Mr Emerson

"...if once in a thousand years the stars should appear,
       men would think the City of God had been founded."

and

"...the sky is the daily bread of the soul."

-Emerson

Free Dive

Now I cannot walk
    under the leafy bower of elms
without recalling those sublime
subsurface frolics at Lake Pillsbury,
Spooning & rolling & tucking
Into cold secret green rooms
or entering the undulating darkness
    of seagrass canopies,
A forest of long curving stems
Melding into further mystery---
Headlong I plied my passage
Through the silent labyrinthe of leaves
Peopled with the movement
    of small translucent fishes
Who like me larked weightless
In the glimmer of wavy light--
At ten feet & equalise my ears
And stroke plunging to twenty-two feet,
Where the sea-gardens array themselves
    in fields of white rippled sand,
The silver shining surface far above,
I turn & roll lewdly unclothed
    exhaling a stream of bright bubbles,
Surprising a school of big bass
Trawling the rock garden bottom--
Then with sublime slowness
I drift upward
Into a shimmering halo of golden light
through the high twine of branches,
Calmly I break the blue surface
    and float on my back breathing deep,
Studying the prisms of cirrus ribbons
Miles overhead.

one for bukowski

Almost by default
I slip further & further
Past unemployments
And broken plumbing
Into midsummer's lowest denominators,
Barefoot naked unshaven
Limping about the house,
Cold showers
And one-sheet-sleeping alone-
Knee surgery recuperations
Opening up the lazy day
And its slow hours-
I'm lazy too on doctor's orders
Reading Ginsberg or Billy Collins
In the shade
Sipping vodka with homemade lemonade

the poet (#2)

The wayward squirrel
Who lingers in morning sun
Admiring leaves or seeking silence

Is met with the reproach
Of squirrel wisdom,
With the squirrel-wheel mantra-

Get Busy!
Time is Acorns!

navigation?

The stars let us down
Either that or bad math

Caused us to call
St Charmain Rock 'Rabrindranath'

tilting at windmills

Small band of poets
Who believe technology
Has got it all wrong-

That instead of delivering
Space and time
It's been against them all along

so?

Your actions speak louder
   than your words
      said she
But I don't mind
   I've made my peace
      with hypocrisy

A Date With Death

A date with death
On the high Wyoming plains
Premonition in dreams,
December when the ground lay bare
And sunlight shone golden
On vast windy rangelands,
Out of Rock Springs
Ominous snowclouds gather to the North
Sioux chanting & death-rattles 
             in the bottom of my mind-
Far down some wrong turn
The pickup out of gas
Where the road ends
Under swaying cottonwoods

thurber

"...there's no safety in numbers-
or in anything else."

I'll Take That Job

Little could I know when yesterday
I stacked the two-by-eights
And corrugated sheetmetal
That my errand to repair her leaky roof
Would carry me up shaky ladders
Into a windy blue domain
Where hour by hour things changed,
Close clouds caught the light
A hundred ways
And rowdy ravens gave me their greeting,
Morning air pulsed
And squirrels scolded me from their cedars,
Raining shuckings on my poor skull,
Little could I know!
What fortune I would find
Spending the entire day
Rubbing elbows with eaves
       & brick chimneys--
And at dusk on the gable what a seat!
   full moons waxing alabaster
      over the purple sage Sierra....

fields of fruit

     If it's depression that you're after, there's certainly no shortage of sources, there are plenty of cherries out there with a big black D printed on them waiting to be picked & tart your tongue

baja

It arrived some time

in the middle of the night

the moon was high

     the air was clear

even though asleep I could hear

its slow rhythmic roar

in sets of three or four

the big Peruvian swell

surfers this morning
     sounding the conch shell –

a grand familiar thunder

to all who've gone "down under."

Baja, 2011

Ah but what a dance

to plunge into that Cortez surf

and stroke for all you’re worth

   to the dangerous rocks

      with their whitesand coves

following the stripers and iridescent scissortails

as the big Baja waves

tumble across your silly snorkel

weightless is the dance they show you

Exit your boardrooms and cubicles

come frolic with the colorful mexican fishes
that school about in that vermillion sea

that know what life's about

merge a marvelous moment

with the yellow transparent fingerlings

   oblivious to everything 
but movement color and delight…

traveling on the edge

bad sparkplugs
   almost ended our trip in Virginny
leaking camper roof
   almost did us in in D.C.
a big argument
   almost ruined everything in Biloxi
then we ran out of money--
   yet here we are
fat dumb & happy in N'awlins

-2005

my circus act

Alone in the digger pines
At the end of Piper Hill Road
Cross'd by vulture shadows
I balance the 2 x 8 x 14 redwood skirt
On my knee
Twenty feet up the bent extension ladder
Between my lips a passel
Of sixteen-penny galvanized nails-
Praying nothing shifts

lunacy

In the Asteroid Room
   a scuffle broke out
I got clocked
   or should I say moonrock'd