleep in

a fold of dune beneath

the stars concealed in

mornings runny yolk. 

Squirrel tale

The World You Gave Up, In A Nutshell

The vascular map of sheathed copper wire

coursing through a hallelujah chorus

of twining branches tapering off in

creamy sunlight, swaying elevated

roadbed touching down here and there, dipping

a toe in a thousand small ponds, bearing

the innocent up in Holy Rapture

to hover high above the tribulations

of murderous cats and indifferent steel

belted radial tires, a wondrous

transit system.  Have I mentioned the nuts?

The ones you’ll never bury in a fever

of industry only to forget their

exact location, an act of faith sure

to hearten the gods who abandoned you

and shanghaied me to usher you on to

the next world, heaven perhaps, the trees alive

with the likes of me eyeing the skies for

goshawks, gazing down on you, rapt, buried

treasure map anchored by a good glass of wine. 

B-side of Your Cheating Heart

Kaw-liga

In the end you dreamed of slipping back to

the woods, cone and needle a comfort, stars

tilting overhead in deep frictionless

grooves, chisel and gouge spicy talismans

in harrowing hillbilly creation

myth; yet you were pierced straight through the heart, his

keening blade, your name carved high and lonesome.

No bones about it. . .

Skeleton

I envy your clattering ivory

armature, spare elegant collection

of slender reed and knobby rolling dice,

nothing more than racketing conveyance

indifferently assembled; rainy day

distraction for a brooding prodigy

given to florid red rages and spare

motes of grace, set aside and forgotten

with the last hank of elastic gristle

glued down, off-hand snapping jolt of juice to

animate His rattletrap contraption,

picket fence to cage howling broken hearts,

chipped china bowl brimming with a confused

stew chock full of hubris and eternal

light, sly grinning marionette, punch line

carried off by wind through your empty rooms.