the thinning of the illusion
life is ever apart from
death of what was
and the new
**
—Owl Canyon
Scat on hard-pack trails
is honest—
a discarded rocking chair
aside the trail,
just one more ass
not knowing its place.
**
A crusted poison oak leaf
lifts just enough to tumble
from under the slightly raised log
at my feet—trail-play.
**
Work in the garden, down in the yard,
is about as natural as it gets—you know,
tasks intended, and all those actually done.
**
—after Ponge…
count if you so choose,
syllables do—
but know the venue
is between and among words
as they are written,
each a voice,
light and shadow
mingled, unsettled
among shifting letters,
ever in search of
new ways
to say…
**
Coming across the work
of teachers who helped bring me
the way I’ve come, energies reignite
illumined essentials the breath pulls up
for the sighed release of knowing
I do know how to take the next step.
**
Butterflies
tangle in the breeze,
flowers bob—
open-face,
open-wing spirit
and these unfolding
iterations of kind.
**
When light falls at angles,
shadows get a head start,
but never make it all the way.
**
“…all land is one,
though some holds water.”
—Edith Shiffert
**
Looking for the Sunday paper
in the courtyard,
I find scattered mental notes,
left behind from Saturday.
Can’t imagine why in the world
I was thinking that way.
**
The pen I write with fits my fingers
like made just for me. My jeans,
the same, like a glove, like the air
lining my lungs with life-stuff,
even without asking.
There’s work to be done, for sure,
inequities, mistakes, so many wrongs,
yet so much we get right, that’s gotten
right for us, just because, that it seems
we ought, time to time, give pause.
**
—post card poem, to Melody:
This simple act,
placing words appearing,
each their own distinct arrival,
making this making into what it will be,
because of, or in spite of, me.
**
Morning coughs-up crow calls,
two long strings of stuttered stuff,
a welcome counter-balance
to the talking heads
on the screen.
**
Winds left over
from last night
pummel the palms
waving outside
the windows
holding
their cries
out there.
**
Nearing its final pages,
the journal’s feel
thins, bone-to-bone
fingers slide
barely padded surface,
sense
unwanted
good-byes.
**
fog bunches the ridge line,
tumbles rutted canyons,
dripping words
**
The poems I like,
well, I don’t know
till they’re there.
**
you know it’s sky
because trees reach for it,
that there’s been water,
for the willows,
and the legs
always remember the mountains
**
noon-day heat
lifts from the earth,
brittled grasses
toss it to the air—
only mustard blossoms
carry color
