New poem

Rainy Spring Morning

Rainy spring morning is older now

slower, less inclined to bound

up the down staircase

or greet sudden dawn with a drop jaw slap

to the forehead, night

somehow no longer young, drinking

whole days in breathless gulps from a clanging pail

knobby throat exposed, bobbing

lewd and naked, heedless

of a sopping shirt, unaware

exactly when he took to sipping primly

from the lip of the minute cup

a careful hand cupped to a careless chin

catching the gesture

in the window

above the sink

beneath the sleeve

of light that smears charcoal features

and quotes from windows past

the glow that drew him on his way to school

tucked way back

in the shadow of huddled trees

new leaves sluicing rain in whispers

onto the backs of sidewalk worms. 

Rainy spring morning twists the band

on his cudgel finger

grateful mate to the one you wear

dialing in this hypnotic spell of molten gold

a boy for a moment 

lingering in front of a house

upturned palm catching creamy light

that runs through his fingers

and pools around his clumping buckle boots.   

Field of Gleams

The Lightning Field

Thin, chill air goes slack around you

punchy from the drubbing

it took, begging a moment

of silence to absorb the blow

and all that rain

a real gully washer

aligning toppled right angles

into a glittering cube, raw

from a good scrubbing

shedding curtains of water flush

with grit, spent casings from an epic

shelling, replacing all your memories

of frail veiny lightning. 

Fate tempted and humbled, sweep into

The Lightning Field, nervy and brash

on the margins, the brass leaking

away the deeper in you go

polished stainless steel sentinels

at intervals of 220 feet

the silent roar of 400 slender mirrors

piercing, tapered points patiently

describing a plane but you’re not listening:

smeared by a blood red sun, engulfed

in a fired cathedral, spires set aflame.

http://www.diaart.org/sites/main/lightningfield

Short friction

Cam

Send a moist finger oozing around the loping edge

eye lids closed

on the perfectly round marbles

of your irises

every languorous exhalation

nudging this pin wheeling planet 

ticking around a fluid axis

the Wheel of Life

magisterial to the end

leeched of color

cooling with soft metallic ticks

but the cam

that eccentric wheel

with the lopsided grin  

delivers a wallop

and throws off the heat

as it erodes with a racket

refusing to go gentle into that goodnight. 

Saturate Before Using

Something Fine

or Jackson Browne, Ingrid Bergman and Debra Winger

Argue Over The Check

Now if you see Morocco I know you’ll go in style

the one blocked out on story board

during location scouting

for The Sheltering Sky

dun palette to set a mood

beneath creamy whites

and buttery strokes of ochre

vermillion smeared here and there

a fez perhaps or glint

from a caravan topping a dune

glimpsed in watery mirage.

Drain all color and plump the look with lush

gray scale formaldehyde

a béchamel and beetle black

Casablanca plated in silver gelatin

shadowy corners hiding

small round tables

and clinking glasses

the scrape of my chair muffled

the waiters eyes accustomed to the dark

the afternoon paying out

like shimmering net from a slow drum seiner. 

I may not see Morocco for a little while. 

Bumpy road

Phrenology

Years now but I can still see him albeit

through milky glass shedding gluey sheets

of rain, the flimsy carton of Papa Wear

pressed neatly along the folds into a caned

chair on a low porch, grape arbor screening

a setting sun, harboring bees, their legs

bristling nuggets of pollen.  Amazing

creatures, finding me fifty years on

brushing off the golden grains I read

as honeyed fiction.  Shy of one hundred

knobby skull a china cabinet 

draped beneath a threadbare sheet

hands like the roots of a bristle cone pine

gripping slick mossy limestone, his clear

eyes pierced me like Cold Harbor Miniѐ balls.

It returns to me as novella

set on a particular afternoon

a dozen men in work pants drawling

vowels around unfiltered Camels

aboard a flatbed trailer hitched to a Deere

creeping up the switchback road to the top

of Wear’s Mountain.  Four different versions

of the same man ferried up for a looksee

my legs dangling off the back like my father’s

his father shadowed by the brim of his

CCC pith helmet and Papa Wear

firing round after round from a service

revolver aimed at the noonday sun. 

I waited for the bullets to rain down

and later, in the cool of the grape arbor

he ran his fingers lightly over my

quilted skull, making grand predictions

in the quiet presence of knowing bees.