Remorse

Remorse is a fog written down

twisted up inserted in a beer bottle

chugged in the back seat '66 maybe '67

thrown out the open window

with a chance of adding

a dent to any sign of authority

the trajectory of its fall

intersecting time and space breaking

arriving here this morning

here on the shore a message

from a younger self saying

help me anyone who reads this

The List

Was that just thunder or someone dragging their chair
over the boards of the narrow porch at Nanbu's courtyard
now there's nothing to say there it goes again
right to the top of the list the one I haven't made yet
the one I will leave on the kitchen counter or right here
where it hasn't happened yet lists don't happen I know
they're written scribed chicken-scratched here's
the ox-heads making their As the double-yokes
their busy Bs the sickle C ready to cut through
Mediterranean waves now nothing just groceries
or things that happened last week so we can say
we're alive the other day I made one up for creatures
starting with wait a minute while I look for it
goats and ending with mongoose don't worry
there were birds in there myna uncelebrated
but everpresent and melodious laughing thrush
hardly present but gloriously celebrated and
three kinds of beetle in case you're wondering
the sort of list where one word say centipede
can conjure up at least five or more stories
like the time in bed when it felt like
all the hair got torn off one arm see that's
wriggling and stinging its way behind
that one word ono too three letters
two of them the same eyeballs popping
when right there by the harbor up it flashed
from the depths a ferocious slippery rainbow

Catching a Ride

Spiders do it spinning a yarn
all the way across the wide Atlantic
how is that possible

Barnacles too on the backs of whales
encrusted they hunker down for long journeys
how did all this begin

Fleas on cats especially those three rascals
up at our place the ones who sit in the rain
I'm not even sure what their question might be

And dreaded coqui frogs in flower pots
or truck beds of visitors from the leeward side
testing their shrill philosophical theories all night

Not forgetting the phosphorous at that chemical factory
where my dad worked after the war
how it came on the bus in trouser cuffs and burst in to flames

Trouser cuffs came into it out on Highway 99
back in '68 hitchhiking 200 miles north to Seattle
I guess I got there and back okay each time

Sometimes it feels like everyone's leaving
catching boats or planes off the island
how come I'm still here and where are they going

Aren't we all anyway thanks to gravity
hustling through the elliptical pathways
slowed down only in our own minds

Sticking out a thumb miles from Dublin
eventually got a ride from an electrician who only wanted to say
we don't do that here we just show our hand on the road

Hailing or hitching these are important things
not Salem to Seattle and all the miles between
but the A to B from me to you from you to me

Snow

Sunrise. Silence. How snow comes falling over the known world
covering all sound. I feel that childhood wonder stirring.
The pure exhilaration of witnessing the miracle of snow
that comes in the night. We wake up in our warm bed
a small world of its own. Pillows and blankets pushed
into a soft fortress against the unknown vagaries of the night.
We survived. We look out then. Step with that tenuous
reaching into the cool air. Barefoot across the boards.
Press against the glass and there it is. The frozen pond.
Familiar boulders statues and walkways all white.
Branches lace-like and delicate where there were once
leaves. We saw them fall. Kicked them into the air.
Smelled the neighbor's smoke. Now this. A quietude.
Evergreen boughs heavy and flocked with the pure essence.

Back inside. They're still asleep. As if the snow
had entered the house and muffled the usual stirrings.
What to do? Back into the cave. The fortress warm still
that held my form all night. There on the wall
the earliest stories. Creatures like deer horse dog fill
the margins but the center lights up with good deeds
rescue attempts and the everlasting battle against evil.
The bow so trusty points its arrow directly at the heart
of the sinister dark lord who seems oblivious...who seems
to be dancing and applauding as if my one mistake
were to believe I could do anything to stop the death
and destruction. I quietly abandon warmth
and race to the window. Was that a dream too?

But there all around—the pure land right where I left it.
Miracle of miracles. Pressing both hands
against the glass now. My face sidelong pressed to ice
it seems to see further to understand more
of what's there beyond the light. And there it is.
Blue sky. Cloudless above all this. And the gods
with their thick glasses surveying the scene.
And that's when I learn how it takes fire to make snow.
How it takes ice to unlock the heart.
I look for strings. Surely those two faces
the darker one frowning surely
they will pluck the lines and bring the day alive
bring buses planes and trains into this scene
the postman the bus driver the cacophony
of everyday life that will most certainly
melt this perfection till it flows back
into the ocean of dreams.

Maple

A man walks by with a Bayer logo bag over his shoulder
I'm in the corner wondering what he's got in there maybe
something for the music in this place with its relentless
heartbeat I myself don't know what I'll do meantime here
in the corner between sips of Americano writing
whew it stopped or rather now it's strung out to dry
in long guitar gently working up to saying it in strings
outside on the way here the wet rounded setts where
First Avenue meets the brow of hill descending
into Pike Place Market a five-ton truck its mouth open
jaw rising up and down in shudders the steel plate
lower lip holding two men holding an empty cable
spool one loses balance steadies himself the other
looks away another on the ground holds an edge
of the big wooden construction what a coffee table
that would make for a giant found furniture is so
passé I suppose at least in the First World today
I live in the Fourth always last writing till it's
time to go today dressed for rain the maple
what kind of red outside the hotel this morning
moreso in the absence of bright sun as Ruskin
liked to point out more pronounced more
beautiful more rich vibrant and alive
on a gray day not cancelled out nor diminished
by bare bulb brilliance even the banana I bought
on the way here Give me 25 cents he said
seemed questionably ripe though I was drawn
to its rather gray pallor and sure enough
upon peeling it perfection put a spring in my
step in November now I don't care about
the synthetic digital percussion coming
through the air where's the speaker
and you know what the barista said
he said he likes the sound of the word
donut the sound the word makes
rather a dull thud though softly I said
not a ring to it though there is a ring
and an emptiness in both word and donut
but getting back to the maple not blood red
nor embarrassed or flushed not a high
pressure red more a force that rose up
and emerged all the leaves of April
May and through till now gone in fire
but here the flames green gives us at the end
life all by itself saying change change
I did it all year long why can't you
and if you don't believe me take this
and that take your photographs
the ephemeral temporal fleeting
here today and gone with a heavy
frost moment take it and fill
your boots with fire light up under
the cloudy sky waiting for passersby
to notice your feathery suspensions
in the next riff and the next
strumming right along now
knowing it won't be long
but while it lasts call it
maple song

Seattle Coffee Works, Pike Place Market Area, November 9, 2011

The Barista

No one knows that behind the counter
she wears those flamenco dancing shoes
somewhere over the rainbow
with a puzzled look or Dame Fonteyn
biting back a smile
a white camelia between her teeth
they don't know but how could they
from their centipede line wiggling over
café interior threshold into the world
of parked cars trees still dripping
from this morning's showers

She moves in that rhythmic certainty
choreographed by orally transmitted
variations on the theme of coffee tea and
what else is there chocolate not too much
for him especially and no whip
but some like latté with a lot of froth
they smile they leave a chink of loose
change in the tall-necked vase
that takes pecuniary thanks for the dance

Now that one's calmed down a bit since
yesterday she's glad to see back only once
for the caffeinated measure the small poison
the small click of the heel the eyebrows
flickering the steam the twist of wrist
the tamping down of finely ground
a look over a shoulder the line
shuffling closer and with a shout
Americano! the head twists away
into the new world outside

The Work of Hunters

—from a line in Frost's The Mending Wall

 The work of hunters is never done they like to think
and thinking's never ending with their pursuits in mind
talking to older ones now reduced to staying home
weeding their small patch of greens
ones who see change a long way off
maybe pre-plantation days maybe ancient
family understandings and ways to read the signs
all creatures having their respective languages
roads they travel habits that can't be broken
habits that surprise us when they shift their
patterns the way pigs will fool you coming
at dawn one morning and dusk the next day
midst full moon one night or the rising of it
the next even a thin curved smile of a moon
some say will bring what's called the game
where do they sleep?
oh that will change with these nomadic types
where eat? well just look next time
and see how well they turn the soil
where it's good and wet
they're not after your prized roots
but those might pay
for a night of hunting worms
the hunter and the hunted changing roles you see
and here's a question why is it
we call hunters on the land by that name
but on the sea or shore it's fishermen
can you tell me that?
aren't they hunting
with their nets, spears, hooks and depth
finders, their maps on paper and too
those maps we can't see
like all hunters' stories told and held in the
constellations of their minds where it's
so dark only their grandfather's words
can guide them

The Deepening—for Todd

Layer upon layer sunrise and crackle
in that place between radio stations
smoke inversions early frosts or late
snows stealing almond blossoms from us
well we might ask is it we who change
or the haze coming over the world
with each new invention child eyes
seeing one part of the spectrum
the one we reserve for nostalgia
and by the time we turn around
the town doesn't recognize us like it used to
but the coffee shops improve with our aging
who is it exactly that changes certainly
we took note of the phenomenon called entropy
took note and threw it out cleared off the tables
sure the traffic calls out in a different key
an octave far below the familiar dogs
known to sleep through such vibrations
people in caves might notice a shift
that's how fleeting this life how thin the curtains
see how the breeze takes the fabric
and bends it to another older will
that's both out there and in here
where we know there's more than 5 senses
the other hand too the toes
no more counting
keep your geological grumblings
leave me with my ditch dirt
my glazes my pottery
all accidents born in the kiln

After Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish

Like ancient wallpaper peeling at the corners
pulling with it the patterns before it revealing
plaster in crumbs and crusted states and before that
the lath behind all, the ribcage itself hiding behind
what we thought was the true wall
that's how it went the time we spent in the old cottage
when the light would die and other older lights
would smoke up the corners of our eyes
and remind us that we weren't alone other souls
inheriting their place in history the unrecorded
stories the unnamed the voices
only a faint echo making us turn once or twice
to see who's there? Did you say something?
Did you hear that? To the point that we began
to wonder if we were merely finishing
someone else's sentences
left to wonder who will finish ours
as we recede into the dark
it's all around us now an emptiness
without structure without end
an entering and entering
always straining to hear

Gossamer

I don't know why but when I was a kid
it came to me in solitude alone away
from games and others the way we skated
over the world chasing and touching
hiding laughing skinning our knees
breaking the fabric that covered us
protected us then no it came to me

by myself the garden weedstalks
pebbles stones the whirring of winged
creatures shadows damp places
beneath or behind thorns the slow
movement of the brown hairy caterpillar
the mystery shrinking expanding
coming down from trees by summer's end
something lost more found others
released blown away like dandelion
seeds and it seems my quiet discoveries
made their gossamer way to you
I can see it in your eyes

The Head of Cabbage

The cabbage stared. Was that an iceberg lettuce over there on the other side of the cutting board—otherwise known as the chopping block? It was weird looking at your own green and leafy reflection in a knife blade the size of a hubcap—not that cabbages know much about cars. Now kings, on the other hand. Royalty and cabbage go a long way back.

I'll never forget my grandfather standing at the gate, the limp rabbit's hind legs caught up in one hand, its head and once-alert ears hung long, I reckon denied that last look at the cherished ground that provided shelter. No more the dark of the tunnels! Meanwhile, there nestled in grandad's other arm was a fine head of cabbage—also denied the rabbit—not your pale grocery section version but a deep rich green squeaky, tightly wrapping against itself head—no eyes there—no sight for the master of the vegetable world. Tight-lipped across the field and through the last gate home, the four of us stepped carefully.

The Perfect Cut

There at the keen edge her eyes
split with nowhere to look
but either side when all along
it's the space between enticing her
that place of emptiness that fills
with her concentration and skill
as she brings her well-honed steel
into the decision to change beech
oak maple walnut doug fir or
mesquite into beams walls
windows openings closings floors
ceilings knowing full well how
taking away creates a full house
although few will ever know how
precision and exactitude
calibrate themselves in the heart
of the carpenter named Katie

Her Mirrors

Her mirrors know her witnesses
in that confluence of ghostly presences
and the two dimensional wall
of her perceptions

her book markers
know her collection of thumb prints
the well-read coterie of borrowers and
lenders the never-returned perusers

her windows understand only the sunset
the cheerful bruising of each day's fruitfall

the floor of her house the soles of all those
who passeth misunderstanding how they
came and went the vendors and the venters
only the former friendly enough to win her smile

her earrings the dancing moments fit within
the circles she so tightly drew
a nodding of the head
a shaking of disbelief
a rare laughter and the suffocating press
of the telephone with no way out
and there
there upon the old wall pictures of a life
not hers a child an aunt mysteriously
ensconced in Minnesota
the rest utter strangers

Remembering My Typewriter

Is that a typewriter I see before me?
Come let me press your space bar
with either thumb let me swing your
carriage to a new line hold down
shift and fly across QWERTY
ipsum capsicum and ampersand
without thinking fingertips resting only
on your home keys whilst pausing
twisting back your roller for earlier
impressions those lightning strikes
those keys the bones of your ancient
fan opening and closing take me
to the margins of possibility until
your ribbon runs quite dry oh my
tabulate tabulate return oh damn

Afternoon dives into an empty swimming

Afternoon dives into an empty swimming
pool and says ouch lies there crumpled
on the bottom and waits till 5:30 for gin
and tonic to come and fill things up
again I say I say the evening star is
out and so will I be pretty soon sings
the long dry spell between noon and
six the breath held the pinched
expression forgiven as the hours grope
towards the ladder and the 5 o'clock
shadow just had to find its way in
here eventually into this rambling
syntactical array of time passing
with its bouquet of unopened minutes

Your tongue along the salt

Your tongue along the salt
your toe inside the fault
and everything between vibrations
mine at last—let not these moments
pass away I heard it said
I hear it now I lean on you
like a child against the bed's edge
eyes tight against the truth about angels

the mind I feel is too much with us
thinking and drifting out of sight
of land broken its truce with the shore
lost now on our own catamaran of love
too lost to hoist the sails against
the coming storm

It's Very Difficult to Put Revenge Back in the Box

Bless me father it's been so long
I can't remember how the incense smells
how it curls like God's thoughts
toward the dark regions of His house
yes I'm on bended knee glad to see
you've installed cushioning
since I last paid my respects to mortal and venial
I'm at that place on the spectrum your holiness
your grace my grace is a little worn
so much to reveal and so little time
and all the while the undertow of illusion
and the geometric snare of rationality
like a calendar harmless enough its
gridlike inducements you can see
the marks here and here father all
the creatures I've killed in irritation
a sweep of the heel wiping out entire
armies all the vain blasphemy hurled
at cars parked too close or traffic
moving too slow and greed father
things I coveted including
my best friend's well
this is hard to say father
bottle of '67 Chateauneuf-du-Pape
that was painful for everyone
but worst of all I'm a purist
and I've lost count found love it's only
perverse curiosity that brings me
back here your face against the curtain
my reason for coming up in smoke
father, ten pushups won't work this time
I'm certain

No Trace

Last seen walking an isolated beach
at low tide on a remote island
in fact the eye witness may be
making it all up the way
she leaned into him their hands
loosely clasped their knees
lifting in certain mystic synchronicity
his trouser legs unrolled and wet
around the ankles feet immersed
in trembling shallow surf a zephyr pink
imbuing all even her white shift
wet too at the hem clinging
and all this just a moment just
an image in and out of focus
all the deciding and hesitating
long since given up and let go
what each brought in their way
lost now as history rewrites itself
and someone over here this side
behind our left shoulder says
it doesn't matter but there was
a coincidence I hear you say
an address in Chicago an aging aunt
en route to Santa Barbara
a garden with fireflies and a night
without traffic without urgency only
the pale undoing of corn in the kettle
meat searing and laughter never
talk of the throbbing aircraft their
endless migrations dropping fire afar
so much pain washed away
in this tide

Pearls Mean Tears

"Pearls mean tears."—Doris Lessing

Pearls mean tears she said
What do you mean he said
Are we talking Tahitian black
fat too pricey for the casual gift

unless a million may be said
casually and you can step over
a twenty dollar bill without
stooping to pick it up and so forth

or how about Japanese women
knives between their teeth
diving in only a twist of cloth
to great depths at great risk

I suppose there's lots to cry about there
No she said I mean Rembrandt
that room in the National Gallery
sounds of baroque those rough

imperfect pearls falling
into Trafalgar Square with flocks
of pigeons sent soaring each time
St. Martins-in-the-Fields' doors open

and the big canvas teasing
teasing all the experts how did
the master make the skin translucent
how did he capture the light

as if he placed one brushstroke
inside each shell of time
and tears grew there to bead up
in the corner of an eye

and fall in the second movement
or the third the lions stationary
unmoved guarding the monument
the one-armed one-eyed admiral

while inside the luster and sheen
the opacity cries out to be seen
long after the master himself
disappears from view

The Yellow Line

The Yellow Line

Grass grows down it

down the center line of this place

green tufts sprout from the faded ochre stripe

that separates our comings and goings it's

stretched out between us a cautionary tale

unwound from Pololu Lookout

all the way down Akoni Pule

and the rest of the story

running rings around our island

what else is left to say?

Days are even-handed too

alternating nicely with bed

pillow blanket and dreams without roads

cambered either side of the yellow

See how it clings to the black tarmac

by night shrinking by day expanding

cooling and warming up what we call

everyday existence as we rotate on our axis

You've seen no doubt the human nervous system

sans flesh and bones stretched out or better

an example our strands of DNA those spirals

laid out on the 3-D work surfaces of our imagination

since there's no table big enough

nor ether strong enough to keep us calm

as we consider how many times to the moon

and back the chemistry of information

will pierce its threads of phosphorous

hydrogen oxygen nitrogen and carbon

Well so it is with the yellow line

neither stop nor go this archetypal

agreement is older more primitive

pulled from the flames and mixed

with a little water for one long

one-handed daub

Without end Amen

not to mention other god-like attributes

such as fractal squinting

on all fours a familiar position

as we study the ancient art of stripe

as it travels over and percolates through

every pebble, stone, puka, bump, lump,

serration, aberration in the jagged world

of the diminutive not a straightforward proposition

After all we see a yellow line

and say there it is but there it is

rather more than that

more along the lines

no pun indented

of the infinite

something we really

really relate to and

adopt wholeheartedly

if not egotistically

It is the yellow line after all

that petrifies us truly scares us silly

notice how we jerk back

when we inadvertently drift across

its profound illumination yes

it's the line we drew that frightens

holds its power over us

something inside us

non-negotiable

But you know having set out like this

on my side of the sweet yellow line

I think it's worth saying we need

a bit more of this sort of thing

wouldn't you agree? That is

the ability to agree

silently without getting

in each other's way

This arrangement of the yellow line

single or double so simple

such low maintenance even

faded the truth of it is there

if not a little annoying entropically

(how annoying the fading of the line)

if we can do so much with so little

why don't we do so much that needs doing

so little bit more?

That's what I see

before me

when I see

a yellow line.

Back to the Sun

Back to the sun with half a cup
of Americano to go fathers
looking for their children as they
head off to work out on the open
ocean the night still a little fuzzy
at the edges of morning questions
of remorse are usual why do we
do the things we do the old men
at the coffee shop snapping
their newspapers against the wind
asking why they the other guys
do the things they do and why
the punishment isn't longer more
difficult whatever happened
to an eye for a tooth or was it
no no there's no good answer for such
crimes so much hope dashed
against the walls an epic slaughter
nothing to replace what's been lost
on the horizon Botelho's water
jets into the air over the sunburned
fields flies keep busy around my ears
and over the hood of my black truck
where I'm hunched keeping my pen
moving in case I have to stop
and look up or make a decision
overhead a myna sits on the higher
of three taut cables looking hopefully
to the east and above that a plane
moves like a shining mote in the big
blue eye while everything here
on earth clings to the dark center
as if word is out that justice
will never be done which can be
taken more than one way and for one
eye there is no certainty it has truly
come to that all we can do
is hope for better reception up the road
and call again to see if the kids
are okay find out did they make it

Leave It Open

LEAVE IT OPEN

We start the day early each with our list

my wife taking hers down the coast in her

fist calls me saying Maui’s unusually clear

maybe I’d take my walk where I could see 

but I set about loading the cuttings one

more thing on my list leading to another

until a change in the weather reminds me

I’d better head makai to find Haleakala 

gigantic on the horizon a floating blue

mountain drawing all the sky's shadows down

to the dark bowl of sea into the forbidding

channel called Alenuihaha where clouds

shrink and fall laughing into whitecaps

but in a scientifically plausible reversal

night begins to inch its sapphire way

upward to heaven—connecting under

to upper world with Maui’s sleeping

heart beating against what’s reasonable.

I park in long cane grass and thread my

arms through a gate’s galvanized frame

swung open expecting and desiring

more than beauty can give me when I

notice one fencepost leaning away from

the long barbed lines of wire nothing

standing still not even my joy as it

happens not on my list when a tractor

bucks down the field’s hard-packed

edge toward me and I draw a circle

in the air signing Shut the Gate? but

the farmer smiles and shakes his head No

so I follow him out till I’m in my truck

—and I picture my wife returning home

her list the long road map of her day

her hand finding my own list still clean

on the kitchen counter
and I imagine her beauty
laughing against what’s reasonable

I Look at the Moon

I look at the moon and think of the world these words
will never touch up there in the steadfast blue
somehow lunar reality seems upended
while the moving dot I call my mind
begs me to hold up a thumb and compare

the cuticle I call my own with this
heavenly satellite its light never its own
as the sun plays with us no it's more
a piece of cloud laughing like Kohala
mountains asking us to see through

the illusion that cannot possibly be nothing
everything conspires this way
into a sort of symbology of souls
meeting and colliding themselves
heavenly bodies with a soundtrack

that throws us somewhat
we check our watches note the location
establish a few reference points or
coordinates and breathe into our
curvature of make-believe

rest or stillness and soon enough
the half-moon becomes the top
of Buddha's curly head lifted so far
off the planet there's a quiet gasp
who said that how did we get here

and what's the point surely
I'm just a visitor here surely
I kept my promise and it's time
to move on surely the pages
will keep lifting and fluttering

in these whirligig gusts until
the story ends or begins or flips
to that really gripping scene
the one where kingship is at stake
and we're ready to sacrifice everything

and though we know there's nothing
extraordinary really going on
what with the sounds of traffic
the engines belching and droning
the voices of strangers inserting

words words words into this moment
inside our own galaxy
the alarm is out and when the moon
disappears behind a rooftop
our blood runs wild

To Watch You Walk

That's how it all began.

The gallery the sepia colored photographs
of ships against the quay at low tide
the harbor less silted the men in the rigging
small boys and girls appearing twice
 or more in those days when picture-taking
was slow and the exposure long
for the youngsters of that sea town
in those days and now those youngsters'

children how many years? the generations
looking out to sea all this time
collecting samphire on the marshes
slipping through the mud-slick estuary
each new moon and here they stand
clustered 'round the old prints
the forgotten photographic plates
retrieved from attics now the photographer

from London is in town and so he stands
on the edge looking across the figures
meeting and recognizing great grandmothers
and each other in this way
the gallery walls holding up their past
where the past likes to be
at eye level though young Frank
or Susan need holding up themselves

to see and through all this
your elegance in long Bedouin colors
long dark hair pinned back
with your Hawaiian shell comb
the heavy black-veined turquoise stones
hung quietly I see this quietly

how you walk head high
like an exotic bird gliding
through peoples of another place
tied there by the pull of the sea
tied there so firmly they almost
do not see your peregrinations
your way of touching down
and passing through

If I Tell Her

If I tell her I'm available
she will look at me and smile
and leave me guessing her intention
whether pleasantly informed
or cynically inspired

It will not do she said
and rescued me from doubt
to blame the clock the calendar the phone
the internet the outside world your gout

I waited wishful of her sage advice
my inner voice cried tell me more
but she stood back as if the play were mine
and so it went reversing roles

The ping-pong ball flew wild
I lunged and with a snap of wrist
returned it to the line
I wonder she said if ritual of sorts
makes intimacy a little easier

I wondered what she meant
ritual? really? like weddings
funerals birthday parties and state dinners?
engagements made or broken?
contracts drawn and quartered
or simply holidays celebrated
carved up with drumsticks
and requisite cranberry relish

Is that what intimacy looks like?
again the space between closer
and further apart like the breathing
like the ribcage like the bird
we call the heart

I Saw a Garden

I saw a garden I was small
bushes flowers weeds were all
the same to me back then
things green woody bright or dead
contained within three walls
we lived in the city
shared a house with other families
though the war was over
several years before

one bathroom for the house
a manual wringer squeezed the water
from the hand-washed clothes
and lurked like some enamel clad
iron beast on the way to the garden

safe in the garden hours alone
though small I'd read King Arthur
his knights his Roundtable
exploits and adventures
robins and sparrows sang out
as I crashed through the thicket
swinging my sword of milkweed stalk
snapped off that morning

cobwebs hung dew laden
like lace set to dry in the sun
I left them there

Boil

An angry sound with no pause at all
between the lip-pressed consonant
and the gush the release of fluid
the non-stoppability innocent enough

when it led to the whistle in the little
passageway my parents called the kitchen
the short window-less hall connecting
our shared bedroom to the front room

did we live there? I only remember solitary
hours crouched into the corner
where the BBC poured forth
Dan Dare Pilot of the Future

or the Light Service of endless classical music
50 years later the sounds with no names
never knowing Bach from Beethoven
until decades of repetition
 
imbued my soul with signatures
of emotions or calculus
all this released by the morning kettle
but those other sorts of eruptions

the doubling of bubble that
came on my knees all too often the knees
given over on Sundays to the hard boards
St. Mary's-on-the-Quay before the Lord

the genuflection that lasts so long
I had to sink back on my heels
till I disappeared from view
and my mother's knuckle would find

the tender place between my wings
and I would rise up once more
for Et Cum Spirit Tu Tuo
or a chime and glimpse

of the bedazzling circle of tasteless bread
and come away rubbing my right-
angled places now dotted with red
swellings the pus-filled follicles

of the post-war diet the boiled
sweets all calm on the surface
the world at peace but our mornings
unto the altar of God with a boil

and so on till I left home

It's Always One of Those Days

It's always one of those days you find yourself
gently winkling some imaginary debris
out of the corner of your right eye
I suppose when a sleeper comes away
on the tip of your index finger
that's reality and you can move on

when I was a kid I read that Crusoe
kept track with marks and when his
indigenous friend aka the slave turned up
he was named Friday

what if we were all named after the day
we all turned up Hi nice to meet you
I'm Sunday...but then there's the question
of turning up which I think more forgiving
than being born or that other cruder
handing on of the genetic line in the term
delivered

no I like turning up because it gives
both the turnee and turner
a balanced sense of presence
but I suppose what you don't want
to hear as you commence your stay
because being here is one thing
telling the tale quite another

what you don't want is someone
to yawn widely and let out of their mouths
the damning phrase Oh it's always
one of those days...as if there couldn't
possibly be anything at all remotely
heroic in your turning up just
an ordinary event

no shooting star just a little dust
found its way to the corner
of somebody's eye and waiting
to be revealed as real
or imaginary

It repeats

It repeats until you drag yourself reluctantly away and begin the search.
It's not in the receiver not in the basket with the remotes nor nestled down
in the cushions of the couch maybe there's time to find one of the other three
the one in the study oh yes still in its cradle a curious name for something
small black and boxy that bawls out its electronic repetitions until you
feed it with your now, your center shifted to another moment...
Thich Nhat Hanh all those letter Hs there for breath he says Thank you
telephone thank you for bringing me into the present but what if it's the
obnoxious neighbor or the annual policeman's fundraiser or the Obama
campaign and right at dinner-time the beans green and soft in their pan
the mashed potatoes and celeriac hot over the steam and yesterday's
brilliant and dynamic flash of presence stripped of its shimmering skin
and sizzling in the pan so thank you is in order I suppose
not just to the repeating cadences of the phone
or the living brilliance the other end of the wireless line
who initiated the call thank you to the way it
the way the present moment we call now keeps teaching and
waking us up poking us to rise up from our slide into hibernation
get out of our caves and blink into the sunlight

What Do We Need

I say these things happen
at night while we lie sleeping
in the morning green rain
picked and gathered

Circle of wicker on the doorstep
open up by twisting and letting go
step out into another turn of the planet
face into the sun even with the clouds
between always something gathering
collecting and passing through

What don't we need
the love of hate will do
the green left to wither
and a helpless pull away
from the center don't you wonder
what would happen

Action now
action places if you please
don't you wonder about
movement without all this
say before our tongues
got tied up and we were left out

Dying of thirst
falling out of bed
out of a tree
out of memory

Evening on the Suez Canal

Evening on the Suez Canal and not a pint of Guinness to be seen
the dark peat strain of an Irish night locked up tight
between the ears a blood red beret keeping the lid
on stars come down to look out from archways and porticoes

rooftops too you might imagine Oh the cream at the top
of a glass sure isn't it the imperial pint you're after
well isn't it the imperial pint of oil that brought us here mate
and what are we doing here at all dressed up for a cold

mountain night with no hope of a turf fire when all the world
burns morning noon and teatime 'Tis cold enough at sundown
sure and the smokin' chimneys no more and the biscuits
broken in the saucer the cows in their lower field

with the old man takin' one last nip before he retrieves
the well-darned socks from the soot-black bar
over the embers 'Tis here in the gut now the fire
spices ground up in the devil's own kitchen

don'tcha know be jaysus paprika and cumin cayenne
and the little children chasin' after our heels
like dark sparks all day where d'ye s'pose
they put their heads where's their mammies

and that flowered water they gave us now back
at the little café them pointing to the vine climbing
up the walls the flowers too comin' down like stars
wouldn't a pint of Guinness go down beautifully now!

Salmon

One follows salmon with single malt scotch and sets aside the small square glass
on a square of Brazilian quartzite all sounding very exotic for effect but it's the world
you know so don't go raising your eyebrows just accept the miracle our large

planetary group represents and get over it, under it, through it, I've said it
all before the prepositional prospecting we need to claim but the point is
smoky boxed up salmon good till 2016 can you believe that but cut into

and opened up for a decent soiree I'm shrugging my shoulders here why
not? one asks and also...with that lovely though slightly shy-making odor
on the fingertips well it's not everyone who understands, not everyone

who accepts you for who you are just fresh as you might be from a soiree
quartered beets dark red so deep you look outside and check to see yes
it's night and cucumbers cool as courtyards in northern Africa their seeds

naked and inviting okay this could go on right through to lychee sorbet
pink with sliced peaches and more zinfandel can you believe it yes
it takes a kind of faith to carry on in such a world where was I

the peat of single malt Scotch from Islay the small island windswept
and stories of Moroccan rendezvous it's crazy how these intersect
but they do it's true and you I'm sorry I just don't know how

we got here 

Sometimes Getting From A to Be

Sometimes getting from a to be can be so what was the word she was looking for? dreamlike.

She left her car unlocked without looking back and cut across the road through the haphazard morning rush hour such as it was out in the sleepy town thinking to herself the so-and-sos never pay attention to crosswalks anyway. She reached curbside where the coffee shop regulars had vacated table and chairs on the edge and pushed back under the overhang.

Oh yes. Thunderstorm on the way. Everybody who had any wits about them could see the nimbo-stratus heaviness and gloom fast descending from the east. Air temp had dropped and the smell of what exactly. That curious freshness. Maybe ozone?

The line leading to her morning fix shifted from one or more legs to another like a pantomime centipede body angled against the doorway and looping back inside where body heat was palpable and conversation was shall we say politely reflecting the state of the world at 7a.m.

She touched the headlines of today's Gazette and asked people seated and standing This anybody's? When she got the blank looks as permission she didn't hesitate and turned on the typical Martha performance that is doing something useful in an otherwise tedious situation. Make it fun. Right? Her eye caught a subheading bottom right that made her freeze and the room busy with lattés and mochas double shots and English muffins toasted crispy—all that disappeared.

Oh my God, she said aloud.

People she'd recognized from her community over the years people who would at one time have distanced themselves moved closer. What's up? Whatcha got there? But she didn't have time. She abandoned her place in line just as the barista called out Americano!

Some Dreams

Some dreams are so tactile the bed falls away
the air in the room loses ambience and any chill
of waking in the dark

—some dreams find the center and turn the whole of you
inside out without you knowing it
what do you know anyway
what's forgotten reappears
reminds you it's showtime every time
and the wings flying system substage
and of course auditorium are occupied
each pair of eyes turning their own
insides out in a kind of melding
that far surpasses your usual stretch of the imagination
where intimacy is concerned touching say as we do
bumping into each other as if a casual
idiomatic expression has much deeper meaning
but it takes some serious dreaming to get the picture
who's to say it's not the other way around?
that we limit our perceptions in this so-called
wakeful life for the sake of navigation
getting from a to be or do I mean Chicago
to New York or was it from the front door
to the closet where the cat food is kept
there in the dark because between down
during and under over up the inches
or miles separating cities and mundane
journeys of the domestic kind we'd be
floating in perpetual confusion maybe
get side-tracked into a little unknown
cul-de-sac and settle down for 30 years
or so do you think that's why some people
have several families spread around
the globe some dreams do seem so
tactile as if by staring straight ahead
the distance will magically rise to meet you
but this means nothing really how
I mean how can dreams so ethereal so
unquantifiable so subjectively
identifiable so out of reach and yet
so within how can they mean anything
more than just movie-going
for the common man

Cable Knit

Cable Knit

Her entry way was curiously empty, bare linoleum with no soul, only the small kitchen at the back beckoning with its sound of the kettle whistling.

Ah, tis grand altogether, she said, as I hovered on her threshold. It was the height of the three day fair that came in like a pagan carnival ruled by a great long-horned mountain goat and went out like a drunken flea circus—the smells of cattle and sheep at my back—the bleating and crying in the street, mud and piss spilling into the doorways. Only the dirty little children sticky with boiled sweets gave us any sense this was supposed to be fun.

She stood with her arms crossed keeping a life of celibacy close and tight against her chest, keeping the cold Irish morning at bay with knotted limbs, keeping those strong fingers warm and ready for her next fierce battle of the knitting needles.

Tis the sweater, ye call it—we'd be calling it a jumper, or a pullover, sure—isn't that what ye're after?

Neither sweater nor jumper seemed adequate descriptions for the thick patterned arrangement of lanolin-heavy wool called an Aran. Yes, yes, I said.

My God, I can smell the turf burning in her back room to this day. And there the stairs that led to her life as spinster seamstress, to the room at the top where miles of fleece combed and spun into yarn struggled against her fingers till they succumbed to the ancient patterns, twists and turns willed into being by this remarkable woman whose keen memory needed no plan written down to make for you something that would ward off wind and cold and much, much more for a very long time.

She jerked her head with half a nod, a timeless country shrug, eyebrows and all, and gave a short tut with her tongue. They say this one's The Tree of Life, she said.

Woman Found Guilty

WOMAN FOUND GUILTY OF THEFT reads the headlines. She took it. Something so big or so valuable it warrants a very big can't miss it boldface typeset layer on the left side of the front page. Maybe she stole a shopping center, pretty big. And if she did the news would read HOW DID SHE DO IT? or IT'S GONE! Maybe MOLL STOLE MALL!

Maybe a diamond necklace? Nah! Why would she steal something she expects to be given by the man of her dreams? Gucci bag? HAG BAGS BAG?

This is getting nowhere fast. She stole someone's heart! Now that's guilty as proven but who's the judge? What annoys me about this headline? Oh, it's a WOMAN found guilty. Would we see MAN FOUND GUILTY? Ah, forget it.

'Twas a water buffalo

'Twas a water buffalo no horse
that Lao Tzu rode across the plains
Bubalus bubalis 'twas of course
ten thousand silken threads for reins

Tell me said the wanderer to the moon
how it came to pass that Lao Tzu's mother
carried him sixty two years in her womb
till she could go not one step further

How she leaned against a plum tree
and out came the philosopher fully made
whisky-face, long ears and wild goatee
swinging his necklace of single twist jade

The moon leaned down to reply
but out of the east a dragon cloud came
and devoured the earth, the moon, the sky
swallowed the wanderer and his name

White Space

White Space

There it is. Right here. Not there.
Take that distance in the form of the letter
T the man outstretched the road
with two choices and breathe
for the white space is here

and now a resting place
a place of letting go in the shallows
where the effort relaxes and the poet
sings through the spinal chord
and every guitar resonates

without a single string being plucked
each word untangling itself
from your childhood fears of periphery
wooded dark enticing ensnaring you
with its magnetic candy

till you become unstuck from your sheets
and scream out in confusion against
a night oppressed by imagery
in the cave on the linoleum the ceiling
where's the mother's voice when you need it

okay she would say it's okay
you're just having a bad dream
and light somehow dispelled
those difficult words though
I do wonder if I'm old enough yet

to understand even the things I say
myself and so I say it's here
the four corners and the inner circle
the loops and dots the marks
the child mind brings to meditation

till the room spins it's the emptiness
after all as Lao Tzu would from his horse
say peach in hand ready for the bite
of his life teeth grazing over the grooves
of the stone embedded in the body of flesh

Imaginary Invalid

Plaza Inn, Ashland, Oregon May 29, 2011

Sound of the creek past midnight.

Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire singing in my ears—Oded Gross and Tracy Young's adaptation, that is. Once again, fabulous ensemble work—and I mean the entire cast, not just the song and dance ensemble who came in at key points like the girls in Little Shop...

How remarkable now I think of it, the interaction with the audience, specifically a 25 year old from Grants Pass named Joy Cunningham who works as a teller, facts gleaned in a laid back ho hum Fool's errand into the auditorium sliding along the apron as our main man slept in his wheel chair. Audience members audibly groaned with disapproval as the Fool walked away saying Well, no one could be expected to write a song of beauty with such information, that name, that age, etc.

So how extraordinarily effective and explosive when much later he emerges "cured" by the Scottish doctor (the maid disguised) with a song filly luxuriously with Ms Cunningham's details...extraordinary for its effect but also for its clear connection to the core of the play, in that we are married to our personal perceptions of ourselves (and through that feat of psychic engineering, everyone around us) in sickness and in health—nay, therefore choosing sickness or health as our stance...

A remarkable demonstration. Do you know there is little work of note on the subject of audience?

In Memory of Our Friend Joy Craddick

She is a bead of rainwater at the top of the ridge pendulous on the new branch of green sprouting maple

She is the cloud rising or falling who can tell there in the canyon making love to the creek as it rushes through dancing over under and against the granite boulders still lodged happily where flood left them

She is the sentinel crow mounted atop live oak as we descend into the switchback

She is the lilac burgeoning in faint purple clusters in the wet fragile bushes of the town

She is the smoke on the cheek of the woman on her porch coffee in hand phone pressed to her ear

She is the broad dark span of wings outstretched as the great blue heron soars over the quiet road

She is the laughter of the a small girl in the corner of an eye in the curve of a bridge in a sudden step of the curb in the sleight of hand of the clown on the plaza

She is the release of an audience into the afternoon their applause clinging and singing in their clothes the wool the modern fibers the leather feather weave and braid button and belt

She is the teeth crowded into the smile of an old woman on a bicycle bent into the hill

She is the railroad tie thickening underfoot

She is the long endless reach of the stainless steel rail how the spikes pin the incongruous together and invite the journey into the open passage through mountains where the emigrant fell to his knees by the spring and cried out in despair

She is the hand touching your arm as the breath leans into you

She is Medicine Buddha

She is Christ's smile

She is Muhammad's fierce gift

She is prayer flags unrolled and tied up into the wind on the most auspicious morning

She is the circle of women remembering their grandmother's stories as the long braid is cut and the head shaved before the surgeon's cut

She is the daughter wielding the scissors

She is the youngest one crying for the first time

She is the last cry and the birth of a sigh at midnight

She is the fire in the hearth before it is set

She is the snow in the gap in that brief wink of sunlight

She is the shovel left in the ground and the thrush gripping the handle

She is the worm working the onion peel the coffee grounds the green trimmings and castaway grains of rice soaked in shoyu

She is a hollow vibration slipping into the second chamber of the black walnut flute in the key of G or was it F sharp?

She is the voice of my father embedded in an oak tree

She is the ballerina without points liberated from the wings last seen tiptoeing like a ring-necked dove over the rooftops

She is the wheel the rim the spokes and whirring mile the spinning question

She is an opening and the memory of a door

She is the alpha wave trading places with the beta wave

She is the gift of the ocean and the emptiness of a boy's pocket

She is the key turning in the lock

She is the dust on the page a list undoing itself punctuation pretending to be invisible

She is pain trembling for its very existence a vial of truth in the hesitation that comes between breaths

She is the palm of your hand passing over the forehead clearing a second thought to make way for every first thought

She is the quiet battle in the vast plain

She is the small heart in the humming wire

She is the preoccupied mind occupied with suffering in the motel they call this life

She is a window cleaner a waitress the man snaking his hose from an air compressor to your flat tire

She is the scent of pure joy on the wrists the twist of sage and the allure of the tattooed bic lighter

She is the light that is left that was always here and never left

She is a soft footstep heard overhead a gentle greeting

She is two eyes widening with love and compassion

She is a small furry creature curled into a cushion made by the first woman

She is a slight shift in the way you stand an inclination of the head

She is the grief you take out of your purse at the end of the day

She is the relief the release the repeating syllables of prayer snapping and cracking in the cast iron stove the recognition of this life in the mirror the fingertips against the temple walls the permission the flight from the garden the illusion and the descent of painted scenery when you least expect it

She is the living treasure weeping on the edge of the stage and the fox leaping into the piano

She is the word now appearing like dregs at the bottom of your glass

Sylvia Beach Hotel—A journal entry

Sylvia Beach Hotel, Newport, Oregon, May 20th, 2011
http://www.sylviabeachhotel.com/

One of my regrets would be that I will never again have the pleasure of sneaking into a cafe, any cafe I like, sitting down and diving into my world and no one knowing what I am doing and no one bothering about me and being totally anonymous, that was fantastic.

J. K. ROWLING, BBC News, Jul. 17, 2005

The photography group left at 4:30 this morning to work at Seal Rock at sunrise. All of Hogwarts tumbling downstairs in the dark it seemed. I joined them late at breakfast—passed on the cooked and went for raw fruit—Panini Café Americano in hand—and told them I was wakeful anyway. Jane Austen's room occupant told me I could expect a comfy bed when I switched rooms later.

Gryffindor's four-poster seemed all right but my back was tweaking. Today will stretch and walk much more. Outside street lights bright all night. First night in six I didn't take a sleeping pill. Might have to reconsider that. I was extremely groggy waking up. Mind you, half a bottle of King Estate pinot noir followed much later by the obligatory shot of single malt (Redbreast) in Nana's Irish pub probably  wasn't doing me any favors. Well tonight I booked myself a table at April's across the street so there will be no party of shutter bugs—though meeting them was informative and amusing.

I think the loft is my favorite space in the house. Banquet table pushed against the east wall, ceiling slope overhead. The six plus feet wide poster of the Oregon coast pinned to the slope is quite intimidating—so what must the real thing be like? That's a great example of an abstraction taking on greater dimension with greater impact on the psyche than direct experience. The long drive will of course affect me directly physiologically and in the long term psychologically—such big nickel words—but the map does serve to give me a literal heads up regarding tomorrow's drive, from here to Brookings. In other words, if I don't start out early, I won't be in Brookings till dark. And there won't be a lot of opportunities to stop.

Today, having said all that, I may take a nostalgic trip north to Depoe Bay, not far, to flesh out my recollections of that summer with Pam and David.

Last night's restlessness and wakefulness was visited by dreams of elaborate bullying and intimidation—in one case someone rather well-off and possibly gay throwing lighted matches at me one by one. I kicked the box of matches remaining away which angered him. He threatened to use his influence to blackball me and my family from any institution in Stinson Beach of all places. I woke up and lay there remembering a weasly asshole in Arlington High daily teasing me, seeking me out, and my adamant refusal to "step outside" which only added fuel. Looking back I think I somehow knew—or reasoned, is perhaps a better way of saying it—that getting physical, that is, hitting him, would not help. And yet, how many instances of teenage altercation do we see that seem to illustrate the opposite? What if I had gone home and asked my experienced boxer father to guide me in some nifty punching techniques? I probably would have gone to Vietnam from college. Instead I rationalized my way to a life of non-violence. I still do not believe that damaging or destroying the other helps anyone. Regarding the Hitler question, he was allowed to go too far first by the German people and then by the European "community" as he invaded and bullied one country after another. Too many aristocrats and industrialists were waiting and watching—even joining in—for Adolph to be thwarted. Allowing him to rise up in Germany and then proceed towards empire building was not a series of nonviolent acts. Of course, nothing I just said has much substance or credibility for obvious reasons.

To continue with last night. My wakeful thoughts turned to other fears such as my being here on the—have you heard? It's on all the billboards—fateful day—Saturday the 21st—the last day of the world. Well yes. I even felt the hotel trembling and thought how ironic I decide to travel the greater length of Oregon coastline the day it falls into the ocean. Hell, even Highway 20 from Corvallis to Newport is officially closed today, the Friday before, the penultimate day! Okay. There was a distinct braiding of fear and amusement but I sedated triple warmer anyway and calmed down. Soon enough, my thoughts turned to Harry Potter's milieu since I was of course meaningfully assigned Rowling's room. I thought of opening the owl's cage—at least opening the window—but I did settle on the world of magic as thematic until I fell back to sleep. In my descent into slumber my admiration for Rowling grew, particularly how she highlighted teenage bullying and intimidation. Harry had his circle of friends and his "good" house for safety. I had Janie Beck—who taught me always wear black socks—and others, plus the "safety" of good rapport with several teachers, notably Feldman who taught Latin, and my own cousin Holmes who ran the audio-visual department.

As for magic, I know Rowling's on the record as nonbeliever, but we do need it. Not need "it" so much as an understanding of our own powers and an understanding of great force at large in the world. Rowling and Tolkien among others tap into this beautifully. One only has to consider our friend Joy's "gentle intention"—beginning with the thermometer attached to the fingertip to illustrate how we can raise or lower our own body temperature, and leading to my wife's changing her own brainwaves—to grasp that we really do have tremendous powers and we need them to learn how to use them. That's what school should be about for these things do not go away nor diminish. But that's not a focus here, so much.

For now I need to accept the truth of this for myself and act accordingly—finding meaning in and bringing meaning to this journey.

Why did we wait for anything?—Why not seize the pleasure at once?—How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

JANE AUSTEN, Emma 1815

Sweet Life Patisserie

Looking for meaning we are interrupted
by a small girl asking four basic questions
dancing on and off the chair opposite.

Two tables over her father feeds baby brother.
What are you eating? she asks first.
Quiche, I say. Made of eggs. Like a pie.

Clock? she says, tapping my watch.
Yes indeed it has a small clock face.
What's that? moving closer, touching

the point of my pen. That's a pen, I say
but now her small index finger arches
emphatically down onto my open journal

and I start to answer but she runs away
leaving me with my list for the day.
Eat. Look at the time. Take my pen. Write.

Stopping by the Smith River

Stopping by to see the Smith River
it's been awhile we both lay down
put our heads together and talked
the current state of affairs running
right through our toes fingers hair
till I grew silent but she babbled on
incessant with no punctuation no
pause to her stream of consciousness
unless you call that beautiful laughing
water dancing marks of exclamation
I don't know I couldn't interrupt
once she'd started once she
recognized me by voice or impressions
made on her over the years by my
two daughters son and wife this life
she'd start to say this life what a gift
right? From high up in the mountains
all the way downstream to great mother
ocean and everything between
take that willow there thickening
under stones so smooth from being held
touched rolled so many times how
the willow branches show us the way
things tend to lean new buds on their
stripped down story of how things went
last winter yeah I finally managed to say
I know and looking up saw the great trees
leaning in eavesdropping
like it was all news

For Arika the Seeing Eye Dog

The paws twitch
the fleas itch
can you imagine the vast reaches
the ridges the gulches the long lashes
not to mention the wilderness of the tail
where follicle to follicle and strand to strand
through the dense fur of the seeing eye dog on
her side how the opportunistic flea
makes its way in that clawtooth ingrown
toenail sort of way that ectoskeletal inside
out dastardly impish trollish out
from under a rock in a dark don't
put your finger in there sort of way
only to find a landscape washed and treated
for invasive species of all walks and hops
just read the label flea! Your days are done!
Meantime in dreamtime the hostess
with the harness vibrates at rest with
the memory of long sun-baked walks down
open highway say Akoni Pule where
one scent can take you through the green
overgrowth into the shadowy leafy
undergrowth in pursuit of mongoose
rat chicken dog or best yet cat
but remember ah remember this
all in a dream-haze because out there
in wakefulness reason hath overtaken
instinct long since and the wildness tamed
like exquisite calligraphy of the soul
to flourish in two worlds the world of dog
dreams and the world of eyes
for the mistress both concurrently
till, that is, one is in recline
when one is allowed to dream

the road to Foster's place

The road to Foster's place is 2.4 miles 8 minutes with traffic. But he's not there anymore. He's here. One of the things I wanted to do while passing through Eugene was look up David Foster, emeritus professor of art at U of O, because of his influence in my life. I remember visiting David on my way back from taking the professional knowledge test in Portland, just after moving here from England. I was the first person at Southern Oregon offered this quick method of proving you were qualified to teach. They weren't set up for the test in Ashland yet, so I had to drive the six hours north. Now I'm hesitating because I can't remember how it turned out we went to breakfast together...and he paid, which I appreciated, living on substitute teacher pay and my wife's three part time jobs at the coffee shop, the used clothing store and the bagel shop. On the way to breakfast David was talking non-stop about opportunities, how I was like a prairie dog sticking his head up through the surface and looking around. Things looked good. While he was talking I remember thinking about Ezekiel sticking his head through the clouds and discovering heaven's machinery, the gears and cogs and how everything worked. David was like that, as curious and fearless as a child, with all the wisdom of someone who'd been through the war and trained up with the Bauhaus movement, to name a couple. We crossed the street, first waiting for the crosswalk sign to illuminate. Nothing was sacred or really you could say the opposite of David, everything was sacred. I said Aren't you alarmed at these modern judgement saving devices, or words to that effect. Like being told when it was all right to cross a road, whether there was traffic in the street or not. He looked at me and said, I pick and choose, and that's one I can live with. I'm okay with that. I'll be happy to wait for the all clear. There's other things I do where I make my own judgements, but this is one I'm fine leaving to the city.

When I first met him he came literally vibrating with quiet energy and force into our small college. I saw him right away as my revered teachers' mentor. He ran a film class in the evenings and it was well attended. He began with hand-painted frames, moved through Fritz Lang and Orson Welles and on from there. I'm not a film buff in any way, but he gave me a grasp on film's antecedents. Elsewhere on campus he supervised the building of the dark room where I would later spend hours alone stirring Russell Kaine's photographs around for the yearbook.

David had a sort of Hemingway appearance, with the teacher's shrewd eye, turning everything you said or did into an opportunity to learn. He was I would say swarthy, a working artist. Back at his house after breakfast, I noticed the lights went on each time we entered a room, and went out when the last person exited. Typical David. His house was basically fully packed with computer gear and art project materials, a printing press in the basement.

Over the years we exchanged Christmas cards. His were always homemade. A piece of wisdom along with one of his fascinating sketches. He was internationally known for taking his modified VW van out into the wild and running photographs through his computer and then to a kind of sketch pad he devised. It was like a marriage of what he'd seen and what he wanted to illustrate. He had a kind of Chinese landscape sense of economy and his work was beautiful, frame-able. And of course I was honored to be included in his mailing list, which must have been vast.

The thing is I can't remember when I stopped hearing from David. We moved states and I attributed not hearing from him to that break. So now I'm hear and he's on my list. I touch his address in my contact application and the journey to his house looks like a brush stroke with some angularity reaching into the east. But for some reason before setting out I enter his name in Google to discover that David G. Foster died in 2003, on the shortest day of the year. He was 78.

He was killed crossing the street.

I'm heading out of town now, over to the coast where I'm going to do some writing and some walking. Maybe I'll take out my iPad and do some sketching in David's honor. I'm just sticking my head up through the surface and looking around. It's a beautiful day and you're never too old to cry for an old friend, but would they want that? Time to move on, glad I knew him.

Getting the Rooster

My God! My God! Has it always been so?
Walking to the kitchen for a drink of water
and coming back with fish tagine leftovers.
Take the other day. I went down to the fenceline
swearing under my breath I'd get that rooster.
Every morning the call to prayers at four dark
by that feathered tin trumpeter in the guava.
How many times I stood clear of his backside
hands on my hips like my old grandmother
muttering promises to cut his scratchy warbling
and dismantle the acoustic tunnel that amplifies
his broken serenade right up to our own bedroom window
and other post-neolithic thoughts on hunting
for reasons other than food. So I reach the scene
bend under the weeping bamboo and behold
the makings of the male of the species who on seeing me
tries to run through the small squares of the cage
by defining the inner dimensions of the rectangular cuboid
with his feathery mass and some rather potent instincts
potent because instinct caromed off my own instinct
while captor and captive eyed each other
as if the horizons hadn't been stitched together
with telephone poles and sagging wires quite yet
and the background roar was not really a motorcycle
but a rather greater point of view who might
quickly reverse the situation with me suddenly
defining other sorts of dimensions and so on
but I was not interested in the kill certainly not.
Did he know this? If so he had a strange way
of showing his understanding of relocation
by speeding up till he became a brown blur
with a bit of red in it.
There was a moment when I hesitated I must say
as I studied his diminutive crest and asked him
are you a chicken or da kine? which is local for
"really annoying rooster who crows at godawful hours of day or night"
when to my horror—I do have some left after a lifetime
of intermittent exposure to American television—
I saw the zebra dove belly-up on the floor of the trap.
If I needed further proof I had my man this was it.
I promptly loaded my victim and his victim
into the back of my black pickup though in a pang
strapped the cage down for the ride
and high-tailed it up to Pu'u Hue—a nearby deserted mountainscape
well known to catch-and-release volunteers like myself.
The shabby counterfeit of Chanticleer and I gave each other hard looks
before I set one end of the trap against the wide gate
slid open Freedom's door of twisted wire, watched and listened
as the creature threw caution and dignity to the wind
and waddled furiously in the straightest line
I've ever seen taken by a bird on foot, almost to the horizon
clucking and hiccupping from clump to clump of thick grass
and I stood there marveling awhile at high cirrus clouds above,
painted bark eucalyptus lounging on their elbows below.
The air seemed pure and clean. My conscience likewise.
I turned for home key in hand sensing a sharp pang
as if the absence would never replace the palpability
of direct experience as if I had sown the seeds of separation
and now all there was left was what? The post mortem
wondering if I'd gotten the right guy? How would I know
until I lay awake that very night listening for something
to return? Unless something had never left.
But the cage was not empty yet.
I shook out the dove. Getting down on one knee
I noted the surgical hole over the heart.
Even if that wasn't the right guy
I'm glad I got him. Or was I? Or did I?
It was me lured them both in the trap with scratch from Takata's Store.
I cast the innocent victim into the long grass
and went down the road without looking back.

That Fierce Wild Cry in the Night

That fierce wild cry in the night
arriving only now in earshot from another time
a time to abandon everything we have gathered around us

and embrace the shadows like lovers seeking forgiveness
a time to walk away from the fire with the promise entrusted
and speak it to another wall a ship-lap tongue and groove array

of knots and grains that make us weep for the forest of childhood
no time to think here no time to hold on or let go this time
there is no pillow to turn into no soft escape that will muffle

the truth. Oh there will be days when we will ask each other
why such vital life-changing experiences cannot travel in whispers
like first kisses barely touching...why surrender must reach back

so far to the tails of our ancestors the tips of the spine
blunted and vestigial with memory neither easy nor difficult
and languages returning to tongues with a ferocity

that knows no limits and the towers in the night
with their windows of fire along the dreaded coastlines
moving moving in a dance with their own foundations

and there in the abandoned lot some of us stare
into each others' eyes longing for trust reaching
into our pockets for photographs and finding only

money we cannot spend. It's a long sentence
this sleeplessness and we wake up get dressed
in transparent fickle robes of our own imagination.

How Many Miles to the Border

How Many Miles to the Border

How close to the other and his chaos
dusty roads and slogans marked
in stones against the barren hills

The line is there I know the wet line
of the river the deep line that pulls
you in as you swim from what you

are to what you think you really want
the weather too stops on that spot
the clouds too big to get through checkpoints

and morning dew that falls here in the desert
ushered into cubicles and strip-searched
under guise of freedom and liberty

give me the map the red veins and blue
careful not to let the folds and creases tear
more than we already have allowed

whole rectangles of topographic abstractions
dangle over the silent steering wheel
how many miles how many widths of the thumb

can span the mountains and rivers without end
how close how near the other and the smells
of his strange cooking his spices caught up

under fingernails where tired morning
moves its fingertips over the skull
I know it's close I hear his music
and his children crying out to be fed

Dirt Dirt

Dirt Dirt

Dirt dirt give me the dirt
the scoops the shovels.
How about in spades or
trowels? Plowed under
or dug up. Come on

I know you're a mine
of information a veritable
quarry no a canyon
or is it a gulch? A hunch
of gulches. An arroyo
of Hey! Yo! Wassup?

What's down! Why
the grave look it's dark
so dark I can't see
down here in the catacombs
the worm tunnels the filth
the stench of Verdun

the bombed out craters
of rock-ridden backyards
where countless children
played after school maybe
two or three while school

was in session. Under
the fingernails. In the pores.
It takes a scrubbing brush
to see he's really a white
kid a good kid clean through

and through though he won't
eat his brassicas. No! And you
know why? Too gritty mommy.
Too crunchy and dirty he cries.
Silly boy she says. Eat your

greens your sprouts your spinach
your broccoli calabrese and kale
too not to mention sparrow grass
stalks in the night pushing their
way through the old man's
well-intentioned mounds of earth.

Soil he says. Not dirt.

She Gets Me Going

She Definitely Gets Me Going

Otherwise I'd be staying

probably minding my own behavior

since there's enough of that to go

around and come back again

without going anywhere really

not so much a spinning of wheels

as a weaving and re-weaving

an undoing to delay completion

I suppose a waiting because they're

in the vestibule the concerned

citizens the hallway the portico

the front deck you can hear their

conversations in passing feel their

elbows jutting angling like rooftops

giving inquisitive and frankly generally

couldn't care less looks the sort that

confuse lesser mortals but I've got

the ticket you know sorry if this

offends or makes you nervous or worse

something out of my control thank god

jealous poor you if that's the case

but rubber meets the road here my

friend because she gets me going

in definite ways ways that can be

defined in radial far-flung spokes

in the itinerary soul-dazzling star-

bursts reaching the known edges

of the world that's going

wouldn't you say? that's gone

my friend definitely long so long

the birds might be marbled godwits

or apapani goodness and gray-green

coastal granite infused with soapstone

or jagged a'a ooh-ooh dashes and

hyphens leading and poking each

word along each syllable in the going

and the getting and the defining

after all it's a parallel universe my

friend she gets me and me she gets

in a frisbee-boomerang sort of

lopsided spinning kind of way

gasps from the bystanders and

grunts of approval disapproval

from other passengers the turning

long-playing gold record mounted

like a museum piece with the song

always crooning in rising cadences

hardly a skip of the needle

louder and more insistent

I can hear it now Frank

Sinatra doing The Best

Is Yet to Come

Trash Mermaid

Trash Mermaid

On the beach this

morning's murder

of crows. Rocking

their black numbers

where froth and turbulence

reveals food

wearing shells

crustacean clues

perhaps their group

deception is no crime

merely passion for

misleading information

picked-through

candy wrappers

and other trickery

of human rubbish

bottle tops entire mermaids

objet trouvé washed ashore

in the beachcomber tradition

pre-assemblage.

Last seen hanging

on a wall in 

Breakers Café.

La Velita

LA VELITA NARANJITO

Her name was La Velita Rosalita Carmelita Celestina Naranjito and she was hand-picked to go far in this world. It could have been different. Nestled there in her dark leafy green bower, a beautiful cluster of white blossoms highlighting La Velita's graceful proportions, she watched with trembling apprehension the day the great shaking took her sisters and brothers from her life. That was the day people still call The Great Fall.

A shapely creature, La Velita seemed to draw the warmth and glow of sunlight to her without pretense. She was not given to fluttering her eyelashes like some young things from even warmer climes. Yes, in La Velita, all the romance, legend and beauty of Old California were still alive. The people looked at her and knew that the blood that flowed through her veins ran fresh and full of promise. Anyone could see she was without blemish, almost. After all, which one of us can say they have reached their best years without a scrape? Without a tumble?

One faint scar, only one faint shadow and that seen only by the very worst mannered busy-bodies who squinted from behind their faded J.C. Penney's machine-washable curtains. Apart from that, La Velita might have a little beauty mark in an unexpected part of her anatomy, but who's keeping track of these things? Who is the judge in these matters? Is this our right, to be staring at others, looking for little imperfections? What's the world coming to? It wasn't this way in our grandparents' day, I can tell you that! No! In those days, it was the whole person that mattered.

It was the whole of La Velita who stood proudly before the bespectacled man with a mostly white-haired goatee. Of course, she had learned to stand like that, to present a fearless picture of herself to the world. But it was a performance. She was in fact a little uncertain and more than a little afraid. What was he doing? Taking notes? Drawing? Look at him! Now he chooses a red pencil. Now a blue. Now a green. What is he doing? She stood stock still, petrified.

For what it was worth, Miguel Diablo liked to keep meticulous records of his food. That's right! He was going to eat poor La Velita. Where is this story going, you may well wonder. The next thing you know, Miguel's incisors will begin to show themselves like Swiss Army pocket knives from beneath his upper lip. Admittedly, he is twisting his mouth somewhat as he draws and writes. Perhaps he's seen her beauty mark. Or maybe he's seen that faint scar. Is he wondering how that happened? Is he thinking to himself, this is a story standing before me, a story waiting to be told.

Once upon a time, there was a rustling in the house, the top rungs of a ladder being thrust into the leaves and branches. Was anyone awake who would hear? Only La Velita, poor abandoned La Velita, the day after The Fall. No brothers and sisters. No mother and father. Grandfathers and grandmothers long since in the ground. She was alone. And now she feared for her life.

Suddenly she was twisted awake but she couldn't speak or scream. Not a sound from her. Quickly the darkness enclosed her, the soft folds of burlap sacking, the smells of the field, the granary, the sweat of hard labor. Bumping down the tall ladder, bumping against something with a pleasant voice, bumping over the country roads, bumping from sunrise to sunset. Long hours she lay there. At first there was the crazy rolling around but there was no way out in that claustrophobic softness. And then quiet. A guitar. The crackling of twigs in the early life of a fire set in a circle of stones. A song bird settling down in nearby branches. The sound of surf and the tumble of smooth stones at the edge of the sea. Where was she? What was happening?

How can this story end without blood being shed? That is what you are asking, isn't it? Let's see, the young man playing the guitar is taken by surprise by the farmer and skedaddles, leaving poor hapless La Velita there in the scrub-grass and mesquite perimeter where the light from a hastily built fire is subsumed by endless night. Next morning Old Blue, that flea-bitten mongrel who fell out of a beat up '53 Chevy pickup truck with wraparound windows, comes sniffing around the smoldering fire pit. Can you imagine? That cracked nose that used to be shiny and wet, now poking around the sack that holds our precious La Velita? Sniffing and pushing, that big hungry nose pushed past its desire for a discarded piece of filet mignon steak specially wrapped up in a doggy bag by the local diner, to find our heroine, cowering. How the vehicle of abduction becomes a sanctuary! And now that sanctuary broken open by a four-legged question mark in the next chapter of La Velita's convoluted story.

Gingerly, Old Blue caught ahold of La Velita, careful not to bite down too hard. He didn't know the what or why of his actions but the next thing you know, he set off down the dusty road. It was a fine spring day, with a kind of spooky stillness and no sign of rain. In the distance could be heard the big trucks signing their weight in tire tracks down the long north-south west coast highway. No place for a rambling homeless dog like Old Blue. He stuck to the back roads and byways.

Imagine the sight of Old Blue delicately conveying a brightness named La Velita along the weedy margins of the world. Imagine the delight of the runaway girl called Cordelia. Three days on the road, in the fields, hiding out in the woods, fording creeks, sleeping in abandoned sheep sheds, all to get away from her angry, out-of-control stepfather. All the pain and hurt of those months spent enduring his abuse fell away when Cordelia caught sight of La Velita. The girl crouched low so as not to scare off Old Blue and made little clicking sounds and held out her hand. The dog stopped. La Velita looked like a little sun on the end of his dried up nose. With a better look at Old Blue, Cordelia got a better idea. Water. She slowly and carefully reached down and found the plastic water bottle and said outloud, "water, dog, here's some water for you, come on, boy, here's some water, c'mon boy, want some water?"

Now Old Blue knew a well-mannered girl when he saw one, so he went right up to Cordelia to see what she was on about. The closer he got, the more he could smell the life-giving water. Who knows why all the creek beds and usual puddles were dry, but the stuff was scarce, Old Blue knew it in his bones. He got within a tail's length of the girl and saw clearly she was going to share that water. Down went La Velita, out shot the girl's hand, and thus began the next chapter in what was becoming a very long-winded story.

Old Blue and Cordelia made a natural partnership, one for which the dog was quite happy to surrender that small bit of sunshine he'd been carrying so far. In return, the girl stepped up her search for food and water, sharing everything with her new companion.

Now it's a known biological and botanical fact that La Velita's lifespan was far shorter than this story. Cordelia knew this but for some reason known only to a higher muse, she took good care of Old Blue's present, treating La Velita like a precious friend, a jewel, a keepsake, a good luck charm. Besides, it gave Cordelia an idea.

Across the tracks, watch out for the 12:19! Over the far ridge. Yikes, a snake! Lucky. He just had a mouse for breakfast. See the lump right there in that long colored rope of a body? Through the pecan orchard. Hey! Old Blue recognized that pit bull. See how their tails are wagging. Good thing, too. Behind that rusted out abandoned school bus. Under the big water tank. Down the dried up creek bed. Tiptoe past the old lady's washing line waving its faded denim jeans, red bandanas and more underwear and socks than Cordelia had ever seen in her life. Stumble across the stony corn field and whoa! Look at that! A rice field, kind of wet. Endless citrus orchards...Old Blue, come on! I know where we are now!

Until...until the unlikely threesome turned a corner round a handsome cedar barn and found Cordelia's uncle's house, hideaway of the infamous Miguel Diablo Naranjito. Here she knew they would be safe.

She remembered the family stories about her uncle. Once a great revolutionary hero, long since disappeared from the public eye, all he ever wanted to do with his days was read, write, draw pictures and sleep. A good place, dear reader, to leave you, as the sun goes down in this part of the world, where water is still scarce, but love can still be found.